Has anyone else noticed this trend? It seems like there are fewer and fewer students attending programs or workshops that Career Services offices offer. Is your campus experiencing this too? Perhaps your campus is noticing it not only with Career Services programs, but many other programs as well?
Any ideas as to why? Maybe students are just too busy. Maybe they'd rather look up the same information on the internet? Maybe they don't see it as valuable at that moment. Maybe they just don't even know about these programs?
Obviously there are a lot of factors that contribute to student attendance (or non attendance). But what do we do with the fact that this is a reality? Do we not offer low-attended programs anymore? Do we go to on-line only career centers? How can we market programs more effectively? How do we plan around students' schedules?
I'll be looking for ideas in the sessions in New Orleans. I know there are a lot of sessions that highlight great programs going on in Career Centers, and I'm sure they've confronted the student attendance issue to make their programs successful!! I'm ready to soak up all these ideas!
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At Lafayette College, we just examined attendance at all of our workshops for the past two years. It was time consuming but certainly telling to see the numbers in black and white. Some programs have exhibited the decreased attendance you mention but others have remained quite popular and even grown in numbers. We found that those programs where we include outside experts beyond just Career Services staff seem to be well attended. We bring in employers to teach students how to navigate the Fall Career Fair and to conduct mock interviews. We also use students on panels related to summer internships and our Externship program.
So, the reality is that students will come if they value the source of the info AND if they feel they can't get this info in other ways (i.e. an individual counseling appt.)
Last summer, the Career Center for Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota assessed workshop attendance numbers and determined that due to the low numbers, we would transition to offering our career-related workshops on-line. These workshops were created using the Breeze software, and allow students to view narrative PowerPoint presentations on a variety of topics 24/7. In addition, we have been able to track how often the online workshops are viewed and we have since noticed a huge increase in the number of students viewing are presentations.
I'm a corporate recruiter now, but when I was a career center director we implemented 20 minute Tuesdays, which were short workshops held in the cafeteria and were only 20 minutes long. They addressed salary negotiation, the top websites to look for a job, interview attire-----all fairly attractive topics for students. The lunch hour was 11:45-1:15, so we offered the workshops twice. We got lots of people who would NEVER have come to a formal workshop. I'm happy to share slides with anyone.
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