Measuring student engagement with careers services

Careers consultant Pinar Mehmet and Nicola Varley, careers consultant at Nottingham Trent University, consider how to boost student engagement and the best ways to measure success

For many colleagues working in higher education, student engagement has been a hot topic for several years and one that has become even more pertinent both during and in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Most - if not all - HE careers practitioners will have anecdotal evidence of low student engagement, whether that is fewer ‘bums on seats’, limited interactions within sessions, lack of clicks on online resources or lower than hoped for numbers applying for advertised roles.

A 2022 survey by Jisc showed that 46% of the careers advisory service respondents believed student engagement to be their biggest challenge. This evidence was backed by the recent Early Careers Survey 2023, which found that ‘student engagement with careers advice sessions dropped across all types of activity’.

What challenges are students facing?

Based on the Early Careers Survey, over half listed mental health concerns, balancing commitments, and money among the biggest challenges they faced. These financial concerns may further impact commuting students, whereby the benefits of engaging in extra-curricular activities need to be weighed up against the costs of travel. However, as employability becomes more embedded into the curriculum - whether they realise it or not - many students will be engaging with employability activities by default.

Many students will also be engaged in outside activities that contribute to their employability skills, but how do HE careers advisory services measure this and how do we encourage students to actively reflect on and understand how their experiences link to careers and employability? Methods may include reflective assignments within a module, or via an Employability award.

What can practitioners do?

Knowing your students is the key to understanding their needs. Every careers advisory service has their own matrix requirements and KPIs, but it can be easy to overlook or assume what the student needs are. Finding out preferred methods of communication including using current and preferred social media platforms can help, and also be used to support the promotion of online and digital careers resources.

An effective marketing strategy will hopefully elevate engagement with these resources. Combining the effective use of digital resources alongside advisers may increase overall engagement with services and thus support students’ career planning.

The Early Careers Survey showed the most popular forms of engagement were with events such as jobs fairs and for CV, cover letter and application advice, but how do we know the impact of these interactions? One method is to look at career readiness data and how this is impacted by students who engage with their careers service as well as considering confidence levels before and after an interaction.

There are no easy solutions when it comes to student engagement and, with the increased pressure of the cost of living crisis, it is unlikely that the challenge will go away any time soon. As career practitioners we should take heart from the fact that those students who do engage with us recognise the benefits of doing so.