Many NCAN members provide some career advising to the high school students they serve. Our goal is to provide strategies, tools, and resources to members who are interested in providing this programming to students already enrolled in a postsecondary institution.

Among members already engaged in this work, the career advising services provided to postsecondary students don’t vary that much from the services provided to high school students. What does differ is the end goal.

The goal of providing career advising to students in high school is to help them make decisions about potential majors, which postsecondary institution to apply to/attend, etc. The goal of career advising for college students is to ensure that they are well prepared for a career and the world of work.

Career Advising for College Students – The Basics

Which career advising services should your program offer? The below services are common components of career advising programming for college students.

Note: This list is not exhaustive, nor does it imply that all the activities listed below should be included in a career advising program.

Career and Self-Exploration

These are activities to help students learn about what they love and want to do, their values, and their skills. Activities include:

• Researching careers of interest.
• Learning about the educational and degrees/certificates necessary to enter and succeed in those careers.
• Exploring the national and regional hiring forecast and earnings potential of these careers.

Decision-Making and Planning

These activities help students make career and educational decisions based on what they learned from the career and self-exploration phase:

• Narrowing down the list of career areas and industries of interest.
• Mapping out the education pathway(s) required and gaining real-world experience in these areas. Also, declaring a relevant major and/or minor if they have not already done so.
• Creating a career plan with concrete goals and objectives.
• Beginning to develop their “brand” and professional profile by:
  • Crafting a preliminary resume, cover letter, and thank you notes.
  • Creating a LinkedIn profile.
  • Learning job search strategies.
  • Creating and practicing an “elevator speech” to succinctly describe the type of career they hope to pursue or their qualifications for a specific job/role.
  • Developing or honing interviewing and networking skills.
• Offering opportunities for students to build social capital and professional networks through:
  • Mentors or coaches who can offer general or industry-specific coaching and guidance.
  • Informational interviewing opportunities.
  • Access to job fairs that can expose students to a broad variety of careers.

Engaging in Career-Related Experiences and "Launching"

On-the-job experiences can expose students to a variety of jobs, help them gauge the fit of specific career paths, and enable them to build out their social and professional networks. Some of these activities might include:

• Encouraging students to have real-world experiences such as:
  • Internships or micro-internships.
  • Job shadowing.
  • Research opportunities – during the summer or school year, on or off campus.
• Tweaking or customizing “marketing” materials depending on the job (e.g., resume, cover letter, elevator speech).
• Launching a job search toward the end of their postsecondary experience and the completion of a degree.
• If appropriate, helping a student make decisions about potentially pursuing a graduate degree or joining relevant professional associations or networks.

It’s important to encourage your students to visit their on-campus career centers. Although your students are fortunate to have career advising services through your program, college career centers specialize in career advising and may have a much broader array of resources, tools (most of which should be free to enrolled students), internship and job opportunities, resume writing workshops, etc., to complement the support your program offers.

At what point in a student’s college career should each of these services be offered? It depends. Many programs offer a “lite” version of most of these services during a student’s first year, with deepening intensity each year after that, depending on the scope and sequence of a program’s advising services.

Working with First-Gen Students

Research shows that “even with identical credentials, first-generation graduates have more trouble getting jobs than their better-coached and better-connected classmates.” Many first-generation students can’t turn to their families for help, since their educational and work experiences might be quite different. This makes the career advising done by NCAN member organizations that much more important.

Some NCAN member programs are helping their first-generation students navigate additional workplace challenges, including stereotype threat, impostor syndrome, and navigating the workplace without losing one’s own identity(ies). Some students come from communities with cultural norms that do not align with those of the generally accepted American workplace culture. Others might feel like “impostors” in certain professional situations – like they do not belong, deserve to be in, or are not as educated as their colleagues. Still others are stereotyped by colleagues based on those individuals' biases.

Advisers from NCAN member programs work closely with their students to help them leverage their personal assets in the workplace and understand how to navigate workplace culture without losing their own identities.

VIDEO: This NCAN webinar recording includes some discussion of how some members are helping their students navigate and resolve this dichotomy.

In addition to preparing students for workplace experiences, some organizations also provide support to the employers that host their students. They provide orientation to employers on how to engage with students from increasingly diverse backgrounds and to celebrate and integrate their differences into the workplace.

Additional Information and Resources

Resources Specifically Relevant for Working with First-Generation Students

• Y'all Hiring?: The Black Teen's Guide to Navigating Employment: This book provides a culturally relevant guide for Black youth seeking employment. Elements of the book focus on how Black youth can maintain their cultural integrity while planning their professional elevation and balancing work-life obligations.