It feels like there is a tug-of-war on campuses everywhere. In the middle is the answer to the question: what is Career Services for?
It depends on how everyone defines it, but ultimately, the two sides are whether a) career services is about getting students a job, or; b) career services is about cultivating in students a lifelong purpose.
Career Services for Getting Jobs
On one hand, career services, whether based on campus or offered through online platforms, is viewed primarily as a place for students and job seekers to receive support as they explore career options, build professional skills, and pursue employment opportunities.
These services typically include:
- Help with resumes and cover letters
- Interview preparation
- Internship placement
- Access to tools that help candidates stand out during the hiring process
- Personalized career development
This point-of-view suggests career services is about preparing a student to get a job and begin a career.
Career Services for Life Purpose
On the other hand, career services’ function is to help individuals identify their strengths, clarify their career goals, and connect their education to purposeful and fulfilling work.
This can be activities that:
- Connect students’ education to the impact they can make with it
- Build confidence for the real world
- Provide guidance so students are prepared and informed on choosing a career path
From this point-of-view, career services is about helping them find meaning in their education as a compass for their life purpose.
Then Which is it? Getting Jobs or Life Purpose?
Should career services be all about landing students that first job? Or guiding them toward deeper meaning in their life pursuits?
If you’re balancing year‑end placement metrics, institutional happiness rates, and your own satisfaction as a Career Director or Career Advisor, that tension can feel real. Maybe you’re under pressure: “We need high placement numbers now,” stakeholders say. But you know that isn’t the whole story.
That tension matters. Happy students and strong career outcomes drive your morale and justify your resources next year. If your career center’s services only show up in resumes and job offers, you miss the opportunity for long‑term impact, and students silently feel that, too. They feel aimless, hopeless, and question what they are doing in college in the first place.
So, how do we solve it?
First, we clear the air about what career service definitely is not.
Common Myths About What Career Services Are
Widespread but outdated myths still influence how people think about career services. These misconceptions not only limit student outcomes but also restrict the transformation impact of a career services department. Let’s set the record straight.
- Myth 1: Career services equals job listings and resume reviews
If career centers only serve up job postings and offer resume critiques, we’re missing the bigger picture. Those are helpful tools, but they’re just tactics. True career readiness requires a holistic approach. One that helps students build confidence, understand their strengths, and develop adaptable skills for an evolving workforce. - Myth 2: Career support only matters senior year
Waiting until senior year to start the career conversation leaves a massive gap in student preparation. Career development doesn’t begin with a job hunt. It starts the moment students arrive on campus. By integrating early engagement, we turn career services into a steady guide, building momentum year after year. - Myth 3: Career services are just for college students
This belief overlooks the full journey of today’s learners. High school students are making career-impacting choices earlier than ever. Graduate students face unique market pressures with unemployment rates for recent college grads that are higher than the general population. First-generation students need tailored support. Alumni seek guidance for career pivots.
By challenging these myths, we keep clear the image of career services that drives transformational impact.
The Two Sides to the Question: What are Career Services?
Ask ten career professionals to define career services, and you might receive ten different answers. Some see it as a vehicle for immediately getting students a job out of college. Others consider it a long-term mentorship process rooted in purpose, growth, and transformation. Both perspectives are valuable. And both are necessary.
But this debate is not just philosophical. It has very real implications for how career centers structure their programs, how universities allocate budgets, and how students perceive the value of the services offered. In an era where the labor market is evolving faster than ever, the real challenge is not choosing between placement and purpose, but finding a way to do both well.
Let us explore both sides deeply and discover how career center services can support both immediate career outcomes and lifelong fulfillment.
Lifelong Learning: Career Services as a Compass
Let us begin with the more expansive and arguably more overlooked role of career services: helping students discover who they are, why they matter, and where they belong in the world of work.
Self-discovery
Career services are uniquely positioned to help students with self-discovery. Through intentional programming, student-focused events, and one-on-one meetings with skilled career advisors, students are guided to explore their values, interests, strengths, and aspirations. These are not surface-level conversations, but deep into the heart of identity.
Whether it is helping a biology major realize she is passionate about environmental justice or guiding a student intern toward realizing they thrive in mentorship-based leadership roles, self-discovery transforms anxiety into self-assuredness. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), students who engage early with a university career center are more likely to identify career goals that align with both skills and values. This alignment leads to better long-term career satisfaction and reduced early-career turnover.
Connecting Education to Impact
Purpose is not just about passion. It is also about seeing how academic choices connect to broader societal impact. When college students understand how their classroom learning transfers into real-world outcomes, their motivation increases and they develop a stronger sense of direction.
Imagine a student majoring in sociology who discovers that their skills can support public health policy. Or a communications student who learns that storytelling is crucial for nonprofit fundraising. These result from intentional coaching, labor market research, and personalized guidance. Career advisors, university staff, and advisors can help students see how their education translates into impact beyond graduation.
This not only boosts engagement during the academic year but also improves long-term career outcomes by tying educational choices to purpose-driven career options.
Functioning as a place for lifelong learning aids students on a deeper, more transformative level – allowing students and alumni to know for themselves what work fits who they are and where they want to go.
Confidence for the Real World
Today’s students are graduating into a world that feels uncertain. They are balancing the weight of tuition costs, economic shifts, and cultural change. Many are also managing their identities and unique challenges. For example, African American students, first-generation students, and international learners often experience the workforce differently.
What bridges the gap between education and opportunity is confidence. Purpose-driven career services equip students with a mindset that says, “I can navigate this.” Whether it is through mock interviews, strengths assessments, or conversations about aligning values with job offers, career services offer more than strategy. They offer hope.
Because at some point after a student secures a job – usually not too long after – they will begin to ask themselves if they find their work meaningful. Employment will become less important than other factors. A Washington Post study found that job seekers in their early twenties are more likely to prioritize flexibility, mental health support, and purpose than previous generations. Career centers services that prioritize lifelong learning prepare students for to find the answers to those many questions before they enter the workforce. Students can then have confidence for the full arc of their working lives and even have a sense of control over it.
Students trust career advisors to help them make meaning of their education.
Career Guidance: Career Services as a Launchpad
While purpose and self-awareness provide the foundation for career exploration, concrete tools and preparation strategies are what ultimately move students toward employment. Career services offices serve as the launchpad where theory meets execution.
Career Readiness
Career readiness is a set of career readiness competencies that are widely recognized by employers across industries.
According to NACE, these competencies include:
- Communication
- Problem-solving
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Professionalism
- Digital fluency
Career services help students build these competencies through practical programming. This may include hosting employer panels, teaching professional development workshops, and providing access to platforms that offer mock interview questions and resume optimization. The importance of career services lies in equipping students not just with knowledge but with confidence to apply that knowledge in any setting.
Programs built around skill development are especially impactful for high school students, graduate students, and those re-entering the workforce after a gap in employment. Building a base of transferable skills is crucial in today’s dynamic economy.
Internships and Job Opportunities
Yes, getting jobs matters, and it is still a core part of what career centers do. But instead of the final goal, it is a milestone in a student’s larger journey.
Career centers that focus on connecting students with paid internships create pathways to employment that are both accessible and transformative. According to NACE’s most recent career outcomes report, students who complete paid internships are significantly more likely to receive full-time job offers upon graduation than their peers who do not.
At the same time, career services help students identify the right fit, not just any open role. This means offering support in interpreting job postings, filtering opportunities by interest and qualification, and making informed decisions about company culture and compensation.
In addition to internship and job matching, many centers partner with potential employers to create hiring pipelines that benefit both students and organizations. Career fairs, on-campus interviews, and alumni networks serve as high-impact ways to connect students with career opportunities directly tied to their academic paths.
Resumes, Cover Letters, Interviews
Documents and conversations may seem like technicalities, but they are often the most nerve-wracking parts of the process for students.
Career advisors provide targeted support by helping students articulate their experiences, refine their resumes, write compelling cover letters, and practice answering interview questions with clarity and confidence.
With technology reshaping hiring, tools like Jobscan’s resume scanner help students align their applications with applicant tracking systems (ATS), increasing their visibility to hiring managers. Still, human coaching matters. A student can have all the right credentials and qualifications, but they are at a disadvantage if they do not know how to tell their story or advocate for their value.
Career services must continue to combine digital innovation with personal mentorship to prepare students for success in both online applications and in-person interviews.
How Do Stakeholders Answer: What Does Career Services Do?
The reality is career services is ultimately looked at differently by different people. From the people who use them (students and alumni) to the people who hire from them (employers), career services has a different function from the perspective of different people.
To better understand what career services is, we have to take the perspective of students, alumni, parents, employers, faculty, university leadership, and even differing opinions within the career services department itself.
For example, employers want applicants that are ready to contribute, but also for career services to make the hiring process simple.
For students, they still associate career services with one-off activities like resume writing or the annual career fair. Many are unaware of services like labor market research, mentorship matching, alumni networking, or one-on-one coaching.
Its important to look at career services from the perspective of others, to objectively understand what are their needs and expectations. This will reveal the gaps, misalignments, and challenges that need to be addressed to properly deliver transformative career services.
Is the Real Answer: Both?
It is not a matter of choosing between lifelong learning or job placement. The most effective university career center is one that does both intentionally.
Why?
Because students who can’t find meaning and connection in their degree are likely to leave college. If a student isn’t able to identify what skills they are developing, they are less likely to graduate. And students who are not able to answer the question of how to pursue a career with their degree and get a job are likely to lose faith in their education.
Without delivering on both job placement and lifelong learning, students will either drop out, fail to graduate, or stagnate in their careers.
Go in one direction and students lose. Lean even further and colleges lose.
So, What’s the Future of Career Services?
Are we truly preparing students for the real world, or just checking boxes until graduation?
Too often, career services are reduced to last-minute resume help or quick-fix job listings. Students graduate with degrees in hand but little clarity, confidence, or connection to what comes next. Career directors and advisors know this pressure well. Placement rates, student satisfaction, and institutional accountability all rest on whether your office delivers real, lasting results.
If students think of career services as the place to go ‘get a job’, your access to the student population will be limited to the students with developed career aspirations. The rest of the population will be students who assume that knowing their career aspirations has to come first before they will have a use for career services. But they will be missing out on value that can be gained long before the point they need a job.
If students understand that career services is about planning the journey, not just about getting their tickets, then the value of career services becomes transformative.
