Starting over: Colleges, universities step up career help for out-of-work alumni - Kansas City Business Journal:

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Not so much anymore, says Julie MATC’s interim director of counseling. Now the goal for a careefr counselor isoften “how can I take the skill that you have and get you into a job as soon as she said. MATC is considering revampin g the way it offers career counseling to its students and otherss seeking career help in response to changiny needs and increased Other area colleges and universities also have addexd servicesor programs, particularly in response to more requests from Career counseling at MATC is handled by all 20 of its who also have other duties like academic counseling. Klug has proposecd dedicating one of the counselors to careert advisingfull time.
The counselot would work out of a career counseling center that would be housed in a newlhy created Success Centerfor at-risk students. MATC also increasedr the frequencyof career-related workshops and has created a “Life After Job Loss” program that will be offered for the first time in June. saw a big increase in alumnji seeking career advice over the past academic saidLaura Kestner, director of the university’z Career Services Center. About 60 percenf of the alumni returning to campuzs for advice were people in their 40s and 50s who had beenlaid off, Kestner said.
Marquette has offered career counselingy to alumni formany years, but the needsz have changed because of the she said. In February, the Careedr Services Center partnered withthe university’s alumno relations department to offer a program on weathering the economy. It featured a two-hour presentatiom and discussions, and counselors stayerd after for another three hours to critique resumesw and meet individuallywith attendees. Because of some of the emotionall issues related tojob loss, the cented also set up a partnership with Marquette’s Center for Psychological Services to refert alumni who needed personap counseling.
Marquette also has partnere d with a career coaching firmcalled Transitionwork.com to help alumnj considering career changes for a fee. Appointments with studentsw increased 16 percent in the pastschoopl year, Kestner said. On-campus recruitinh is down 40 percent and job postingsd are down 43 percent from theprevious year. Studentss are finding jobs, but it’s not happening at the rate and quantity as it was beforethe recession.
“I don’rt want to scare studentes into paralysis, but I want to scarew them into action,” she The center is putting increased emphasis on networking and discovering the job marketf not found on job Those were secondor third-leveo tactics for students before the recession becauss they were applying for jobs and gettingb them, Kestner said. The has had a careere counselor dedicated to serving alumni for the past two Cindy Petrites, alumni career works in conjunction with the university’a alumni relations office.
Tom Bachhuber, director of the UW-Milwaukee’x career development center, said student career counselin g needsremain unchanged, but the recession makex the job search more challenging. Graduatex have to be more competitivd than ever in doing independent research on potential jobs in the current he said. Bachhuber is concerned that bad news abouft the economy will scare studentss from even trying to find a job when opportunitiewdo exist. The university’s career center makes a lot of its contactsx throughclassroom presentations, and saw an increase in invitations from professorsd during the last year.