Shawn VanDerziel: NACE’s Role within Higher Ed & Industry

Work Forces

Shawn VanDerziel, President and CEO of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), kicks off a special three-part series exploring the crucial intersection of higher education and industry. Drawing on his extensive experience in HR and recruitment, VanDerziel discusses how the evolving economy is reshaping entry-level hiring practices and the growing importance of skills-based recruitment. He highlights the challenges facing both employers and higher education institutions, including the “language gap” that prevents students from effectively articulating their skills to employers. VanDerziel also examines how AI is transforming both recruitment strategies and career services, drawing employers back to campus recruiting while offering new opportunities for understaffed career offices. The conversation offers practical strategies for helping students translate their academic experiences into workplace-relevant skills, ultimately strengthening the vital bridge between post-secondary education and meaningful employment.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. Julian. We've spent a lot of time on this podcast exploring the connections between higher ed and industry. Among many topics, we've discussed experiential learning, skills based education, business, higher ed partnerships and the impact of AI. We've examined how colleges are continuing to adapt to workforce needs and how innovative collaborations are aligning academic programs with evolving career opportunities.

Julian Alssid: That's right Kaitlin, and we're excited to share that we've partnered with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, or NACE, for a special three part mini series focused on a really critical piece of the higher ed-industry connection.

Kaitlin LeMoine: For our listeners who may be less familiar, NACE is the leading professional organization for career services and university relations and recruiting professionals. As described on their website, NACE empowers and connects the community of professionals who support, develop, and employ the college educated workforce.

Julian Alssid: This series will examine the work happening at the crucial intersection of learning and work in three parts. First, we'll discuss the broader landscape surrounding college career services and recruiting. Then we'll explore NACE's latest research, including projections for the class of 2025, and finally, we'll look at how leading colleges and employers are putting these insights into practice. To kick off today's conversation, we're honored to be joined by Shawn VanDerziel, President and CEO of NACE.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Shawn, thanks so much for joining us today. We're excited to have you on this podcast.

Shawn VanDerziel: Well, thanks for inviting us. I'm excited to be here with you all.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So, Shawn, as we jump in today, can you please give us some background on yourself and what led you to NACE.

Shawn VanDerziel: Sure I've had a windy road to my current position. I'm going to start back way back into college and move quickly through my career, so you can see the perspective by which I approach my work. I graduated from a large state school with my undergraduate and had no idea what I was going to do with my degree, and I had an opportunity to move to Chicago afterwards, which was a great move for me. And I found my first position working in college admissions, student enrollment, which was a natural for me, because in college, I was one of those overly involved students. I was a first generation student, so I didn't have the same resources as as many others may have had, and and wasn't quite sure how to approach my job search, etc, but I knew some things from my college experience, such as like giving campus tours, working with the admissions office, leading student groups, and I found my way into admissions. It was a great way to start my career. Worked my way up, and I got really burned out, and but what can I do? I was so tired of traveling all the time, being up until 10 o'clock at night, going to college fairs at high schools, all of those things. And so I thought, how can I transition these skills into something else? And I thought about recruiting, recruiting employees. So I was recruiting students. Why couldn't I recruit employees? And I found an organization that was really interested in me because of my connection to college students. They were very interested in connecting with college students to their employment opportunities. It was the first time that an outsourced service. Well, I should say, Fortune 500 company, utilized a outsourced service to fully take over the recruitment function. And so I worked for a company called Norrell Corporation, which was a billion dollar staffing company at the time, and we took over Bank of America's recruiting function for their Midwest region because they were expanding banks. So they were opening over 100 banks throughout the Chicagoland area in a period of about a year and a half. And I started as the recruitment manager, hiring all of these folks who are going to work in these banks, particularly through their management trainee programs and for tellers. And they wanted college students to be involved with that. So I was back on college campuses, looking for those students. Well again, I got really burned out, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the i being an outsourced service is a no joke kind of job. And I thought again, like, how can I transition this? And I already had the recruitment experience. I had always wanted to work at a museum, and finally, I had the skill to actually do something in a museum, and that was to work in a human resources office within a museum which is very niche, but I found a job and that I could apply for, and I actually got the job. And so I spent almost 25 years at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which is one of the world's largest natural history museums, and I worked my way up from a human resources rep doing recruitment and employee relations to becoming the Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief of Staff. And I oversaw lots of different departments over time, including our IT department, our education department, marketing for a short while, and also oversaw our Board of Trustees and the functions related to that. While I was at The Field Museum, I built a really large internship program that included over 200 interns every summer. And that experience led me to NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers as a volunteer, I became a volunteer leader and eventually the Chair of the Board of NACE. Over a decade ago, when the executive director of NACE was about to retire, I became a part of the search process, and was lucky enough to actually be offered the job at the end of that executive search process. So five years ago, I started as this President and CEO of NACE, and am so delighted to be representing this organization to the world.

Julian Alssid: Always so great to hear peoples' origin stories. And so tell us a bit more about NACE. So give us an overview, if you will, Shawn and and then the role that nice really plays at the sort of intersection of higher ed and industry.

Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, simply put, that's exactly what we do. We bridge post secondary education to employment. We're all about outcomes and equitable outcomes for all students who pursue post secondary education. What that means on a day to day basis is that we are a membership association that represents folks who work on college campuses, mostly in the career services offices. So we represent every type of college and university, small, large, private, public, community college, four year, you name it, that's about two thirds of our members. One third of our members are the employers who go into college campuses and recruit college students for employment opportunities, for full time internships, co ops, apprenticeships, you name it, the full gambit of opportunities. We represent close to 3,000 organizations, and over 17,000 almost 18,000 individuals are a part of the association.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Wow. Yeah. So this is, this is an extensive operation you have going on, and I would imagine, thank you. Thank you for the background you provided, because it just feels like, wow, you're drawing on, I'm sure, all the different skills and experiences gathered over the years, especially both on the college recruitment side and then on the employer recruitment side as well. It's quite striking.

Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And one of the things that on important work, really important work. And we're not insular, so meaning, like we just don't do things for our members. We do things for the public at large, so that they understand what's happening with the outcomes of students. So at the center of everything that we do is research. We're a knowledge based organization, so we're able to study the employment market from a variety of perspectives. We can see what's happening at college campuses to prepare students for employment opportunities. We can talk with students about what they're looking for in their jobs and how they're being prepared for jobs in their careers, and we talk to the employers about what they're looking for and how those other two pieces need to evolve to meet the growing and demanding needs of the workplace of the future.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Amazing. So with all that being said, given the rapidly shifting environment that we're currently operating in this very dynamic space, we'd love to dive into a couple of different areas that you just that you mentioned, and that NACE raised recently as part of a recent more environmental scan. I believe you posted about it on LinkedIn not too long ago. So one question we have is, first, how do you see the current economy and economic outlook reshaping how employers are hiring entry level talent, and how, with a different lens how colleges are preparing those learners for success as well.

Shawn VanDerziel: What we know right now is that the employment market is contracting so there are fewer opportunities for college graduates to join the workforce as compared to, let's say, two or three years ago, and that is from general full time employment all the way through to internships. With that we also know that employers are continually telling us that there's a gap between what college students offer and what they're looking to hire. So they have, they have made a bunch of shifts in their hiring and how they hire, which is no different than the general employment landscape. So we keep hearing about skills based hiring. Well, this has caused employers, particularly with early talent to really focus on that skills based hiring. So what they're saying is, is that in the old days, they would look at students who had a particular major, and they would look to see what their grade point average is as a starting place for the hiring process, and today, they're telling us for some jobs, we will do that, particularly highly technical jobs that require technical skills. So if you're going to be an engineer, Well, you certainly don't want someone working on your airplane who didn't get good grades, right? So you want to know that they're the top of their class because they have the knowledge to do the job. So they might still be screened by GPA. But if I'm looking for someone who's going into a management trainee program of some sort, that's more of a generalist or etc, I might think a little bit more broadly. I don't necessarily have to have someone who has the highest GPA. What I want is someone who has the skills and competencies to do the job. So how am I then going to find that person? Well, I have to substitute something in there to screen that person by we know from talking to employers that work experiences in general are very important to them. So anytime a student can demonstrate work experiences, and they can list what they actually gained in skill or competency in that work is super important, and they look for internship experience, either internship experience with them as their that student's employer, or they look for industry experience. So did the person have an internship in something that's closely aligned? And those are the students that they're saying they probably have the skills to do the job. They're also, of course, doing things like keyword searches and and using AI as part of part of the recruitment process. But they're really trying to dig down to find students who are going to succeed long term, and that's also one of the reasons that they invest so much money, particularly large companies, into internship programs, because we know that internship programs are the number one return on investment for employers from a recruitment perspective, the cost value is there for them. They know that they can convert at least 50% of those interns into being full time employees. They know that when they hire that student who starts as an intern, they're going to be with the company, more likely a year later and more likely five years later. We know that we've got that that data data to back it up, so the return on investment is really there. So we're finding more and more interest from employers and and partnering with schools to make sure their internship programs are solid. We're also finding that they are returning to campus, so they've been doing hiring on the web for quite some time. They've been focusing on it virtually, but they're also finding a need to get back in person so that they can weed through some of the talent a little bit more quickly.

Julian Alssid: That's so interesting that they're they're coming back.

Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, absolutely. And AI has a lot to do with that, and we certainly can talk more about AI and how that's impacting everything, but there's an impersonalization that's happening, and there really is a business case for for getting back on campus and finding that talent.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, so before we go into AI, which definitely we want to hear more about, it's all the rage, as you may have heard, interested to talk a little bit more about the skills based practices, because there's been some written about how... The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Center on Workforce wrote a piece a few months ago, which, of course, could be ancient history at this point, that companies were not picking up so much on on skills based practices. And so I'm interested to hear your take on that. You know, I get it with respect to the jobs where they're they are looking for skills. But how is it? Are they integrating this more broadly into their organizations? Are you seeing that?

Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So employers in our surveying do say that they, the majority of them, are doing some type of skills based hiring. Where they are doing it is either through keyword searches as an example, in screening the resumes through automated systems or the the other bulk is through behavioral based interviewing questions. So when a student actually lands an interview, being able to talk through with them what they have actually accomplished, and what they have the ability to be able to do based upon the skills and competencies that they've gained. And so by providing those concrete examples, they're able to kind of dig through that. But it also goes back to what I was mentioning just a few minutes ago, which is around they're kind of substituting when they say skills based hiring, what we say academically doesn't necessarily match what employers are doing logistically. There's always this gap between industry and higher ed and the language. And this is a really good example. And so when, from an academic perspective, we think of skill, we think, well, gosh, you're looking for someone who has great verbal speaking skills, right? You can do public speaking. Okay, great. So then, how do you screen for that? Well, what are those employers going to do to find that they're not going to put a test in place to have every candidate come through and do some kind of speech, right? That's not what they're going to do to get to that skill. What they're going to do is they're going to look on that resume and say, oh, gosh, did this student have an internship? And in that internship, did they use their verbal communication skills? Did they designate that on there? So if that skill is not listed, the employer isn't going to find it as a starting place, and then they're not going to be able to dig deeper on it when they get them into an interview. So this comes full circle to what's happening on campuses and preparing students to be career ready, and bridging that employment because we have an onus in higher education with these students to help them to articulate their skills and their competencies in a way that an employer can translate it and employers speak a totally different language. They want the shortcut. They want to get to the candidate in the fastest way possible. So they are going to put any mechanism in place to do that. And so it behooves us to help those graduates to be able to articulate it in every which way, all of the experiences that they have, right? So it doesn't even have they can come from unexpected ways. It could come from student activities. It could come from work study. It could come from a whole variety of places that a student may have obtained skills and competencies throughout their college career.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk about the language gap that exists Shawn and kind and the difference between, you know, maybe how, on the academic side, we describe a skill, and then the shortcut language that employers might use, I feel like that's, that's an area that we've I feel like has, you know, it's been around for for so long now, and it feels like there's just, there's more and more great work happening around how to close that gap. And you know, I think that if we're going to turn to the conversation of AI, it seems like there's some really interesting work there that might be able to support some of the closing of those gaps. But then there's also some new challenges that emerge as well. So would love to transition over to talk a little bit more about AI and how what you're seeing from the perspective of both use on the employer side with respect to recruitment and hiring, and also when we think about career services and preparing learners for really bridging that gap between post secondary and employer. Where is AI, you know, used well, where is it less effective? And you know, where do we still have work to do?

Shawn VanDerziel: I'll start with the employers. So as I mentioned earlier, employers are using it for screening, most definitely, and they've been doing that for a long time, using various AI technologies to help them screen resumes. But an interesting thing is happening right now, which is because of the explosion of AI, there are some employers that are seeing an explosion of resumes hitting them, and because of these bots that are out there, and there are fake candidates that are hitting employers by the hundreds of thousands. And there are job seekers who are literally sending out thousands of resumes at a time. And so when that happens, an employer is put at a disadvantage, because now they have for one opening, or let's call it, two openings, they have 10,000 candidates. So there's a real challenge there for them to screen all of those resumes and to really find the top candidates to come out of that and to really give the right people the right chance, right and so it's a tough predicament to be in, and that's one of the reasons employers are actually thinking about going back to campus, in larger numbers coming up here because they started to deploy a strategy over the last few years of virtual recruiting, which was successful for them, where they were more agnostic about the campus by which they were recruiting from. And now, because of the influx of AI, they are rethinking this, and they're saying, hey, I need to get to candidates differently. I need to know that they're legit candidates. I need to be able to talk to some people and and so I may actually go back and do target schools again, and go on to select school campuses, which then, of course, creates more competition among the schools. So it's this vicious circle that ends up happening, but again, those employers are looking to get to the candidates in the most efficient and effective way possible. On the college side, AI has great promise, particularly for those understaffed career services offices, which are the majority of career service offices on campuses these days. If we're about career outcomes, we need to be investing in career services. But unfortunately, the investment hasn't been made on most campuses. AI can play a really pivotal role in helping to expand the services that a college can offer. It's not going to solve the issues, but more students can be reached, maybe more efficiently. So bots can be deployed to answer basic questions, the staff can direct the learners to resources that are can help them write their resumes, figure out other types of industries or jobs that the student may have the skills to do, to do career exploration, the list goes on and on, and then the career services staff can really dive deep with students in quality work, in one on one work, doing really meaningful work, and helping to set that student up for career success, around the articulation of skills, around targeting of certain employers, thinking broadly about the application of what they've learned, and so it could make a difference long term. But of course, we're at the beginning of it all.

Kaitlin LeMoine: It's interesting to hear you talk about how the use of AI in the in career services offices can actually get career services professionals back to like, maybe like, the core of their work, and what's the most important to their work. And it's interesting. Julian, I feel like we're we've heard some of that about like, well, what are the benefits? What are the benefits of AI? And this is a great example of one space where it's like, maybe it means that the professionals themselves can get back to like what is most critical, and then some of the other, perhaps time consuming, but maybe less impactful work can be automated or supported in other ways. I find that really interesting. And then just the one other thing I wanted to mention is, I think it's, it's really interesting to hear like, it's like, there's progress there, and then it's interesting to hear on the employer side, almost a return to previous practice. And what is that, you know, what does it look like to adjust their like hiring practices now, with this new reality of, you know, kind of endless numbers of resumes and trying to determine what's real and what's not, and how to really assess the skills and abilities of applicants. Really, some really interesting tensions there.

Shawn VanDerziel: That's right. One of the things that we're not finding, though, is that students are getting the AI experiences they need to prepare them. So that's yet another dimension that we need higher education working on with students, but we also need the employers. We found in one of our research pieces last year that very few students, less than 10% actually were asked to use AI skills in their internship, which is so surprising, because you would think that companies who are saying there's a future with AI that this entry level group of folks coming into their company could help them to explore it. Could help to experiment with it. Could bring these new skills to them, yet the students themselves didn't use the technology when they were in their internship, so I hope to see that change as well.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, so we really are at the beginning, and as you said, Shawn, of so much of this, and I guess for our audience, which kind of represents both sides of this, as well as the providers, the companies that are also trying to support this work, what are some practical steps that educators, employers and folks who want to work with, you know them, can take to really design the kind of nimble and adaptable, you know, skills focused education and some of the kind of, you know, exemplar recruitment practices you're talking about

Shawn VanDerziel: As you mentioned, there are some really practical things that can be done that are super simple, and that's thinking about a learner holistically when they come into a college or university, and all of the touch points that they have and all of the experiences that They might go through from the curriculum in the classroom, the projects that they do in the classroom, the student activities, the work study, the part time jobs, the list goes on and on that these are all learning experiences that we know add value to the college graduate experience and why college graduates are so valuable to the future of work. However, these learners aren't able to articulate all of those experiences to translate them to the work world. That's a problem. So they don't give themselves credit for that student activity that they just participated in, that classroom project that they did, where they were the leader of their group, where they analyzed all kinds of data to get to an answer or something, where they did a classroom presentation and had to articulate the results of it, where they then and had to work in a team and collaborate with a team of folks that were difficult to work with because they came from all over, all different disciplines, etc, etc, right? So, like, that's one example where skills and competencies were built, yet students aren't taking credit for it, and the reasons that they're not taking credit for it, for what how that applies to the work world, is that we're not helping them to make that connection, that it is real world, what they just did. And so that's a simple example of just taking the step with these learners to help them to understand how what they just did applies to the world of work. It may seem elementary, but it's needed, and it's going to make a huge difference in these students lives. And then ta da, the employers see it, right, and then they hear it, they're more quick, able to quickly identify that these students actually do have the skills and the competencies to do the job that they're looking to fill.

Julian Alssid: You're getting right at that very basic translation language problem we've been talking about.

Shawn VanDerziel: That's exactly right.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thanks so much for joining us in today's conversation. Shawn, this has been really fascinating, and really appreciate you taking on a couple of really big, big questions with lots of nuance embedded in them. So as we close out today's conversation, how can our listeners learn more about you, about NACE, and continue to follow your great work?

Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, there are a number of ways. The first thing I would suggest is that you follow us on LinkedIn. So look up National Association of Colleges and Employers, and we post regularly, like every day, multiple times a day, statistics, interesting tidbits related to all of this work that everyone can join in on. So even just to be a lurker, that is a great place to hear what's happening in this college to career pipeline. I would also invite you to if you belong to a university or college, to see if you already have a membership with NACE, and if there's a possibility of you being added to the membership role so you're regularly kept up to date. But certainly go to our website at naceweb.org. And we have a ton of stuff there for free, for everybody, again, for the general public to be able to understand what's happening in this world, because we see that as our job to strengthen employment outcomes for all learners well.

Julian Alssid: Thank you so much for joining us, Shawn and and we look forward to continuing with this conversation with your colleagues and taking deeper and deeper. Really appreciate you taking this on.

Shawn VanDerziel: It's been so great having this conversation with you all, and happy to come back anytime.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.