Technological Trends in Career Services: Effects, Usage, and Ethics

By Jeremy D. Dickerson
Graduate Assistant
University of Arkansas
jddicke@uark.edu

Posted: March, 2005     Student Affairs Online, vol. 6 no. 1 - Winter 2005

Technological advancements have long affected American higher education. And the problems associated with technology continue to develop. From high profile cases of accidental plagiarism to federal laws protecting students’ privacy in the information age, each administrative unit on the nation’s campuses is confronting new questions of practice and ethics, and nothing suggests that the future will be any different. The millennial generation, it is said, grew up in a digital world. They expect automated services, and they prefer, according to conventional wisdom, interacting with technology rather than people. Despite the modern push to automate services, professionals in career services have begun to raise serious concerns about their new tools. Below, recent literature on the topic is reviewed and conclusions are offered as to the impact the technological trend will wreak on career services.

As a practice, career guidance germinated in the United States at Yale University in 1919. Over the next 51 years, the practice followed the similar developmental path and pace as many other units on the nation’s campuses. Whether expanding precipitously after World War II or being threatened by the instability of the 1960s, career services led the usual life of academe. That changed with the 1970s when guidance systems went online (Charoensri, 1998). At that time, Charoensri noted that career centers began to measure their achievements not by outcomes but instead by planning programs rooted in the notion that careers are living processes. Just as the thought is today, technology was believed to be an “ally” in the career placement process: capable of freeing staff from clerical tasks so that they might better assist the student (Raymon, 1999).

The opposite of what was envisioned may be what has taken root on campuses today. Davidson (2001) lamented the loss of foot traffic in her career center at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Indeed, Davidson exhibited a corollary between increased online traffic and decreased career center traffic. The center that once flourished with over 10,000 students per semester grew dusty with fewer than a 1,000 within three years of the web site’s publishing.

Technology can make, however, a world of difference to the vitality of a career placement program. Virtual career centers are extremely convenient. With the growing numbers of non-traditional students, students who work during traditional business hours, and those students who just like to live at night, 24-hours-a-day convenience is highly sought after. Additionally, cut-and-paste technologies reduce redundant work. The World Wide Web also provides students the ability to synthesize tremendous amounts of data and to filter opportunities about which they might not have otherwise known.

Advantages aside, Allen suggested that technology has begun to redefine the very nature of career counseling despite the fact that counseling professionals have largely been unaware of the phenomenon. Freeman (1994) suggested a new paradigm for career counseling. He warned of the dangers of denying the implications of new developments in the field: “We see only what we are prepared to see. We are prisoners of our own preconceived notions . . . . To turn away from denial we need . . . to ‘see’ what is actually there” (p. 24). He offered a proactive strategy to counter what he termed the reactive strategy of the past. Rather than focus merely on visible markets of jobs, professionals should capitalize on available technologies to explore hence hidden markets. Students should be presented with a broad range of opportunities—not just those once associated with specific majors.

A developmental theory of career counseling underpinned Freeman’s new paradigm. When guidance systems went online as described above, counselors in an independent movement began to view careers as life-long, living processes. According to Gordon (1984), a “life-long career . . . approach recognizes that an individual’s personality in tandem with the environmental pressures he or she faces at a given time influence not only the choice itself but also the mechanics of the decision” (p. 17). Discarded was the linear concept of the senior deciding on a career tightly related to his or her major. Adopted in ersatz were early interventions, alumni support, and acceptance for the burden of meeting non-traditional students’ needs. Indeed, “the fact that adult and nontraditional learner enrollment . . . continues to increase is, in a way, tangible proof of society’s acceptance of the twin concepts of lifelong learning and career development as a lifelong process” (Raymon, p. 176).

Given the developing importance of career placement services over the past three decades, assessing the effects of the technological advances of the past 3 decades is clearly warranted. Above, several key advantages to virtual services were enumerated. In light of such advantages, one is not surprised that technological use in career centers is exploding. Behrens and Altman (1998) surveyed students, staff, and recruiters to assess technological use in career centers. A vast minority, 2%, of staff respondents indicated that their offices had none of the programs mentioned in the instrument. In contrast, 83% claimed they personally kept abreast of state-of-the-art technologies and felt pressured to do so. And given that 97% of the respondents also believed that administrators think that automation in career services is greatly important, there is no sign that such pressure will subside.

But are the millennials really so eager to circumvent the human touch or are career services professionals just gluttons for new toys? According to Allen (2000), millennials are demanding the virtual conveniences afforded by automated career services. But Allen warned, “It’s not the technology, but how the technology is used that colleges and employers should consider” (p. 31). Institutions should not be concerned with what they do or do not have. Rather, they should ask what goals are they not meeting in not having certain technologies. On the other hand, it is also important that they consider what goals they could be undermining in using technology: “It is important that career centers use . . . technology to support their mission rather than allowing their mission to support the technology” (p. 31).

Davidson goes so far as to suggest that the proliferation of technology may be unethical because technology treats all students the same and because students are presented with dense information on the Internet but not afforded personal counseling. First, technology ignores the nuances of special groups of students. Gordon illustrated that “the special categories of . . . students such as honors, adult, athletes, and under-prepared students, have special needs that dictate different approaches to programming and advising” (p. 61). Clearly, current career-oriented technology does not have the responsiveness to treat individuals as such. Do professionals run the risk of neglecting their duties to do no harm when they are not privy to what answers a student receives through the Internet? Davidson wonders, too, what the implications are for information from personality profiles and other technical information students receive on the Internet. How do professionals ensure that no harm is done when they do not even know what, when, and why students access information?

Allen drew ethical concerns from the profile of persons able to connect to the Internet. She reported that families with incomes of more than $75,000 were 20 time more likely to own a computer than those who made less, regardless of ethnicity or any other factor (p. 35). The wealth gap could continue into college. For those poor students who matriculate, the above statistic suggests that they will be less prepared to navigate the virtual offices. This strikes the outside observer as unjust. As the average annual budget for career services declines (Nagle, 2001), expenditures for new technologies are eating a lion’s share of the operating costs (Behrens & Altman, 1998). With staff sizes being negatively affected by the focus on technology, personal interactions, when they occur, are less focused on the student. Frequently, poor students experiencing trouble navigating the web site and those students needing re-assurances not found on the web site are encountering a staff rich in technological knowledge and deficient in counseling skills. This translates to fewer instances of accidental learning and added gaps in interpersonal readiness for the job market.

But these problems seem to elude career services professionals. When asked to name the biggest challenges facing career guidance for students, engaging students before their senior years and coping with diminishing financial resources ranked highest (Nagle, 2001). While these issues certainly deserve attention, the blind accumulation of technologies without regard for, or in some cases, even knowledge (Behrens & Altman, 1998) of their basic efficacy is alarming. The laissez-faire attitudes of the career center should be reversed in favor of a hands-on approach that best benefits the increasingly goal-oriented cohort of students on today’s campuses and best enhances career centers’ missions to educate students as to the life-long nature of career development.

References

Allen, C. (2000). Technology. Journal of Career Planning and Employment, 60(4), 31-35.

Behrens, T., & Altman, B. (1998). Technology: Impact on and implications for college career centers. Journal of Career Planning and Employment, 58(2), 19-24.

Charoensri, P. (1998). Technology infusion in career services at U.S. institutions of higher education in the Southwest. Dissertation Abstracts International, 59(4), 1086A. (UMI No. 9830826).

Davidson, M. M. (2001). The computerization of career services: Critical issues to consider. Journal of Career Development, 27(3), 217-228.

Freeman, J. (1994). A vision for the college placement center: Systems, paradigms, processes, people. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Gordon, V. N. (1984). The undecided college student: An academic and career advising challenge. Springfield, IL: Thomas Books.

Nagle, R. A. (2001). Facilities, finances, & staffing: Key findings from NACE’s 2001 Career Services Survey. Journal of Career Planning and Employment, 61(4), 21-26.

Raymon, J. R. (1999). Career services imperatives for the next millennium. The Career Development Quarterly, 48(2), 175-184.