Episode #98
Why Career Services Engagement Matters More Than Your Major (feat. David Kozhuk)
What if the single biggest predictor of a student's success after graduation isn't their major, their GPA, or even their school's brand name—but simply whether they engaged with career services? In this episode, host Meredith Metsker welcomes back David Kozhuk , Founder and CEO of uConnect , for his second appearance on the show. David makes the case that career services engagement is the most important thing a student can do during college—more influential on outcomes like retention, graduation rates, and earnings than the major they choose or the classes they take. David traces this conviction back to his own experience as a finance student at UMass Amherst, where regular use of the career center helped him land multiple internships and his first full-time job. He also shares the story of how he returned to campus several years after graduating to recruit top-performing students for a few open roles at his company. Despite the marketing and promotion, a great venue, catering, and the whole nine yards, only three students showed up to his presentation. That gap between what career services offers and how few students actually engage with it inspired David to start uConnect and build the first-ever Virtual Career Center platform —now trusted by hundreds of institutions across the country. From there, the conversation turns to the data. David unpacks: Why so many institutions are sitting on a goldmine of outcomes data they aren't using How uConnect is helping schools connect career services engagement to outcomes data and real-time labor market trends How AI is now making it possible to deliver personalized, trustworthy recommendations to students at scale (no matter your career team size) He also gets candid about what's at stake—for students, staff, and institutions—when career readiness stays a talking point instead of a funded priority, and offers concrete advice for both career leaders and senior higher ed leadership on how to close that gap. Key takeaways: Career services engagement is the No. 1 influence on student outcomes. David points to data showing that students at institutions with strong, scalable career services engagement see meaningfully higher average earnings, retention, and completion rates than the NACE national average—across hundreds of institutions and hundreds of thousands of students. Small amounts of engagement can have an outsized impact. An hour spent in a mock interview or talking with an alum about a career path they'd never considered can do more for a student's trajectory than almost any other hour of their college experience—largely because it builds confidence, and confidence compounds. Non-engagement is rational, not a motivation problem. Students who don't know what they want to do often assume the career center can't help them until they do—a branding and positioning gap David sees as one of the field's biggest opportunities, especially for reaching underserved and unengaged students early. Outcomes data is one of higher ed's most underutilized assets. Most schools collect rich first-destination survey data but rarely operationalize it. It sits in a spreadsheet rather than informing real-time recommendations to current students or messaging to prospective ones. Reframe outcomes data as inspiration, not judgment. David encourages senior leaders to stop treating outcomes data as a referendum on institutional effectiveness and start using it—even a small sample size—as proof of what's possible for students in a given major or pathway. Intentionality is a career leader's edge. David points to other podcast guests like Barbara Zerillo (Post University) and Josh Domitrovich (PennWest) as examples of career leaders who used data to earn a seat at the table. Josh manually tracked correlations between career services engagement and institutional KPIs for years before career became part of PennWest's strategic plan. The stakes are institutional, not just individual. David connects career services engagement directly to enrollment, persistence, completion, and ultimately institutional revenue—arguing that as other funding sources shrink, delivering on the ROI promise of a degree becomes existential for many schools. About the guest: David Kozhuk is the Founder and CEO of uConnect, the all-in-one Virtual Career Center platform used by hundreds of institutions across the country. He started uConnect over a decade ago after a formative experience recruiting on his own college campus, where he discovered how few students were engaging with the career center that had shaped his own path from student to full-time offer. David built an early prototype of the Virtual Career Center concept to help make career services more visible, accessible, and personalized for students—and has spent the years since working directly with career leaders, provosts, and presidents to connect career services engagement to measurable student outcomes. Resources from the episode: David’s LinkedIn profile David’s article: The Answer to Higher Ed’s Outcomes Problem is Hiding in Plain Sight uConnect website Barbara Zerillo episode (Post University) Josh Domitrovich's episode (PennWest): Coming soon! Continue the conversation in the Career Everywhere Community! Join 2,000 other higher ed career services leaders today: careereverywhere.com/community
