Career Management: Systems Most Used Together in HigherEd

At LISTedTECH, our database abounds in career management information systems. It gathers more than 80 different systems that are implemented in more than 2,800 HigherEd institutions.

Career management is a product group that is very segmented. This category includes software in the following subcategories:

• Assessment

• Career Exploration

• Career Exploration/Data/Assessments

• Career Services Management

• Career/Job Search

• Interview Prep

• Job Exploration & Events

• Job Search & Career Fair

• Labor Market Info

• Marketing

• Mentoring & Networking

• Networking/Mentoring/Career Exploration

• Resume Building

• Student Organizations & Events and Activities

• Study Abroad

We decided to focus this week’s post on three of these subcategories: assessment, career exploration, and career services management. They represent almost 40 companies. Please note that The Career Ed Tech Stack E-Book, written by Dr. Sheetal Patel and David Kozhuk, was very helpful to define the categories.

• “Assessments are used to analyze certain qualities of an individual, such as student’s strengths  and preferences, to help inform both academic and career pathways.” (Patel & Kozhuk, p. 14) This important step usually happens before the selection of a program of study or career re-orientation.

• When it comes to Career Exploration, these systems are designed to answer the question: “What can I do with my studies?”. Once students have selected their specialization and most often have started their studies, they want to know what kind of jobs is linked to it. Systems in this category are oriented towards identifying actual jobs, not university disciplines.

• We could define Career Services Management as “systems [that] typically take on the core operational functions for the career center staff and increasingly offer student-facing portions as well, e.g., advising appointments, on-campus interviewing, job boards, application systems, and data management.” (Patel & Kozhuk, p. 12) These systems could also serve for event management, marketing, and communications to help graduates better position themselves for their careers.

My objective with this graph is to show the most common combination of products over the three categories. This is to answer the hypothetic question: If System A is used at one institution, what would be the other systems in the two remaining categories? To explore the question, you need to look at the thickness of each line between two systems. For example: coming from CareerLeader Assessment in the first column, we can notice that there is a thick link between this product and GoinGlobal career exploration, CareerSpots Career Readiness, and Beyond B-School exploration trainings. See the First table below for more details.

Using the data available in the graph, here are some usage relationship links between products for the three categories. Please note that this table does not contain all possible relationships; it only shows the strongest possibilities. The “Number” shows the number of institutions in our database that have a link between the two tables.

Assessment	Career Exploration	Number
CareerLeader Assessment	Beyond B-School exploration trainings	120
CareerLeader Assessment	CandidCareer exploration	109
CareerLeader Assessment	CareerShift platform	110
CareerLeader Assessment	CareerSpots Career Readiness	146
CareerLeader Assessment	GoinGlobal career exploration	205
CareerLeader Assessment	O*NET OnLine career exploration	99
CareerLeader Assessment	What Can I Do With This Major	96
FOCUS 2	CandidCareer exploration	115
FOCUS 2	CareerSpots Career Readiness	118
FOCUS 2	GoinGlobal career exploration	114
FOCUS 2	O*NET OnLine career exploration	113
FOCUS 2	What Can I Do With This Major	97
Strong Interest Inventory	CandidCareer exploration	81
Strong Interest Inventory	GoinGlobal career exploration	89
Strong Interest Inventory	O*NET OnLine career exploration	89

Career Exploration	Career Services Management	Number
Beyond B-School exploration   trainings	WayUp Platform	86
CandidCareer exploration	WayUp Platform	153
CareerShift platform	WayUp Platform	127
CareerSpots Career Readiness	WayUp Platform	177
CareerSpots Career Readiness	SkillSurvey Career Readiness	93
GoinGlobal career exploration	WayUp Platform	199
GoinGlobal career exploration	SkillSurvey Career Readiness	91
My Next Move	WayUp Platform	85
O*NET OnLine career   exploration	WayUp Platform	145
What Can I Do With This Major	WayUp Platform	141

Assessment	Career Services Management	Number
Birkmen Assessment	WayUp Platform	91
CareerLeader Assessment	12Twenty Career Services	198
CareerLeader Assessment	GradLeaders platform	152
CareerLeader Assessment	SkillSurvey Career Readiness	180
CareerLeader Assessment	UConnect Career Services	106
CareerLeader Assessment	WayUp Platform	438
FOCUS 2	Credly Platform	103
FOCUS 2	SkillSurvey Career Readiness	140
FOCUS 2	WayUp Platform	328
StrengthsFinder	WayUp Platform	141
Strong Interest Inventory	12Twenty Career Services	90
Strong Interest Inventory	SkillSurvey Career Readiness	98
Strong Interest Inventory	WayUp Platform	253

 Data note:

• I only kept the institutions that had products in at least two of the three categories.

• If I only had institutional data for one category, I removed it from the graph.

• The graph showcases more than 2,100 institutions.