Season 7 • Episode 1

August marks back-to-school season—and a critical time for recruiters, career services professionals, and emerging talent to prepare for what’s ahead. In this episode of DE Talk, we welcome Shawn VanDerziel, President & CEO of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), for a timely discussion on the future of work in an AI-driven job market. Tune in as Shawn shares key findings from the latest NACE Job Outlook Report, explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping early talent hiring, and offers practical insights for those navigating this new era of talent acquisition.

About DE Talk

The DE Talk monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, equal employment opportunity initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

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Episode Transcript

DirectEmployers Association (00:00):

Get ready. The DE Talk podcast starts now, insightful conversations and dialogue, helping you put the human factor back in HR.

Shannon Offord (00:09):

Welcome to DE Talk podcast, the official podcast of DirectEmployers Association. I’m your host Shannon Offord, VP of partnerships, and today I’m excited to dive into a topic that’s at the forefront of nearly every conversation in the world of work, the future of work, and the evolving role of artificial intelligence from reshaping how companies find and engage talent to transforming the very nature of entry-level jobs. As early talent looks to enter the job market, AI is having a profound impact not just on how we work, but who gets hired, how they get hired, and what skills are now in demand. And when it comes to early talent, the challenges are especially significant. What do recent graduates need to know to stay competitive in the job market? Influenced by automation, algorithmic screening, and rapid shifts in required competencies and how can employers ensure they’re using these tools responsibly?

(01:05):

To help us unpack these questions, we’re thrilled to welcome Shawn VanDerziel, President and CEO of the National Association of College and Employers, and a leading voice on the employment of the college educated and advocate for access, opportunity and the best possible outcomes for all college going students. Sean, let’s get started. NACE has been a long time partner of DirectEmployers and in fact, we co-built the NACElink platform together back in the early two thousands. And as you’re probably aware, our organizations share several members such as Enterprise, American Heart Association, CVS Health, Zimmer, and the universities of Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and others. And for those of you who may not be familiar, can you give us a brief overview of NACE and the role it plays in shaping conversations around college recruiting and early talent development?

Shawn VanDerziel (02:03):

Absolutely, and thanks for having me. It’s great to be here with you and everyone. So NACE is the leading member organization serving at the intersection of education and employment. We unite our members towards a shared goal and that’s ensuring that educated learners are prepared to transition successfully into the workforce. We achieve this by connecting our members and their partners with data and tools that they need to adapt, innovate, and to thrive in the rapidly changing career landscape. And our purpose is to ensure that everyone who has invested in their education is better prepared, easier to find and ready to make an immediate impact when they enter the workforce. And a little more detail, make it a little more concrete for you. We’re a membership association, nonpartisan, nonprofit. We were established back in 1956. We currently have close to 18,000 individual members representing close to 3,000 organizations.

(03:05):

Two thirds of those organizations are colleges and universities of all sizes and shapes, small, medium, large for-profit, two year, four year schools, graduate schools, undergraduate schools, and then one third of our members are employers. And those employers have an average size of about eight to 10,000 employees. So there are many household names that you would know and readily come up with when you think of those employers. And they’re the employers that go onto college campuses to hire new grads for roles, whether that be internships, apprenticeships, full-time employment. They’re there to establish the pipeline for their employers. On the college side, we mainly represent the college career services professionals, so those professionals who are tasked on the campus with the career readiness of the graduates and building that pipeline to their future career.

Shannon Offord (04:04):

How did you get to NACE? What brought you there?

Shawn VanDerziel (04:08):

Yeah, so I’ve got a long storied history, but I started my career in student enrollment. I started in the university environment recruiting students for a university in Chicago. I got really burned out on doing that, going to campuses every day saying the same thing at college fairs every day, doing all the travel. I tried to figure out what is it that I could do next, and I transitioned those skills from recruiting students to a university to recruiting employees for an employer. And the reason that this particular employer was interested in me was because they were looking to fill positions in a management trainee program as well as entry level positions in banks. And that was a corporate recruiting manager position that I held for an outsourced company. And it was the first time that a Fortune 500 company outsourced their entire recruitment function. It was for Bank of America and we filled a hundred store locations or bank locations within a year for them in the Chicago land area.

(05:08):

Then I got really burned out on that, imagine that, and I tried to figure out what is it that I’m going to do next? Well, I finally had a skill that I could apply to work in one of my favorite types of environments and that was a museum. I was one of those people that used to apply for every job that I saw working at a museum, but I was never qualified for anything. So I finally had the skill, which was recruiting, and there was a recruiter job opening. So I took a step back in my career, applied for this recruiter job, I got it, and I worked my way up working for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which is one of the world’s largest natural history museums. And I stayed there. Guess what? I didn’t get burned out. That part of my history stopped.

Shannon Offord (05:50):

That’s a cool museum by the way.

Shawn VanDerziel (05:51):

A great museum if you haven’t been there, dinosaurs, mummies, everything about the world, it’s all there one place. It’s amazing. And what most people don’t know is the scientific enterprise. And so there are over 200 scientists on staff there that do original research each and every day. And I stayed there for a really long time, almost 25 years because I was granted a whole lot of opportunity while I was there and worked my way up to being the chief human resources officer where I oversaw all the human resources functions as well as all of our volunteer functions. But over time I also oversaw lots of other departments in different intervals. So for about five years, I oversaw the technology department, I oversaw our education department, our libraries, our security, even at one point, which for a museum you can only imagine, and I even was a chief marketing officer for an interim period of time, so I did a whole lot. By the time I left, I was still the chief resources officer, but also the chief of staff where I oversaw the functioning of our executive team and communications, but also our board of trustees and we had close to 90 members of our board of trustees when I was there. And once I left the field museum, I went over to NACE and I’ve been with NACE for about five and a half years.

Shannon Offord (07:14):

So what really drove you to go to NACE after your position at the museum?

Shawn VanDerziel (07:20):

Yeah, so when I was at the Field Museum, I built a really large internship program and I needed help with that. So at the time when we were building the program, we were the largest internship program in Chicago. We were one of the largest, if not the largest nonprofit internship program in the nation for quite some time. And we had over 200 interns during the summer months and about 50 at any other given time during the year, and I needed help with that as we were thinking about recruiting students and what best practices were. So I joined NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers as a member. I got to know the organization and eventually was tapped and asked to be on the board of directors. And so I joined the board of directors as a volunteer member. I was involved for a considerable amount of time, eventually served on the executive committee of the board and became the chair or the president of the board of NACE on a volunteer basis well over a decade ago. And once my chairmanship ended, I stayed involved, they kept me involved, and then when the executive director of NACE decided to retire who had been at NACE for about the same amount of time I had been at the field museum, I went through the executive search process and was fortunate enough to actually get the job.

Shannon Offord (08:44):

We worked with Marilyn previous executive director of NACE long time. So you had some big shoes to fill, but obviously we just were a part of the NACE event this year and you’re doing your thing. So awesome to obviously now get a chance to work with you. And obviously we had known that you were on the board and it seemed like a pretty nice transition to have you go from the position you were on the board to actually running the organization.

Shawn VanDerziel (09:12):

Yeah, it’s been a great transition. NACE has, as you heard, a great mission, a very noble mission, and something particularly in today’s environment is needed with all of the scrutiny around higher education and what’s happening with filling the skills gap. This role is a very fulfilling one.

Shannon Offord (09:32):

Was there something specific about NACE’s mission that really drew you to want to lead the organization

Shawn VanDerziel (09:39):

And leading NACE? I have that unique lens of having been on the employer side, having been on the college side, having bridged the two together with internship programs. And I’ve seen the struggles that organizations, particularly small organizations, have small and medium sized organizations and thinking about workforce planning and thinking about what’s behind an internship and how to really make them go, how to use those programs to actually fill the pipeline for the future. Coming in and thinking about being a part of NACE, it was really an opportunity to think about who the majority of employers are in the United States, which are small and medium sized employers, and how they could make just as big of an impact as the large employers are making. And also to help on the college side to make a difference in how small and medium sized employers think about the talent pipeline and helping to bridge it all together just feeds my soul.

Shannon Offord (10:45):

And those larger employers and small and medium, they look at employment and how they recruit obviously a lot differently.

Shawn VanDerziel (10:53):

That’s right. There are a lot of unique needs out there and ways in which people tap talent. That’s exactly right.

Shannon Offord (11:00):

You’ve been deeply involved in workforce development and higher education partnerships for quite some time. What trends or changes have you observed in the early talent space over the last few years?

Shawn VanDerziel (11:11):

Yeah, there’s been quite a bit. There’s been a lot of shifting. One of those big shifts is towards skills-based hiring, as is being reported all over the media landscape these days. And as part of that skills-based hiring, a big thing that’s happened with college recruiting is the move away from using grade point average as a screening tool.

Shannon Offord (11:35):

I wish that was around earlier because that could have helped me.

Shawn VanDerziel (11:38):

Yeah, me too. Me too. I am with you a hundred percent. And so we found just five, six years ago, about 70% of the students who were coming out of college, about 70% of those jobs were being screened by grade point average. Can you believe that? And today that’s down to closer to 38%. So you’re talking about 30, 40% of jobs that are still and why were so many jobs being screened or candidates being screened by GPA? What did that really do? Now, having said that, there are some jobs where it probably makes a whole lot of sense to screen by GPA because there’s a knowledge base that that person needs to have to do that job that is critical to the job. So I liken it to do you really want an engineer who’s working on your airplane who didn’t have book smarts or do you want an architect building your building who doesn’t have the background that you need and that knowledge?

(12:43):

Do you want a medical professional? Same thing, the list goes on, right? There are way more jobs that you probably don’t need to have an over-reliance on the grade point average. Now, that’s one example of a shift. So we know that about 65% of our employers that we survey are doing some form of skills-based hiring these days, and they do that in various formats as opposed to the past, relying on some artificial filters and related to that skills gap that we hear all the time being reported, we don’t actually believe there’s a huge skills gap. What we believe is that there’s an articulation gap of skills that students are learning the skills, knowledge and abilities that they need to do the job. However they’ve been lacking the ability to communicate it. We’ve kind of lost our way and instruction curriculum has lost its way in helping students to really think through what they’re doing in college, all of those courses, the things that they’re doing in the classroom as well as out of the classroom and how that relates to the real world and how it relates to the work world.

(13:52):

And so we’re on a mission, and this is one thing that’s changed, and so many schools are on board with this to help students to articulate their learning in a very different way related to the work world. So that’s another thing. Another big one is the elimination of degree requirements. We hear about this all the time too, and we hear about the scrutiny around higher ed and degrees in the media. Well, this scrutiny is real and it probably needs to be there, but wholescale employers who are, what we know from all of our research is that employers who are eliminating degree requirements are by and large eliminating degree requirements on jobs that they should have eliminated them from a long time ago. They should have never had the degree requirements in place in the first place because the job never required it or doesn’t require it.

(14:47):

What we also know is that the employers that we do research with, that of the professional level, entry level jobs, that there are about 70% of those still require a degree because a degree offers a very efficient and effective way for a person to quickly obtain skills and knowledge that they may need for that first job and then to grow with the company, particularly for those positions that lead to management. And so it’s still very critical in that sense. Another really big trend that’s been happening is the shift in move towards certificates and certifications, stackable credentials, alternative credentials now from a higher education perspective, and those recruiters who recruit from college campuses, often they’re still not using certificates, stackable credentials as a main resource when they’re screening because they’re still not quite sure what they all mean or if they’re going to meet their requirements.

(15:59):

And so they’re still a little bit skeptical. However, these certificate programs are just going to continue to grow these credentials. These are just going to continue to grow. They’re going to continue to get better and they’re going to continue to be more meaningful. And as they become more meaningful, employers will begin to look at them a whole lot differently than maybe what they are right now. But as you can see, I could go on and on about this because there are so many things that are changing and trends that are happening with these learners who are coming out of college. I mean, there are things around what they want from employers that are changing. There are things around what they need in their first job in terms of requirements about where they live. There are expectations that they have, expectations that employers have about what those students will have accomplished in college by the time that they get to them that are very different than just even five years ago.

Shannon Offord (16:59):

I know you touched on this just a little bit, but as we look at the future of work from NACE’s perspective, what does the future of work look like for early career professionals? And I know you touched on a little bit of that with certificates and some of the positions, maybe not requiring degrees as maybe they did before, but kind of what’s the outlook from NACE’s perspective?

Shawn VanDerziel (17:20):

Yeah. I look at it this way because we focus on that early talent, this early talent, they’re the future of work and they’re going to be the ones that shape the future of work. And Gen Z and millennials have been through a lot at a very formative stage of their lives. They’re the future and they’re going to be the management and millennials are already management, and those Gen Zs are going to come up very quickly. They understand the advantages and disadvantages of virtual work and spaces. They understand how to adapt to change and the need for flexibility. They’re continuous learners. Building skills are super important to them, mental health and work-life balance. It’s also on their radar along with self-reflection. They’re very self-reflective and they have a strong desire for stability. So when you piece all of this together, who is Gen Z? How is this going to come together? What’s the future of work going to look like? It’s certainly going to look different when you think about those strong characteristics that are related to the workplace, you can only imagine what the workplace is going to look like. And we’re at a historic point in work as it is already. We have five generations in the workplace for the first time, and it’s soon to be six because Gen Alpha is coming up just in the,

Shannon Offord (18:55):

They’re coming fast.

Shawn VanDerziel (18:57):

They’re coming real fast and they’re already participating in the labor force. I mean, we’ve got 13 year olds and it’s just going to continue to happen. And so we’ve got to think about how this is playing out, but I’ll tell you, I think there are some bigger trends that are out there as well. And the big one certainly is around skills. I know we’ve touched on this, but I would just say skills, skills, skills. Intentionally developing and articulating skills is going to become part of all of our ethos, and so it’s going to be a part of what we each just do when we obtain a job, when we start to attain new duties in a job, we are going to be cataloging all of our skills all of the time, and employers are going to be doing that alongside of us, and colleges are going to be doing that too so that we can get to the people that we need to do particular types of jobs much more quickly. That’s part of the future of work. The other part of the future of work is the importance on durable skills or what people have often referred to as soft skills. They’re so important. Employers right now are desiring graduates who are coming into their companies who have great communication skills, great critical thinking skills, great teamwork skills. I don’t see those really going away. Those are the durable skills that we need to build the future. And so the future of work certainly is going to contain those elements as well.

Shannon Offord (20:29):

It’s really interesting that you mentioned that people are going to have to figure out really how to articulate those skills that they have. I think for the longest time, a lot of people just thought that was just really tied to maybe the veteran community, them trying to figure out and articulate the skills that they received in the military. But it’s not just them. It’s really everyone who’s out there in the workforce being able to effectively articulate the skills that they do have and being able to articulate those to future employers.

Shawn VanDerziel (21:03):

That’s right. It’s just not enough anymore to say that you have great communication skills. Well demonstrate to me. Tell me how you have demonstrated great communication skills. What does that really mean? It’s about clarifying expectations between the candidate and the employer. Employers actually don’t want to take risks when it comes to hiring,

Shannon Offord (21:27):

Not usually.

Shawn VanDerziel (21:27):

So what they want to do is find systems that are more scientific in nature to predict that somebody is going to succeed in a job because they don’t want someone to fail in their first month or two months, find out someone actually can’t do the job or even someone who’s not going to be retained a year later because they just don’t have what it takes to grow with a company. Well, one way to start doing that is to really dive a whole lot deeper into a person’s past, but not just the past, but how they can apply what they’ve learned for the future. We all know about behavioral interviewing and what behavioral interviewing does, which is the theory that past behavior will predict the future. And so asking questions like that is a part of skills-based hiring. But skills-based hiring goes even beyond that. And so we’re not going to stop hearing about this. The tools are getting better, they will get better and we’re all going to be along for the ride.

Shannon Offord (22:29):

What advice would you give or do you have for employers trying to engage and retain early talent in a post pandemic hybrid AI enabled work world? There’s definitely a lot to unpack there, but what advice would you give employers?

Shawn VanDerziel (22:46):

Yeah, there’s a lot I can say on this one, but if you want to engage early talent, get them into the office, this may surprise you. I’m not sure

Shannon Offord (22:58):

That’s going to be controversial.

Shawn VanDerziel (22:59):

They actually want to be in person, so there is this myth out there that they don’t want to be, but I will tell you all of our research and each year it gets stronger, tells us they want to be in person, they want to learn from those around this. Again, remember that that I mentioned just a little bit ago. They’re very self-reflective and so they understand that they don’t know everything and that they need to know more and that relationships are really important. And so they want to be in the office and they want a sense of belonging. They want a sense of purpose, and so they need that, I would say. But they also want flexibility just as much as they want in-person contact. They also want to be able to work from wherever they want at regular interval. They want the best of both worlds.

(23:52):

That’s what they really want. So in my view, and we were talking about the future of work a little bit earlier, the future of work is going to be hybrid, pure, and simple. These students have been through a whole lot. That’s what they want. And for those who want to engage these students, that’s how you’re going to do it. Help to give them a little bit of both. That’s what’s really going to drive them. Let them know that you trust them to go off and work from a cafe one day or that you trust them when they go down to on vacation in Florida that you know what, they may stay an extra week and not be on vacation but work from Florida and they want to be able to have that flexibility, but they’ll come back to you in the office absolutely, because they know that they need to be and they will be there with you.

(24:38):

Now, we also know that with these folks that stability is really important to ’em. So this early talent, this is the number one thing they’re looking for in a company. So they want stability and security, more than three quarters of graduate site job security as the key attribute that they want from an employer and a close second is a healthy workplace culture. Now what does that mean? That doesn’t mean that they are looking for an employer where they’re going to stay for the rest of their lives. That’s not what they want. What they want to know is that the things that you have promised them, the things that you have told them are true and that you are reliable as an employer. And so they don’t want wishy-washiness. They do not want answers that are going to feel loose. They want directness. They want to know that they’re going to get that paycheck and they’re going to get it every two weeks.

(25:38):

Like you promised them that they’re going to get it every two weeks. They want to know that they are going to get the benefits that you promised ’em and you’re not going to reduce them. You’re not going to change them. You’re going to have a plan for them. That’s part of stability. You have a plan for them. So there’s a plan for increases in how that works. There’s a plan for what growth and development means with your company. That’s part of stability for them. They also want to work in locations that are affordable. Affordability is part of what that means to them as well. And so if you live in a more remote place, you’re trying to recruit these new graduates, you’re going to need to offer them relocation assistance. You’re just going to need to do it and it’s going to increase your odds of getting them dramatically. So just do it. We know that from all of our research, but we also know that I’m going to take a step back in the recruitment process, which is internships, that if you want to get an intern, pay them, it’s no longer acceptable not to. If someone is working for you, they’re working for you and they deserve to be paid like every other worker and this generation, they get that. That’s also part of stability.

Shannon Offord (27:01):

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up too. I actually had a friend of mine a few weeks ask me, do people still do internships that are not paid? And I’m like, absolutely not. Those days are long gone.

Shawn VanDerziel (27:14):

Well, this is very sad to report Shannon. They are still offering unpaid internships. Unfortunately, what we find is that about 40% of internships are still unpaid. Can you believe that? Really? That incredible.

Shannon Offord (27:27):

That’s insane. I look at a lot of job postings and I don’t think I’ve seen one in a while.

Shawn VanDerziel (27:34):

I know it blows my mind. The vast majority of them are, I will say, are with government agencies, particularly at the local county and state levels, and they are also with nonprofit organizations. And so we get it, funding levels that are there. But if these organizations want to remain competitive and have a pipeline for the future, they’ve got to think about those funding models.

Shannon Offord (27:58):

In this day and age, I would definitely not take an internship that’s not paid.

Shawn VanDerziel (28:03):

I’m with you and we have a whole campaign going on right now and I would invite everybody to join us. If you just Google it, you can see type in hashtag unpaid is unfair NACE. I’ll take you to a page. And we have videos there. They’re amazing that you can share on your social media. And there’re situations with an intern, someone who had been an intern going into real life situations and trying to pay for things. So my favorite one is the woman walks into a grocery store. And by the way, the people who are in the video are not actors. They’re the real people. The woman playing the intern is an actor, the others are not walking into a store and trying to pay for her groceries with a recommendation letter that she received from her unpaid internship, and then the reaction that you get from the others, but really in a really light way, drills home the importance of having a paid internship,

Shannon Offord (28:58):

Like you have your internship and another job that actually pays you.

Shawn VanDerziel (29:02):

That’s right. That’s right.

Shannon Offord (29:04):

With deep ties to both employers and higher education, how do you see AI beginning to influence the way employers source and maybe evaluate entry level candidates?

Shawn VanDerziel (29:15):

So with AI, applications have exploded for employers and these recruiters are trying to figure out how to combat this. Most are just posting a job for 1, 2, 3 days and shutting it down as opposed to having that posting up there for weeks on end, maybe even months. They can’t do that anymore because they’re getting an influx of applications. Despite the prevalence though of AI in the national dialogue, its use is still really not prevalent among graduating seniors. So we have a report that’ll come out soon where we surveyed students and we found that actually a smaller than you would expect, number of students are actually using AI on a regular basis. They’re using it, but they’re very skeptical of AI. And so there is a smaller group of candidates that is actually causing the influx of applications that are happening at these employers. It’s a very interesting scenario that we’re in, but employers are also, they’re using AI to write job descriptions, to suggest recruitment plans, to screen resumes to determine their interview questions, to manage scheduling of candidates, to do their follow-up activities like turn down letters or emails that they’ve got to send out.

(30:43):

And there are smaller group that are using it for or are planning to use it for as the systems develop and get better for candidate success prediction. So using AI inference and that’s feeding the AI profiles of let’s say successful employees in your company and then using that information to look for candidates that have similar profiles, but focusing in on the experiences and the skills of those individuals. So it’s about prediction. So this is one of those future things that’s probably going to, it’s take a little bit of time before it really ramps up and lots of companies are using this, but you better believe it’s already here, it’s being used and will probably take off over the next few years. On the student side, we do find that students tell us that their universities have developed policies around AI in the classroom and that they’re using it for some of their career search exploration, but again, it’s not widespread. Now, one other super interesting thing that I found that kind of merges these two things together, you hear so much in the news around we need people who have AI and who we’re using AI. When we did a survey of students about what they learned in their internship and the places and things by which they honed their skills, we found that less than 10% of interns actually used or sharpened their AI skills in their internships. Is that astonishing?

Shannon Offord (32:30):

Wow. It really is.

Shawn VanDerziel (32:31):

That if it were really widespread and so on and so forth, that more students would be reporting this. And so I think right now there’s just an overinflation on the emphasis of AI that the news that we hear, it’s all true. AI can replace a whole lot of things that we’re doing. It’s true. It’s going to change the way that we work and is changing the way that we work. However, right now, it is not having as dramatic of an impact on those entry level professional level jobs that early talent fills. It may eventually and probably will, but the immediate is that companies are still trying to figure all this out and trying to figure out what it’s going to mean for them.

Shannon Offord (33:12):

Yeah, I’d agree with that. I mean, I go to a lot of HR tech conferences and every tool claims to be some kind of AI platform, and most of them really aren’t more decision trees types of tools that just say they’re have AI infused or whatever. But for the most part, a lot of the tools don’t really have or aren’t really AI, generative AI and most employers are just, like you said, they’re just trying to figure it all out. Right now. They’re writing policies solely starting to write policies and figuring out how it’s really going to positively or negatively impact their organizations.

Shawn VanDerziel (33:56):

That’s right.

Shannon Offord (33:56):

In what ways can colleges and universities better prepare students for a job market? And I know it could be far out where AI is playing a prominent role.

Shawn VanDerziel (34:08):

Well, hey, first and foremost, they need to become proficient users themselves. So college and universities and personnel that work for them need to start learning. And so for instance, we’ve developed an AI bootcamp for both the career services folks as well as the recruiters so that they have some of the tools, some of the knowledge that they may need for the future. And it’s not enough these days to just sit back and let it happen. Someone’s got to start teaching and we all have to start learning in different ways. And so that’s probably the biggest one. It’s really being clear about the use of AI with students both inside and outside of the classroom. So how is it being used? How can it be used? And then helping them to actually use it and modeling it and helping to demystify what’s happening with AI. There are some real negatives to AI of course, and the students who are coming out today are in tune with that.

(35:10):

They understand that and it makes them skeptical about using AI. And that’s what we’re finding in our research. And so the bottom line is we know that AI is the future, so we’ve got to help them to become more comfortable and to think critically about its use. And so we will find more and more that it is being integrated into curriculum that there are more certificate programs, et cetera, et cetera. But we also got to think about it in every single discipline and it’s application in every single discipline, which means employers have to step up to the plate to help the colleges understand how it’s being used in their industries.

Shannon Offord (35:55):

Great point. So I want to shift gears a little bit, kind of get away from AI just a little bit and really talk about NACE’s job outlook report that you guys put out in the spring and fall. You guys have a great research team. I was introduced to them many, many years ago and seen some of the great work that you have done specifically related to the job outlook report. What is the process for those surveys? Is there a theme you work toward for each survey or how will that all process come together and how do you gather that information?

Shawn VanDerziel (36:32):

Yeah, well maybe it would help if I explain some of the types of surveys we do each year that you might

Shannon Offord (36:37):

That’d be helpful

Shawn VanDerziel (36:37):

And then explain the job outlook more specifically. So things related to employers that everyone may be interested in. We do a really large internship survey every year, which is where we go out to employers and we ask them about the landscape of internships, everything from pay rates to conversion rates and how it’s all working. We are the definitive benchmarking place to come to on that. We have a student survey. We go out to thousands between 13 to 20,000 students every year our part of our survey. And we ask ’em about their attitudes, behaviors, and their needs related to the job search and things that have actually happened with them related to their internships, full-time employment searches, et cetera. So we know how they are responding to the labor market and being included in labor market.

(37:29):

We also do a recruiting benchmark survey, which helps us to understand what the recruiters are actually doing so that they can benchmark their own operations versus other operations and how they’re proceeding. And then we do a salary survey. And the salary survey helps us to understand what are new graduates getting paid across disciplines, across majors so that companies understand the competitive landscape. And that leads me to the job outlook. So twice a year we conduct a job outlook for graduates for the upcoming class. So we do the outlook both in the fall and the spring. So this last fall we did a survey for the class of 2025, and then we reinitiated the survey in the spring to see if there was an update for those students for the class of 2025. And so we want to know how graduates are going to fare out in the labor market, and we want to know also what employers are actually looking and what the differences are between last year or the last time that we did the survey.

Shannon Offord (38:44):

Right now I’ve heard out just in the industry that some of the outlook right now for recent graduates may not be as good as it was in the past. Are there some industries that have been super resilient as far as still there’s a lot of openings and still a lot of opportunity for recent college grads.

Shawn VanDerziel (39:06):

So when we initially did our outlook last fall for the class of 2025, we found that hiring would be up about 7%. So that was last fall. That was pre-election, pre all kinds of things that have happened in the world. And when we resurveyed in the spring, we found that employers adjusted their hiring plans down with hiring being almost flat to the previous year, which isn’t great news because hiring was down for the class of 2024, but it’s not bad news overall. About 65% of employers told us that they’re actually expecting to maintain their hiring at last year’s levels and about 25% were going to increase less than 11%, were going to trim hiring. But those that were in, so basically we had more employers move to the maintain bucket and we had larger employers move to the trimming bucket. And so depending upon the industry, depending upon the employer, there are different employers within the same industry that are having issues.

(40:16):

So it’s really an interesting labor market that graduates are going into. So this does align with what we’re hearing in the general labor market. As you mentioned, when we looked at industries, what we find is that those that are a little bit more resilient right now are surprisingly social services, which in the past has been on a decline, but these days are on an upswing, wholesale trade, engineering services, and even transportation. Those are the ones that are really maintaining or increasing hiring. And then we have others that are holding in there pretty well, which is food and beverage manufacturing, chemical manufacturing, finance and insurance industry. And then on the downside, as you hear in the news, which is true, computer electronics, manufacturing, information service majors, motor vehicle manufacturing, those are some of those that we’re seeing steeper decreases in hiring for new graduates.

Shannon Offord (41:20):

I know those fields were hot before.

Shawn VanDerziel (41:22):

That’s right. That’s right. But that’s a good point. I mean just because if you’re a computer science major as an example, maybe you were thinking you would go to a tech company, maybe that’s what you were going to do. However, your skills are still in need and your skills are still important. And almost every company in the US and beyond hires people who have technology and computer skills and programming skills. And so it might be a matter of thinking broadly and looking broadly at applying your skills to other industries.

Shannon Offord (41:58):

Well, I think it’s a super good point. Just because those tech companies may not be looking for those individuals doesn’t mean that there aren’t other companies who aren’t tech companies who aren’t looking for those people. So that’s a really good point.

Shawn VanDerziel (42:09):

That’s right.

Shannon Offord (42:11):

Are there other takeaways from the spring report that maybe you’d want to share?

Shawn VanDerziel (42:17):

Yeah, I think we’ve covered a lot of ’em throughout our session already today. I would just mention that the skills-based hiring, we know that about two thirds of our employers are doing skills-based hiring in some kind of way from our survey of job outlook, which is a large percentage. And where they’re doing it the most is in the interviewing scenario. So it’s where they’re doing those behavioral based interviews. It may surprise people particularly thinking about the screening. We find that less employers are actually doing it in the screening process these days using AI for the skills-based hiring that they’re actually still looking at those resumes though systems are being used whole wholescale, particularly with larger companies. So there are a number of things that we learned in addition to the things that I already mentioned.

Shannon Offord (43:15):

Do you see any innovations or are you anticipating any changes to campus recruiting maybe over the next three to five years or anything that you kind of see or can say, yeah, these are things that are coming down the pipe and people should be aware of them.

Shawn VanDerziel (43:33):

So more classroom connection to careers, integrating careers into more coursework. And that means employers getting more involved with colleges and universities and what is happening there. It’s only going to benefit the employers as much as it’s going to benefit the future pipeline of workers. We also know that internships are the number one thing that employers look for on resumes for new graduates. Internships have become the currency of getting a job, and so that importance is not going to go away. It’s only going to increase, particularly with skills-based hiring because it points at experience, it points at skills, and particularly if you’ve had an internship within the same industry of an employer, you’re applying, they’re only going to become more important. And so establishing those programs is vital. More segmentation and personalization in the recruitment process is going to happen, and that’s possible because of AI.

(44:39):

Of course, we’re also going to see more thoughtful, careful, and intentional branding of companies because of what these new Gen Zs and then Gen Alphas are looking for and those employers, more information around culture, values, employee experience that employers are going to have to get creative about how they actually express that. More automation of complex recruitment workflows are going to continue to happen. And I think we’re going to find better systems because there are a whole lot of people who are interested in it. And things like bias reduction, increased consistency, and being really data driven with the information.

Shannon Offord (45:19):

Well, I think I’m going to actually steal one of your quotes. Internships are the currency to getting a job. I’m going to steal that and use that in some of my presentations moving forward because that’s really good. As a matter of fact, I’m probably going to use that with my step kids as they navigate through college and high school. So that was awesome. I love that.

Shawn VanDerziel (45:44):

Yes, it’s currency that has a lot of weight.

Shannon Offord (45:48):

I’ll make sure that I give you attribution though, so I’m not going to just use it. Well, we’d like to close out more sessions with a quick rapid fire, a couple of quick rapid fire questions just to get to know you a little better. Nothing real serious. So I’ll ask you a few and just answer the first thing that comes to your mind. So we’ll start out super easy, reality TV or documentaries?

Shawn VanDerziel (46:12):

Reality tv. I’m kind of addicted.

Shannon Offord (46:15):

Alright. I’ve recently gotten hooked on a few myself, so no judgment here. Best career advice you’ve ever received?

Shawn VanDerziel (46:25):

Yeah, so you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen more than you talk. And I think particularly from a management perspective, a leadership perspective, it’s the best advice I ever could have gotten.

Shannon Offord (46:41):

I actually just used that yesterday at a conference I was at. Awesome. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?

Shawn VanDerziel (46:51):

There’s a fictional character I’d like to have dinner with, and that would be Willy Wonka. If it was a real person, I would always want to have dinner with my grandmother who taught me so much and has so much more to teach me. So I would say my grandmother, sorry, I’m going to give you three. And then I would say a famous, famous person that more people would know, probably someone like a Steve Jobs. I would love to pick his brain.

Shannon Offord (47:14):

Oh, that’d be cool. First job?

Shawn VanDerziel (47:18):

My first job was in a one hour photo lab as a lab technician. I had a work permit to work there. I started at 14 years old and we were in the middle of a retail superstore in Michigan, outside of the Detroit area, and it was a fantastic first job. And whenever they got really busy at the cash registers up front, we’d all have to run up there and do bagging to help those cashiers to get the lines down as well.

Shannon Offord (47:51):

I remember those bagging days. That was my very first job as a bagger.

Shawn VanDerziel (47:56):

Valuable skill, by the way. And to this day, I don’t allow cashiers to bag my groceries because I can do it better than the way anyone’s been trained today to do it. There’s a skill to bagging your groceries.

Shannon Offord (48:10):

I agree. I agree. Most people don’t have it, but

Shawn VanDerziel (48:12):

That’s right.

Shannon Offord (48:14):

To be able to make the bag stand up properly

Shawn VanDerziel (48:17):

And the weight of it and where things go.

Shannon Offord (48:21):

You know what, when you do it right, it’s so much easier to put your groceries away when you get home, so

Shawn VanDerziel (48:24):

That’s exactly right.

Shannon Offord (48:26):

There’s nothing worse than they’re all scattered. You got to try to put things from different bags and different places. It just takes way too long.

Shawn VanDerziel (48:33):

I’m with you.

Shannon Offord (48:34):

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Sean. It’s been a great conversation. I’ve enjoyed it. I’m sure our listeners will enjoy it as well. If they want to connect with NACE to learn more about NACE or maybe to get access to some of the surveys that you guys are doing. What’s the easiest way for them to do that?

Shawn VanDerziel (48:55):

Yeah, you can go to our website, NACEweb N-A-C-E web dot org is our website. And so much of what I talked about today is searchable on our website or type in your Google search NACE web and then type in the topic you’re interested in and likely it’ll come up right away. So around career readiness, around internships, around job outlook, skills, you name it, you’ll find it there.

Shannon Offord (49:22):

Awesome. Well, thanks again and we definitely appreciate the partnership that DirectEmployers has had with NACE, and I appreciate you joining us.

Shawn VanDerziel (49:30):

Awesome. Well, it’s been great to be here. Thanks for having me.

DirectEmployers Association (49:34):

Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, or subscribe to receive updates straight to your inbox by visiting DirectEmployers.org/Subscribe where you’ll receive notifications of new episodes, webinars, events, and more.