Mary Gatta: Decoding Career Trends Through NACE Research

Mary Gatta, Director of Research and Policy at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), continues our three-part series exploring the intersection of higher education and industry. Gatta shares up-to-date insights from NACE's latest Job Outlook Survey, highlights the growing importance of experiential learning for the job prospects of new graduates, and discusses the significant shift from GPA-based hiring to skills-based approaches, with two-thirds of employers now implementing skills-based practices. Gatta also emphasizes the critical need for faculty involvement in helping students translate classroom learning into career-ready competencies. The conversation offers valuable research insights for higher education professionals, employers, and students navigating the evolving landscape of college-to-career transitions.

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. 

Welcome to the second interview in our three part mini series with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, or NACE. In our first interview with NACE, President and CEO, Shawn VanDerziel, we discussed the broader landscape surrounding College Career Services and recruiting. Shawn provided an overview of the field and NACE's work, highlighting its central role as a knowledge-based organization with research at its core. Today, we're looking forward to delving deeper into that research with Mary Gatta, who leads NACE's research efforts. 

Julian Alssid: As Director of Research and Policy, Mary brings over 20 years of experience in teaching, research and advocacy on issues of education, employment and retirement, inequity. Her work focuses on evidence based research analysis, developing solutions around economic security, education, and workforce policies. Before joining NACE, she held faculty and research positions at the City University of New York, Gottman Community College, Rutgers, University's Center for Women and Work and Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington, DC, which is, I think, Mary, where we may have actually first met.

Mary Gatta: It was it was where we met, yep. 

Julian Alssid: Indeed. So welcome to Work Forces. Great to have you. 

Mary Gatta: Thank you for having me. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes. So great to be with you today, Mary. Thanks so much for joining us. And as we get going today, can you please tell us more about your background and your role at NACE. 

Mary Gatta: I come out of higher education. For the most part, I spent most of my career in higher ed, in faculty roles. My training is in sociology, so I have a PhD in sociology, and my study, my research, and also a lot of my teaching has really been around work and understanding the impacts of education on labor market rewards, looking at the impacts of systemic inequities and how to mitigate them. So when I joined NACE as our director of research and public policy about four years ago, I was really excited, because the work that we do in terms of our research work at NACE really focuses on how to better understand the outcomes, the career outcomes, of college graduates, how to understand it across lines, levels of equity, and also how to understand the employer side, like, what are employers looking for in recent college grads? So it was a really great opportunity to kind of marry all of that for my own career, and also we know how important evidence-based research is around career outcomes for college graduates and for university recruiters. So that has been, is, really the focus of our research work at NACE. 

Julian Alssid: So tell us a little bit more. I mean, at NACE, you're sitting on a real trove of data. So I know you must be in, you know, in researcher heaven, tell us a little bit about that data that you sit on, and add a little bit more about the types of specifically the types of reports you generate, and who uses them and who they're intended for. 

Mary Gatta: We do a variety of surveys for our research throughout the year, and we in terms of kind of our samples, we are using...we're fortunate that we're able to survey our members, both our higher education members, who mostly sit in the career service kind of field, and also our employer members who really focus on university recruiters. And what we do throughout the year is do research, sort of, on career centers, right, career services. So what's going on in higher ed? What's going on with employers coming to campus to recruit career fairs? Kind of those basic benchmarks. We also, on the employer side, look at recruiting benchmarks. So what does the recruiting cycle look like, right? What is the hiring cycle look like for college grads? What is the hiring cycle for internships? What are the projections for the upcoming graduating class in terms of entry level hires? What are employers? How are employers thinking about things like skills based hiring, for example, and skills based practices. So throughout the year, we survey both our higher ed and our employer communities on those topics. We also, once a year, do a student survey, where we send that out in the spring through our higher ed partners to students, right where we are able. You know, how are students thinking about experiential learning? What have been their experiences? How are students thinking about the job market? What have been their experiences on how many interviews have they had? How have they sourced those interviews through career fairs, except networks. This year, for the first time, we did over this past summer, a survey of early career talent. So we surveyed college grads who are one to 10 years out to kind of look a little deeper into their outcomes. How did things like experiential learning opportunities during their college tenure impact their career outcomes? And then the final little piece of data. We do is our it's not little, it's actually quite big. Is our first destination survey, which is we look at aggregated levels of what are the outcomes six months post graduation. So we're in the process now of collecting that data for this class of '24 and then that report will be out in the fall. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: So you are busy, you're there's a lot you're collecting from a lot of different stakeholders, and really, living at the intersection of these worlds is really fascinating. Can you tell us? I mean, there's so many different directions we could go in this conversation. But given that you've recently conducted the job outlook for 2025 can we start there? Like, what have you learned? 

Mary Gatta: Yes. So we have just released, this is hot off the press, our Job Outlook Survey, which is a survey of our university recruiters of employers about what the job outlook looks like for the class of 2025.  And we do this survey twice a year, I should say once in the fall, and getting those projections and then again in the spring. So what we are seeing now from our very, very hot off the press data is that right now, college hiring, college graduate hiring, is expected to be about flat, right? We're just seeing about a .6% increase. And just to put this in a little context, in comparison, in the fall, when we surveyed our employers, their projections was they were expecting hiring to increase over 7% from last year from the class of '24 levels. So I think that's a really important data point that we now that we're into the spring, and we're seeing basically a flat increase, a flat hiring projection, really not much of an increase from last year. When we go a little deeper into it, we see that about 65% of the employers in our survey intended to just maintain last year's hiring level, and a little less than a quarter expected to increase that. And just related to that, we do an internship survey every year looking at the benchmarks and the hiring and in our internship survey that we conducted just this past winter, we saw that employers were expecting to bring in fewer interns this year than they did last year. They are projecting a decrease in about 3% in intern hiring. So that's sort of an early sign that there might be some softening going on around hiring, because typically our job outlook projections and our internship projections felt like kind of run or pretty much aligned. So where that's sort of just some other interesting point that we're seeing right now.

Julian Alssid: Mary, can you? Can you tell us a little bit of what you're saying by industry? I mean, are there particular, is there anything that jumps out at you with those terms? 

Mary Gatta: Yeah, no, we're kind of seeing it pretty comparable across industries, and so I don't think what we're seeing specifically in terms of industry, it seems to be relatively steady overall. When we look specifically at some industries, we are seeing some hiring projections with increasing around wholesale trade industry, management consulting, and transportation, and some decreases, larger decreases In chemical manufacturing, like pharmaceutical manufacturing, computer and electronics manufacturing, and motor vehicle manufacturing. But of course, with any industry analysis, you know, our Ns are really important here, so I would just take that a little bit into consideration, but that's pretty much what we're seeing. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: It's interesting to hear you speak about what sounds like a separate survey done around internships, but seeing that there's also a slight decrease there. And yeah, I feel like we're hearing kind of across the landscape the importance of experience and going into the job market with experience. I'm curious just to hear your thoughts. 

Mary Gatta: We did a survey about two years ago, on employers, and 80% of employers told us the best return on investment they get for recruiting strategy is internships. And further to that, in our job outlook, we collect data on using the GPA as a filter. So what that means is our employers using the GPA to filter out college grads and back in 2019, before COVID, about 75% of employers said, yeah, they're using the filter. The GPA is a filter. Now we're seeing that decrease to about anywhere between 30 and 40% of employers. And what's replacing that (and it's even for employers that are still using the GPA) is experiential learning, so having internship experience, work experience, and also being able to articulate your skills. So I think even though we're seeing this dip in internship and projections of internship hiring, experiential learning writ large, is really important as a recruitment strategy. And then just added on to that in our early career talent survey that we conducted over the summer, we ran the analysis of students who did some type of experiential learning, whether it was an internship, whether it was undergraduate research, whether it was work, study, study abroad, and those who did not. And what we found in the first one to three years after graduation, those who were experiential learners had more jobs, career satisfaction, saw a higher value to their higher ed, and had an average of $15,000 higher salary. We very much have consistently seen in our research the importance of experiential learning, coupled with (and experience learning is a great way to do this) being able to fully articulate what are the skills that you're learning, be it in the classroom or in a co curricular. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, well, that's it's really, I appreciate you broadening the lens on internships to really be about that experiential education piece, and the recognition that maybe it does come from an internship, or maybe it comes from your involvement with a student activity or a club or leadership experience, or what have you. So I think that's a really interesting and important call out at a time where experiential education just feels so important to kind of demonstrating skill sets, right? And being able to articulate.

Mary Gatta: Yeah, being able to demonstrate skill sets. And also, I mean, there are other important benefits. Think about social capital, type benefits, right? Access to mentors, networks, you know, kind of an understanding of work. All of that is really important that comes from experiential opportunities. 

Julian Alssid: Looking beyond the job, the job outlook report, can you speak a little bit more to some of these trends that you're seeing that are sticking out in following the tracking of, you know, skills, skills based hiring. Love to hear more about that, what you're seeing and how that ties back to all of what we're talking about. 

Mary Gatta: What we're seeing in our research for about the past two years now is that when we survey our employers, if they're using skills based hiring, almost two thirds of them say they are. They're using skills based hiring at some point in the recruiting process, 90% of those employers say they're using it at the interview stage, and two thirds say they're incorporating skills based hiring in the screening process. So another three quarters also said that they've developed skills based job descriptions, for example, and more than half use a kind of a skills based interview rubric. And then obviously assessments kind of play a role here too, that we know. And about 40% of our employers created internal assessment tools to assess skills, and another quarter or so use external created tools. So I think the skills based hiring. I mean, the fact that two thirds of our employers are saying they're using it at some point, shows it's really important, and it's really important that college grads, and that we help prepare college grads to be in an interview, in a have a resume and a cover letter that is focused around skills based hiring, right? And that incorporates those practices. And this ties also to what I said earlier about the decline of the GPA, right? So experiential learning is part of that right? Employers are looking for experiential learning. But also employers tell us that they really do want students to be able to articulate their skills and competencies, so and be that you know in their interview, be that through their descriptions, etc, through that a work portfolio. That is really important. Another, you know, critically important thing that employers are telling us to be helping prepare students and college grads for that will help give that, get them prepared, and give that and for it like up. 

Julian Alssid: So then, how do these trends kind of shape the advice and the guidance that nice provides, you know, career services professionals and students and employers. 

Mary Gatta: Yeah. So I think our resource is helpful, you know, across the board, right? So when we're able to get our data, whether it be around skills based hiring the GPA from employers, higher ed career service centers, faculty, staff, etc, are able to then incorporate that into their workshops, into their curriculum in the classroom, right? So having that knowledge of what employers are looking for from amongst college grads will help them maybe adapt syllabi, for example, to align course outcomes with competencies, career readiness competencies, right? So the students can then kind of share with a prospective employer. You know, in my sociology course, for example, I was able, I learned sociology and theory and methods, but I also developed critical thinking skills by engaging in a research project. Or I developed, I worked in teamwork on a group project on X, so that data is really important. The data also from our student survey. For example, we ask our students, what are they looking for in jobs, like, what are the benefits they're looking for? What are the attributes of the job, you know. And overall, our data shows they're looking for economic security type benefits, right, job security, for example. So that helps to inform employers right when they're recruiting students on what the graduates are looking for and what college grads are looking for. So that is really, I think, helpful. I think what's exciting about our early career talent survey, for example, is for the first time, we were able to kind of look at, you know, in, you know, in a self reported way. Obviously, all the data from students is self reported. But how, for the data around experiential learning, for example, how we're able to see a correlation between taking or participating in experiential learning opportunities during your college years and the impact on your early career. And that's informative for students. That's informative for parents to talk with their students, to talk with their children about. So I think that's really also helpful. And, you know, we also have, you know, compensation guides, for example, internship compensation guides that are helpful for employers to sort of gauge, you know, intern pay. We do a salary survey every year, and I should say, our first destination survey, which is the survey that we have on, what are, what are the outcomes six months out, that is open to the public, so that is not behind a paywall at NACE. And you can, we have a dashboard, and you can filter that by type of, you know, type of school region, the northeast, the southeast, etc, the west. And that can also help you think about by major. So it gives you, gives students, it gives, you know, everyone really a sense of, you know, how, what are the outcomes across different whether it's geographic variables, types of Carnegie classifications, etc. So I think you know, college outcome data is really important, because obviously it helps to inform a student's decision about their major, their career path, but it also helps inform both employers and higher ed professionals about the each other, right? Because they're both really important part of the college recruiting. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely Mary, and I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about how kind of some of these shifts that are happening, like, for example, when you raise skills based hiring or an emphasis on internships, I'm curious to know. I mean, given your years in this space, what are some of the trends you've kind of seen shift pretty significantly over time. And in addition, I mean, you know, what are those shifting? Because when you've seen those things shift over time, what does that make you think about future state, you know, where we are now and where we're headed? 

Mary Gatta: One of the things, I think, is, and it's something we're working on at NACE, is really engaging faculty in these conversations, connecting career services and faculty more directly. We do know from our student survey that students go to their faculty for career advice. You know, speaking as a former faculty member, you know, we need to help ensure that our faculty are able to connect the amazing work that we're doing in the classroom in our disciplinary area with careers, right? And that work, you know, really requires us not to really change our syllabi significantly in any way, but, or what we're teaching differently in any way, but what it really does, it just kind of overlay on, you know, what are the I'm learning these sociological skills, right? Or I'm learning these skills in biology, but what, how does it, how do I help my students translate that to in an interview? How do I help my students connect that? How do I engage in some type of experiential learning with my students in the classroom on that? So I think we are seeing more and more, you know, the importance of that right? Students are saying they're going to their faculty for advice, and last year, we did a survey with the Society for Experiential Education and AAC&U on faculty who said both students and alumni are coming to them for career advice. So I think that's an important trend that we need to continue to provide the support and the professional development for faculty and career services to connect and work together collaboratively, so that faculty have the knowledge and the resources to help students on this. And I think that's something that we're seeing, you know, really good shifts on, I mean, in in our work. And, you know, faculty, like everyone in higher ed, I think really wants their students to succeed. That's the goal, right? That's why we're here, right? We want to ensure that our students succeed when they leave school. So I think that that's a really positive trend that I hope will continue. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely. 

Julian Alssid: Mary, so with those discussions with faculty, to what degree are they touching on the whole notion of skills based approaches? I mean, that's a really big kind of crosswalk, I think, for many colleges, and very challenging. 

Mary Gatta: So one of the first ways that we've been working with faculty and is just to help folks look at their syllabi, like look at their classes, and look at it from not only the lens of their discipline and the learning outcomes, but also the lens of like, our NACE career readiness competencies, right and aligning, like, just doing a very basic alignment of the learning outcomes that I already have in my course, and how do they align to one of our eight NACE competencies: critical thinking, technology, diversity, equity, inclusion, teamwork, etc, and then just kind of framing that in the classroom more. That's all it really involves. When I was when I taught in sociology, one of the things I would do in aligning those competencies is when I would then assign an assignment that I would talk about not only how the assignment was tied to what learning sociological research methods or sociological theory, but also how does it connect to just career readiness competencies that employers are looking for. A simple another simple way of doing that is having to send a very low stakes kind of point, low stakes on a paper, for example, where students write a paragraph reflecting how I worked on this sociology paper can also be connected to what are the skills that I learned broadly around career readiness, and then just helping students make those connections, because employers, you know, tell us the competencies, I mean, our career in his competencies are important, right? And they're looking for that in recent college grads. 

Kaitlin LeMoine: So I feel like you're bringing us in this direction, Mary, but what are your recommendations for how our audience can become forces in applying your research findings to shape the future of higher ed and the future of higher ed and employer collaborations. 

Mary Gatta: Think our research is really helpful in being able to get a strong landscape of what is happening in colleges, what students are saying, and want and what employers are saying in the recruiting cycles. So I would recommend being able to, depending where you're sitting, right, what, what lane you're sitting, being able to kind of connect that. So if you're in higher ed, I would recommend you know, checking out our job outlook, checking out our recruiting benchmarks, for example, so that you get a sense of, what is it that that employers are looking for? How are they reading the different competencies and importance in the and and proficiency of recent college grads? If you are an employer, our student survey, I think, is really helpful, because it gives you a sense of what your you know, your soon to be employees, your soon to be peers are, are thinking about in terms of their what they've been their college experience, how they think about networks, how they think about mentoring, what they're looking for in a job. If you're a college student, I think that our first destination survey is really helpful for you to get a sense of the college outcomes our early career talent is really helpful in order to get a sense of... We have data now from students who are one to 10 years out, what's their experience like? What, what has been helpful so, and we'll have a series, we're having a series of articles come out on that over the next few months. So I think really, because we're fortunate to be able to serve both the industry recruiters and the higher ed community and have them both participate in our research. I think we can, you know, we're able to kind of provide that data for folks. So I would recommend reviewing the data. 

Julian Alssid: So Mary, how can our listeners learn more and keep following your work. 

Mary Gatta: Yeah, absolutely. Well, certainly. You know, checking out our website and our social media, we're very active on LinkedIn, for example. So checking that out, I should say we are a membership organization. So if you are in the field and want to join NACE, we do more than just research. We do professional development. We have a conference every year that is coming up in June in Philadelphia, and we do that annually. We have a virtual conference in addition to the in person conference, and we also have many, many webinars and symposia throughout the year, both in person and virtual formats. So I would definitely recommend checking us out online. 

Julian Alssid: Sounds like it's a lot more research too - a lot more access to the research, for your members.  

Mary Gatta: Yeah.

Julian Alssid: Cool. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. 

Mary Gatta: Thank you for having me. Yes. 

Kaitlin LeMoine  

Thank you so much, Mary. 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.