You reach students in a room they already have to be in. That is the whole advantage, and it takes very little to use it.

1. Paste the syllabus statement from the toolkit below into every course you teach. It takes thirty seconds and works all semester.
2. Book a class visit. Fifteen minutes at the top of a session, a full workshop, or an industry pathway session built for your students. Tell us the course and the slot. Request a speaker or workshop →
3. Name one competency in one assignment prompt. The crosswalk below gives you the sentence — you are already teaching the skill, you are only labeling it.
4. Refer any student who seems adrift. Two minutes, and it is supportive rather than disciplinary. We tell students exactly that. Refer a student →

If you do only one of these, do it in week one. Students set their semester habits in the first fortnight, and a resource introduced in November competes with finals.

Advising is where the career question actually gets asked, usually sideways: what can I even do with this? You do not need a career answer. You need a route.

1. Add one line to your standard advising email template. The toolkit below has it written for you. It then runs on every appointment you send for the rest of the year.
2. When a student says they are unsure what the degree leads to, send them to the industry communities rather than to a list of job titles. Browse the communities →
3. When a student or a parent asks about job prospects, link the outcomes data instead of estimating. It is broken out by program and by class year, and it is the version we can stand behind. Undergraduate outcomes →  ·  Graduate outcomes →
4. Refer, do not carry it alone. If a student needs more than one conversation, a referral routes them to a career coach without you having to hand off the relationship. Refer a student →

A note worth having: Career Services is open to students from their first week, not just their last year. Students routinely believe the opposite, and an advisor correcting that belief early changes how the next three years go.

You have students in informal settings where career talk lands differently than it does in an advising office. Use that.

1. Request a career coach for a floor meeting, orientation session, or student organization meeting. We will come to the residence hall or the club room. Request a speaker →
2. Tell your student leaders that their role is professional experience. Resident advisors, orientation leaders, and desk staff are doing conflict resolution, crisis response, and event logistics. Most of them do not know that belongs on a resume until someone says so.
3. Co-program with us. A resume night in a lounge reaches students who will never walk into MTCC on their own.
4. Refer a student who seems lost about after-graduation. It comes up in these conversations more than it comes up in class. Refer a student →

For the student who asks at 11 p.m. and will not remember to follow up in the morning: the AI Career Coach on the Hub answers from published Career Services content and routes to a person. elevate.iit.edu →

You field the outcomes question constantly, often from families, often on the spot. Two things make that easier.

1. Link the outcomes pages rather than quoting a figure from memory. They carry current class-year data, response rates, top employers, and salary ranges by program. A number quoted loosely in a recruiting conversation is the kind of thing that comes back. Undergraduate outcomes →  ·  Graduate outcomes →
2. Say what is actually distinctive: career support is free and open from the first week, experiences are built into the program rather than bolted on, and Chicago is the employer pool. That is a stronger pitch than any single statistic.
3. Student-athletes and students with hard schedule constraints can meet a coach around practice, and the Hub is available at hours our office is not. Schedule is not a reason to skip career support.
4. Incoming transfer students: the Transfer Bridge is open for Fall 2026 and is built for students arriving on a shorter timeline. Transfer Student Hub →

If you supervise a work-study student, a lab assistant, a desk attendant, or a departmental aide, you are their first professional supervisor and most likely their first professional reference. Almost none of them know how to describe the job to an employer, and you are the only person who can tell them.

Four things, none of which require a budget:

1. Name the skill out loud when you see it. “That was good de-escalation” is career development. Students cannot claim a skill in an interview if no one has ever named it for them.
2. Write them a two-line task description they can lift onto a resume. You already know what they do; they will describe it as “worked the front desk.” The gap between those two sentences is worth real money to them.
3. Give one piece of written feedback per semester. Three sentences in an email. It becomes the reference letter you will otherwise have to write from scratch in two years.
4. Tell them explicitly whether you will serve as a reference, and if so, that they should ask. Students assume the answer is no and never ask.

Then point them at the resume guidance so they can translate the work themselves: Resumes and Cover Letters → The toolkit below has a start-of-term note you can send your student employees as-is.

Department-level partnership is where a single conversation reaches every student in a program rather than one section of one course.

1. Name a department liaison. One person who knows what Career Services runs, gets the calendar early, and is our first call when we build something for your students. Become a department liaison →
2. Pull outcomes data for program review and accreditation. First destination, employers, salary ranges, and continuing-education placements, by program. Undergraduate outcomes →  ·  Graduate outcomes →
3. Connect an industry partner from your network. If you know an employer who should be recruiting here, an introduction is worth more than a cold email from us. Introduce a partner →
4. Student chapters are looking for faculty and staff advisors. Find the ones in your discipline on 312. Browse student organizations →
5. Ask for a program-specific session. We will build a pathway session around one major, one cohort, or one graduating class. Request a session →