Shaping the future: Adapting career services for Generation Z and Alpha

A new staff week for the CIVIS community, Shaping the Future: Adapting Career Services for Generation Z and Alpha, invites participants to explore innovative strategies for meeting students' evolving needs and preparing them for the future job market.

The younger generations – Generation Z and Generation Alpha – tend to have different values and expectations than previous generations. This is reinforced by the increasing use of AI. The labor market is not used to this. The services and support options offered by career centers at universities must therefore change in order to meet students in the best possible way on the one hand and to bring the job market into line with students‘ new expectations on the other. 

At the moment, career centers work according to the supply and demand of the job market. The focus is still on the classic specialist career. Universities currently have no strategy to serve students outside of the classic mass subjects (e.g. law studies, business studies). Career centers should offer students the space to combine their personal and professional experiences into a well-founded profile so that they can meet the demands of the 21st century, e.g. for self-organization in teams, and find the necessary sense of purpose in their choice of career fields.

Main topics addressed

The training week aims to explore how career services can better support students' changing needs, develop strategies for adapting to the evolving labor market, and foster an environment that prepares students for the future. By coming together, participants can: 

• Share insights
• Identify key challenges
• Develop actionable solutions to enhance the effectiveness of career services.

Learning outcomes

• Understanding of challenges of the younger generations in a radically changing work of world: Generation Z and Generation Alpha do have different values and expectations than previous generations. The labor market is not used to this. 
• Explore the need for adaptation of the services and support options offered by career centers in order to meet students in the best possible way. Career centers should offer students the space to combine their personal and professional experiences into a well-founded profile so that they can meet the demands of the 21st century, e.g. for self-organization in teams, and find the necessary sense of purpose in their choice of career fields. 
• Knowledge transfer and quality assurance: The exchange harmonizes the perspectives and experiences of the career services in their actual fields of action. 
• Networking and strategy: Space to explore common fields of action and for joint strategy development. 
• Best practices: Career service staff learn about best practices and innovative approaches from other universities and can integrate these into their own institution. 
• Input for strategic alignment of career services in the universities of the participating Career Services employees. 
• A common understanding of the changing challenges for Universities and Career Services in the world of work 
• Identification of fields of action and ideas for universities to meet these challenges 
• Starting points for exchanging and coordinating activities