Career Center shoots for greater competitiveness

Trudy Van Zee was named as the Career Center’s new executive director, effective Nov. 1.

She hails from Accenture, a multinational management consulting company and the world’s largest consulting firm by revenue, as well as TPO, a human resources outsourcing firm based in Washington, D.C.

“I went from Accenture, a huge global consulting firm, to a small boutique consulting agency in the D.C. market, where I was brought in to build a strategy practice which had not existed,” Van Zee said. “TPO is a small consulting [firm] with a legacy around doing outreach or outsourcing, but they wanted to meet the demands of their clients and build strategic programs, so I was brought in to do just that. It also gave me an opportunity to be entrepreneurial.”

Van Zee plans on making the Career Center pivotal to helping students become more prepared and competitive in the market, particularly as colleges around the nation refine their career and preparatory services for their students.

“We have to equip them in different ways than we have in the past, because other universities are doing that,” Van Zee said. “We have to make sure that we build a profile on our students, so we can be distinguished as the market of choice in the marketplace.”

Van Zee hopes to improve the Career Center and aims to make students more competitive in the job market, drawing inspiration from comparable universities.

“The spotlight has never been as bright on career services across the nation as demand for transparency on the return on investment continues to intensify,” Van Zee said. “So we have a real opportunity to rethink and provide, and while the job market for college graduates is improving, there remain some challenges.”

Career preparation consists of priming students for a work environment that will exceed the current level of academic rigor they are experiencing; most of this preparation cannot be learned inside a classroom, according to Van Zee. She explained that employers are becoming more vocal about their requirements for market-ready skills.

“I am planning on improving on what we have today,” Van Zee said. “I believe that career centers across the nation are going through a similar exercise and challenge to become more and more relevant to the students, because the world has changed, and we have to make sure our students are competitive with others. It’s more challenging to meet the demands with the student supply with just their academic preparation.”

Although market demands require specific sets of skills for specific jobs, Van Zee said that she wants to provide students with skills that extend beyond their first post-graduation employment opportunities.

“I do want to close that gap between what employers seek and what graduates come equipped with, with enduring capabilities, so that we build in our students that set of skills that will last beyond [their] first destination, and I think that what [those capabilities] will do is position our students in their first employment opportunity at an advantage,” Van Zee said. “I think it will propel them, if they are more prepared — more ready — than their counterparts.” She intends to incorporate the strategy and architecture from her previous career at Accenture into the Career Center at Hopkins for greater innovation and global outreach.

“[At Accenture,] I designed and implemented a number of large global people solutions, many of them related to careers — career development models, competency models, performance managing systems [and] on boarding alumni,” she said.

Of all her roles and responsibilities, Van Zee has enjoyed working with students the most, citing their vivacity and drive as sources of inspiration.

“I’ve been very impressed with what they’ve been able to do in a short period of time,” Van Zee said. “The students are truly remarkable and unbelievably bright, unbelievably hard-working and unbelievably capable, and our job is to get them unbelievably ready for their careers. This is once in a career opportunity to come into a world-class setting to make a huge difference — and what is more exciting than to make a difference in students’ lives?”

Van Zee also plans to implement other major changes, including changing the layout of the Career Center.

“We’re going to look fairly different than we do today because we do want to provide our students with that readiness, which means we’re going to look at how we deliver our services differently,” Van Zee said. “We need to scale, we need to become experienced.”

She emphasized the importance of having an inclusive center that caters to all majors and students, regardless of career and post-graduation plans.

“In order to do that, we need to think differently in how to deliver services, and we’ll have to leverage technology,” Van Zee said. “We need to leverage our local community in a better way than we have today.”

She also stressed the connection that alumni networks provide.

“We’re going to position our alumni [on] what we do and how we deliver, because they are so engaged in the topic of career services, and they are so valuable,” she said.

Van Zee is excited about giving improved services to students.

“We have tremendous opportunities right here on our campus and beyond into the community that we can leverage to create more and more experiences for our students throughout their four years,” Van Zee said.