Three steps to introduce transfer students to career services

Students who engage with their campus career services are more likely to secure internships and graduate employment, and they report greater confidence in their career readiness, according to research. Yet most students don’t use them.

Institutions have responded by developing first-year experience courses that introduce campus resources and normalise help-seeking behaviours. These classes provide structured entry points that build familiarity and confidence.

But transfer students often don’t benefit from these introductions. Arriving midway through their undergraduate studies, they are expected to navigate complex institutional systems with fewer structured opportunities to connect with campus services.

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Transfer students operate on compressed timelines, with less freedom to explore options and less flexibility to recover from missteps. Many students report feeling overwhelmed by their new environment and uncertain about how to engage with available support services. While most transfer students recognise the importance of internships and career preparation, their participation in career fairs and related programming remains consistently low.

We surveyed transfer students to better understand why they were not using career centre services. Their responses were consistent. Many described the career centre as intimidating. Others were unsure what to expect or worried that it was either too early or too late to seek services. Several students pointed out a more basic barrier: they did not want to go alone.

In response, we developed Transfer Transitions, a one-credit course for incoming transfer students that integrates career development and campus resources into the curriculum. The course is built on a simple premise: if institutions want students to use high-impact services, those services must be incorporated into structured academic experiences rather than relying on students to seek them out independently.

The course design emphasises three elements:

1. Connection: Integrate social exchanges into academic assignments.
2. Career: Embed career centre services into course-required tasks.
3. Capstone: Develop a culminating project that supports reflection on and articulation of career-ready competencies.

Connection

Transfer students often struggle to develop peer networks upon arrival. We address this issue in Transfer Transitions by structuring regular, low-stakes collaborative activities that require discussion and reflection. They are intentionally designed to surface common aspects of the transfer experience and foster early rapport.

In an early icebreaker assignment, students are paired and asked to create fun, AI-generated images of their partners as their favourite animal, depicted in a setting aligned with their partner’s future academic and workforce goals. The activity is intentionally creative but structured, prompting students to discuss prior experiences, academic goals and career aspirations. Further, focusing on students’ sense of identity builds belonging. As students identify the traits of the animal they select for their image, they also reflect on their strengths. Strength and asset-based reflection build confidence and reinforce persistence.

Finally, partners introduce each other to the class through their AI designs. As coyotes in courtrooms, bears in boardrooms and lions in laboratories appear, so too does a foundation for peer engagement that carries throughout the course. By the end of the assignment, students are more comfortable participating, asking questions and supporting one another. Additionally, they gain presentation and public speaking skills, reinforcing soft skills necessary for future employment.

Career

Reducing barriers to career centre engagement begins with exposure. The Transfer Transitions course includes a dedicated class session held within the career centre, developed in partnership with professional staff. This “field trip” session introduces available services and provides opportunities for direct interaction with career advisers.

Capitalising on this experience, many course assignments require the use of career centre resources. For example, students are given a résumé development task that involves using the centre’s digital feedback tool. Students must submit both initial and revised versions and draft a reflection statement about the document’s improvement. Embedding these requirements into the curriculum shifts career centre engagement from optional to integrated.

This approach normalises the use of career services while ensuring that students leave with career-relevant materials, preparing them for the future job market. It also reduces ambiguity about career centre services, including where to begin and what to expect, two common barriers identified by transfer students.

Capstone

The course culminates in a capstone project designed to help students articulate their career-ready competencies. Recognising that many students struggle to translate their experiences into clear narratives for employers, the assignment focuses on applied reflection and demonstration.

For example, the capstone project in Transfer Transitions requires students to develop personal websites that showcase their skills through curated artefacts and examples. Throughout the course, instruction is aligned with the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) competencies, and students are required to select at least three competencies to highlight. For each, they provide evidence of development drawn from coursework, prior experiences or co-curricular activities.

Because course assignments are intentionally scaffolded, many feed directly into the final project. This design helps students to connect classroom activities to broader career goals, while producing a tangible product they can use beyond the course.

Students’ reflection journey

During the final weeks of the course, we surveyed students to gain a clearer picture of the class’ impact. Via a series of five short questions, we set out to understand whether the inevitable interactions with the career centre affected their use of the services. The results were both affirming and encouraging.

When asked to name any barriers or challenges to using the career centre before taking Transfer Transitions, students noted that they had not fully understood its value. Many reported experiencing impostor syndrome, being overwhelmed by too much information at orientation or feeling like they needed previous experience or connections to pursue an internship or join a club e-board.

After completing the course, most students expressed their intention to continue using the career centre’s services. Some of the most common tasks they intended to use included interview preparation, résumé assistance and feedback for job opportunities and/or graduate school applications.

Perhaps one of the most powerful takeaways from the survey was learning that most students would not have used the career centre services had they not been required to do so as part of the Transfer Transitions course. This reaffirms earlier feedback and demonstrates the success of the intervention.

This compilation of students’ experiences provides first-hand insight into the effectiveness of structured course-career centre collaboration. We observed the evolution of students’ attitudes towards participation in career services and collected authentic feedback that will ultimately help us to better support students in the future.

Future considerations

Transfer Transitions is an elective course, so it serves a small number of students within an ever-growing group each year. However, it’s easy to replicate.

We invite faculty to consider embedding opportunities in their courses for students to interact with peers, connect to NACE skills, reflect on and articulate the competencies gained. These small steps go a long way towards helping transfer students not just survive – but thrive – during their transition.

Roxanna M. Ruiz-Vázquez is academic adviser, and Adrienne L. Provost is assistant dean at College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, both at the University of Florida.

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