What University Personnel Should Know: Students\u27 Career Confidence, Help-Seeking Stigmas, and Perceptions of College Career Centers

Career center professionals face many challenges in providing services to undergraduate students. For example, students may be unaware of offered services (Garner, Rintz, & Valle, 2 20 I I) and therefore underutilize available career center resources. This is a problem because today\u27s society places high value on developing the skills necessary to be successful in employment (Garver, Spralls, & Divine, 2009). Perceived stigma related to seeking career help (Ludwikowski, Vogel, & Armstrong, 2009), low career decision self-efficacy (O\u27Brien, 2003), and other barriers (Shivy & Koehly, 2002) can prevent students from seeking career services. Two studies were conducted which focused on evaluating student perceptions of career center services. The first study was a survey study evaluating students\u27 awareness and use of career center services, stigma related to career counseling, and career decision self-efficacy. The second study involved assessing students\u27 evaluations of individual career center counseling and workshops. The results showed that women and upper division students reported more awareness and use of career center services than did men and first-year students. Gender and year in school, however, were not associated with differences in more general perceptions of career counseling (e.g., stigma, value). Students who attended career center events reported high levels of satisfaction, enhancement of self-efficacy, and intention to use career services in the future