Your school has a resource that could materially change your career outcomes. Most students know it exists. Most never use it.
According to the 2026 State of Higher Ed Report, 84.3% of students are aware that their school offers career services. Only 38.8% have ever used them. That means roughly three in five students who know their career services office exists have never walked through the door.
If you're in the 61%, it's not because you're disengaged or unprepared. It's because nobody has made the case, in specific terms, for why career services is worth your time right now.
The gap between knowing career services exists and actually using it comes down to a few predictable reasons, and understanding them makes the decision to go easier.
Here's exactly what to ask for when you walk in. You don't need a specific job in mind. You don't need a finished resume. You just need to show up.
"I'd like to explore what career paths are realistic for someone with my major and interests": This opens a career exploration conversation, which is the most valuable service career services offers students early in their academic journey. A good career services advisor will help you understand what professionals in various fields actually do, what preparation is most relevant, and what you should be doing now to position yourself for the options you're most interested in.
"I want to understand what skills I'm already developing and how to describe them professionally": This opens the skills coaching conversation. Ask your advisor to help you look at your coursework, work experience, and co-curricular activities through a competency lens. What are you actually building? How would an employer describe those capabilities? What's missing that you could add?
"What internship or experience pathways exist for students in my field?": This accesses the employer relationship knowledge that career services advisors have and that job boards don't reflect. Advisors know which employers recruit on campus, which have historically hired students from your program, and which non-traditional experience pathways (research, project-based work, micro-internships) are available.
"Can I do a mock interview in my field?": This accesses practice that is genuinely hard to replicate on your own. A mock interview with a career services professional who knows what questions are common in your target field and can give calibrated feedback on your responses is more useful than any amount of self-preparation.
The research is clear and the career services advisors will tell you the same thing: the answer is earlier than you think.
The students who extract the most value from career services are the ones who engage in their first or second year, return regularly as their interests develop, and use the relationship to build sustained professional direction. By the time those students reach senior year, they have a clear professional narrative, employer connections, and experience that positions them strongly.
The students who wait until senior year are starting from scratch in the most compressed period of their academic career. They're trying to develop in four months what their peers developed over four years.
The practical minimum: visit career services at least once before your junior year. Once before your senior year is better than never, but it's not optimal. The earlier you start building the professional direction that career services can support, the more time you have to act on what you learn.
The outcomes data on early career services engagement is meaningful. Students who engage with career services (particularly those who complete internships facilitated through institutional connections) report substantially stronger career readiness than those who don't.
According to the 2026 State of Higher Ed Report, 94% of students who completed an internship say it prepared them for their career. Institutional career services is one of the primary pathways to internship access for the students who don't have professional networks that surface opportunities directly.
The students who found internships without institutional help (the 51% who navigated that process independently) often had professional networks, geographic access, or prior work experience that provided a different kind of pipeline. Students without those advantages are more dependent on what their institution can provide, and career services is the institutional resource specifically designed to close that gap.
You can treat it like an advising appointment: you have a topic (your career development) and they have expertise. You don't need to have the right questions prepared or know the vocabulary. You can start by saying what you're studying and where you are in your academic journey, and a good advisor will take it from there. Career services staff work with students at all stages of professional development, including students with very little professional context.
This happens. Career services quality varies significantly across institutions. If your school's career services isn't providing substantive value, the alternatives are co-curricular programs that develop professional competencies, alumni networks, and faculty mentors who can provide professional guidance. These can supplement or substitute for weak institutional career services.
Alone is fine. If you have a friend in a similar major or career interest who also hasn't engaged with career services, going together can reduce the threshold for both of you. But don't wait for a companion if you're ready to go; the conversation is more useful than the company.
LinkedIn can surface job listings and basic networking contacts. Career services provides personalized advising, skills assessment, institutional employer relationships, interview preparation, and the kind of professional guidance that requires human interaction. Think of it as the difference between a job listing board and a career counselor; the information is different in kind, not just in format.
Three in five students who know career services exists have never used it. The most common reason isn't that they tried and found it useless; it's that they never went.
You don't need a specific job in mind. You don't need a finished resume. You just need to go, ask the questions above, and start building something.
For the full data on career readiness, career services utilization, and what positions students for success, read the 2026 State of Higher Ed Report.