Senior Associate Director, Graduate Student Career Development

The Senior Associate Director develops and implements a sustainable and comprehensive career support system for Princeton graduate students in all fields and disciplines. Reporting to the Executive Director, this person leads a team of Graduate Student Career Development professionals (one full FTE, one partial FTE, and multiple stakeholders throughout the department) to develop a vision and strategy, and design, implement, and evaluate timely and relevant career development resources and opportunities to support the career success of all graduate students throughout their training. The Senior Associate Director is a seasoned career development leader with specific expertise in working with doctoral students. The person in this role works closely with the Center for Career Development team and key stakeholders within and outside the campus community to empower graduate students to explore career options, develop decision-making skills, and position themselves for success in jobs inside and outside academia. In addition, this role serves on the senior leadership team at the Center for Career Development, and participates in creating strategy for the entire department.

This role will be in-person in the Center for Career Development offices.

For full considertion, please include a resume and cover letter.

Leadership of Graduate Student Career Advising and Programming

• Develop and implement a vision and strategies to empower all Princeton graduate students to explore, design, and pursue personally meaningful careers inside and outside academia.
• Provide personalized one-on-one career advising for graduate students.
• Design and implement programming tailored to meet the needs of graduate students at all stages of career development.
• Provide leadership in advising international graduate students on job search and employment issues specific to international job seekers.
• Identify and connect students with relevant employers and programs, and train and inform advising team and employer engagement team to build their knowledge.
• In collaboration with senior departmental leadership, determine annual and ongoing priorities for graduate student career development to meet the emerging career needs of graduate students.
• Collaborate effectively and build strong relationships with teams within the Center for Career Development to integrate graduate students into Center’s services and programs to ensure graduate students have access to relevant and timely career development support.
• Identify, monitor, and communicate career trends and best practices that impact graduate students to build departmental knowledge and capacity.
• Provide leadership in creating tailored career development support for under-served graduate student populations (e.g., first-gen graduate students, international graduate students, BIPOC graduate students, and graduate students from the LGBTQIA+ community) to make career development more accessible to all graduate students.

Management and administration

• Provide management, ongoing professional development, and supervision of one or more professional staff members dedicated to serving the needs of graduate students. Manage by influence teams across the department to meet strategic goals. Build a motivating and supportive work environment, which recognizes and nurtures the diversity of people and ideas.
• Serve as member of the Center for Career Development leadership team and collaborate on team-wide initiatives.
• Select, train, evaluate, and supervise a grad student fellow, as needed.
• Identify, monitor, and communicate major recruiting and employment trends within both the academic and nonacademic job market that impact graduate students.
• Collaborate with communications team to create and implement effective marketing strategies to publicize opportunities and programs to graduate students.
• Contribute to ongoing office assessment efforts, data compilation and analysis to identify and report graduate student learning outcomes.

Collaborative Relationship Development

• Build constituent relationships across campus with a focus on graduate faculty and departmental staff, colleagues across campus, and graduate student groups and centers on campus serving graduate students.
• Participate in committees and task forces designed to improve the quality of service to graduate students.
• Build relationships with employer representatives in industries of interest to graduate students (in collaboration with the Employer Engagement team) to encourage their participation in the recruiting program, and advise them in establishing effective recruiting procedures as part of job development and program participation.
• Interact with individuals at peer institutions, conducting periodic benchmarking to ensure implementation of the best practices in career advising related to graduate student programs.
• Represent Princeton University and its Center for Career Development at professional conferences. Engage in professional and regional association activities (NACE, EACE, and the Graduate Career Consortium).

• Master’s Degree required; PhD preferred
• Five or more years of progressive experience in career counseling/advising and program development, preferably in a higher education setting
• Experience advising graduate students and working within a student-focused and student responsive environment
• Knowledge of best practices and theoretical underpinnings within career development, and the ability to tailor, adapt and evolve such practices to a complex and fast-paced organization
• Ability to implement a developmental, goal-oriented, and motivational approach to advising graduate students
• Strong communication skills and demonstrated skills in managing through influence
• Ability to establish, measure, report, and present learning outcomes
• Demonstrated commitment to the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in all interactions with all constituents and stakeholders
• Excellent interpersonal skills, and ability to build effective relationships
• MBTI and Clifton Strengths certified, preferred
• Ability to solve problems and make decisions in a timely and effective manner
• Ability to manage changing technologies, social media, and communications

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

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