Why Your Employer Partnerships Are Carrying More Weight Than Ever

Session Overview

Institutions are operating in a more complex employer engagement environment than ever before.

Employers still want access to students and early talent. Students still want meaningful opportunities. Institutions still want career outcomes that demonstrate relevance and value.

But the work of connecting these pieces is becoming more strategic, more visible, and more important to the influence of campus career leaders.

The challenge is that many employer partnerships are still built around activities: events, postings, panels, information sessions, interviews, and recruitment cycles. These activities matter, but they do not always create the deeper systems-level conversations employers need to have about how early talent is developed, supported, retained, and advanced once hired.

That gap creates an opportunity for campus career leaders.

When employers struggle to retain early-career talent, build clear career pathways, or connect learning to workforce needs, campus partners can play a more strategic advisory role. But doing so requires a shared language and a systems-level lens for understanding why career development efforts often fail to scale.

In 2025, Challenge Factory partnered with CACEE, with the support of CERIC, to examine this persistent challenge. The result was the development of the Career Development as Strategy Playbook and the Career Infrastructure Bootcamp, designed to help employers shift from program-based approaches toward building internal career centres that function as part of everyday workforce and business planning.

Together, the Playbook and Bootcamp lay the foundation for organizations to implement a made-for-this-moment Career Infrastructure Operating System™ (CIOS). This proprietary framework reframes career development as an integrated, enterprise-wide system rather than a disconnected set of programs or activities.

Through a CIOS lens, campus career leaders can better understand the structural conditions that determine whether career development can scale, and how those conditions influence employer partnerships, student outcomes, and regional talent ecosystems.

In this webinar, participants will:

• Examine why program-based career development efforts often fall short inside organizations
• Learn how the CIOS framework helps diagnose structural barriers to sustainable career development
• Explore how the Career Development as Strategy Playbook can support stronger, more strategic conversations with employers
• Consider how campus career leaders can move from delivering employer engagement activities to influencing the systems that make career development possible

Date, Time, and Logistics

Thursday, June 25th, 2026
12:00 - 1:00 pm Eastern
via Zoom

Each participant will receive a confirmation e-mail with the link to join the session via Zoom upon registration and again in a reminder e-mail 24 hrs leading up to the event. There is no cost for both members and non-members to participate in this session. Registered participants should also note that there contact information will also be shared with Challenge Factory, with which CACEE is partnering, for this session.

Who Should Attend?

This session is designed for campus career leaders who want to strengthen employer partnerships, increase their influence across campus, and position their institutions as strategic contributors to the future of early talent development.

Questions?

Please do not hesitate to reach out at events@cacee.com with any questions, to speak further about this session, or for additional details about CACEE's partnership with Challenge Factory.