Samenvatting

This professional product is created for Saxion Career Services, as a supporting service of Saxion University. The client is looking for ways to enhance communication towards students and a way to put their wishes and needs into practice.
 
Saxion Career Services is a supporting service of Saxion University, where students can join activities which support their career path. Workshops that are offered include but are not limited to resume writing, intercultural sensitivity and how to start your own business. Other activities are networking events with professionals from the field and a career café where students can engage with Saxion Alumni. The team of Saxion Career Services has started a few years ago and is built up from various other departments within Saxion, such as International Office, Businesspoint, student deans, an HBS teacher, study career counsellor and a student psychologist. Since starting Saxion Career Services, no valid research has been done to surface the actual wishes and needs of students in regards to how they would like to receive the support, and whether or not students are even aware of the fact that the service exists. Moveover, Career Services wants to grow and learn from the way other universities tackle the support of students in regards to career development. 
 
This document provides Career Services with ways on how to develop in order to provide students with the intended support. The information is gathered for Career Services by means of asking the following management question ‘How can Saxion Career Services successfully fill in the wishes and needs of her students in regard to study support?’. The answer is collected by several analyses, amongst which are a trend analysis, target group analysis, best practise analysis and an analysis amongst the students for their actual wishes and needs regarding study support. The research questions that are formulated to obtain the needed input are”: "What are trends and developments regarding education and career development?” “What are characteristics of university students who could wish to make use of career support?” “How do other universities offer career support to their students?” and “In what way do university students wish to make use of career support at Saxion?”.
 
The answers to these research questions are gathered by the means of several research methods. The main research method is a case study, focused on the specific case of Career Services at Saxion University. Data regarding the best practice analysis as well as the wishes and needs research is gathered by using the stages of the customer journey as a research model. These stages focus on the entire journey a customer goes through when purchasing an item, or in this case, the stages a student goes through when participating in activities of Career Services. For the best practice analyses a selection of universities is analysed by the means of document analysis and thus qualitative research. The data of the wishes and needs of the students is gathered through quantitative research by the means of an online survey. A total of 224 students have participated in the survey, coming from all 12 academies as well as the Saxion Part-time school. No students were excluded from participating in the survey, for the best total overview. 
The analysis of the research’s findings show that the current target group mainly consists of Generation-Z students, divided between Dutch and International students. The job market moves to a skill-based market, according to the trend analysis. Besides that, interactive learning creates a more dynamic learning environment. Generation Z learned to believe what influencers share through social media platforms, over using encyclopaedias. 
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