An Effective Career Ecosystem Task Force

By Monique Frost, Consultant, and Jeremy Podany, Founder & CEO - The Career Leadership Collective

Those who work in higher education are no strangers to being asked to join a committee, working group, or task force. But when it comes to building a career ecosystem, an effective task force can be much more than another group. A career ecosystem task force can be the catalyst that helps an institution move from a collection of career-related efforts to a coordinated, institution-wide strategy.

At the Career Leadership Collective, we have had the privilege of working alongside many task forces as they shape the initial stages of their career ecosystems. Across these experiences, we have seen that the most effective task forces are intentionally designed, aligned to the strategic priority at hand, bring key stakeholders together to create shared ownership, and launch institutional change. Furthermore, at this point in history, we believe they are essential for developing a thriving and lasting career ecosystem. 

A career ecosystem task force is a temporary group, charged by a senior lead, comprising relevant stakeholders from diverse departments, assembled to complete a strategic task. Unlike a standing committee or advisory board, a task force is action-oriented and typically dissolves once its objectives have been achieved.

So, what does an effective career ecosystem task force look like, when is the right time to launch one, and how might it help your cause of building a career ecosystem?

Why is a Task Force Common and Necessary for Building a Career Ecosystem?

Building a career ecosystem is not a quick initiative. It is significant change-management work that requires time, intentionality, and the perspectives of multiple stakeholders across an institution.

A career ecosystem touches academic affairs, student affairs, faculty, advising, employer engagement, institutional leadership, and, most importantly, the student experience. No single office can fully define what career readiness should look like for every student, nor can one individual adequately map how an institution should deliver that experience.

For this reason, a task force is traditionally charged by a Dean, Provost, or President. The charge matters. When institutional leadership establishes the work as a strategic priority, the task force has both the permission and the responsibility to look beyond individual departmental interests and consider what is best for the institution as a whole.

The goal should not be confused with the question, ‘What should Career Services do?’ The more important question is: ‘What does our institution need to build so that every student will receive the career learning they need to succeed?’ The shift from an office-centered mindset to an institution-wide mindset is foundational in forming a career ecosystem.

What Is the Main Purpose of a Career Ecosystem Task Force?

In higher education, a task force launches. It does not sustain. Staff members with primary roles sustain an initiative. A task force creates the foundation, alignment, recommendations, and momentum necessary for an institution to move forward. This distinction is particularly important for career ecosystems. You are building a campus-wide ecosystem, not an office. It is rare for a career leader to have the authority or capacity to build an institution-wide career ecosystem.

However, when a Dean, President, or Provost charges a task force to lay the foundation for a key institutional or academic college initiative, the diverse perspectives around the table can thoughtfully and effectively build what comes next. An effective career ecosystem task force should help an institution:

1. Align career ecosystem efforts around institutional strategy.

2. Define what the institution believes every student should learn about their career development. 

3. Identify the roles various campus stakeholders will play in delivering career learning.

4. Create a strategic roadmap for implementation and accountability.

5. Establish measures of success and determine how progress will be evaluated.

A great task force should help turn an institutional commitment into an actionable strategy. 

Example: Defining Career Learning Outcomes. 

• One recent task force our team worked alongside spent significant time listening to their peers and students, then mapping their campus values and culture to career learning best practices in order to define institution-wide career learning outcomes that worked for their institution. This was not something a career team or any one individual could have accomplished effectively. 

• Faculty brought an academic perspective. Career professionals brought expertise in career development. Student-facing professionals brought insight into the student experience. Institutional leaders brought a broader strategic lens. Together, the group was able to build something that could belong to the institution, rather than simply to one department. That is the power of a task force.

  
  

Defining something as important as the career learning that every student experiences during their collegiate experience requires a multi-stakeholder working group.

What Are Common Career Ecosystem Task Force Structures?

One of the most important design questions is not simply who should participate, but how the work should be structured. There is an inherent tension between two important needs:

• Inclusivity & Breadth: ensuring that a high volume of stakeholders provide valuable perspectives, illuminate blind spots, and have the opportunity to contribute.

• Discernment & Decisions: ensuring a group can make decisions, prioritize recommendations, and move the work forward.

Trying to accomplish both with a single large group can make progress difficult. We recommend two structures that can accomplish both priorities: 

1. A larger task force of 20+ individuals with the primary task of ideation on key steps. This large group is supported by smaller subgroups of 2-3 individuals to make written progress on each step in the defining process. 

2. A small task force of 5-7 individuals with the primary task of leading the key steps in the process and drafting the results of each step into report form. This small group then invites relevant colleagues, as needed, on a specific topic to broaden the ideation process. Example: employers, students, or assessment staff may not need to be involved in the entirety of a task force, but could be invited into 1-2 key ideation discussions relevant to their role. 

These structural options allow an institution to hear many voices without requiring every person to be involved in every decision. 

Example: Developing a Measurement Roadmap.

• Another recent task force sub-group that we facilitated completed an important step in its career ecosystem journey: drafting a full metrics and measurement roadmap for each career learning domain. The initial brainstorming and exploration required a large group because the institution needed a range of perspectives. But the discernment and finalization required a smaller sub-group. That distinction was both helpful and productive. 

An effective task force structure creates space for both inclusive perspectives and productive decision-making. 

When Is the Right Time to Launch a Career Ecosystem Task Force?

Firstly, if you are an individual career leader who likes this approach, your institution or academic college may not yet have considered launching a task force on your career ecosystem, so you may wish to share the task force approach with them to help them quickly assess whether now is the right time. 

Secondly, if you are a senior leader, the right time to launch a career ecosystem task force is usually when the conversation about fragmentation and skepticism regarding your value proposition, ROI, and career readiness is occurring with increasing frequency, and you don’t yet have a quality plan to act. Or, if your institution has named career readiness a priority but has yet to determine what that means in practice or how it will deliver it, a task force can help define the strategy. You are at the beginning of your career ecosystem-building process.

Perhaps you have observed pieces of a career ecosystem built in isolation. Perhaps your institution has a few courses that embed career learning. These are good signs. But at some point, institutions need to step back and ask: Do these pieces add up to a clearly defined career ecosystem that will move the needle? If the answer is unclear, a task force can help bring those pieces together, identify gaps and overlaps, and create greater coherence across the student experience.

What to do next? 

In conclusion, building a career ecosystem requires more than assembling a group of people and placing a meeting on the calendar. It requires a clear institutional charge, senior-level commitment, diverse perspectives, thoughtful structures for engagement and discernment, and a defined path from recommendations to implementation. The goal is not to create another permanent committee. The goal is to launch something that the institution can sustain. A strong task force helps an institution move from fragmented efforts to shared strategy, from individual ownership to collective responsibility, and from an aspiration to a defined and effective career ecosystem.

Is the timing right to launch your career ecosystem task force? The career ecosystem era is taking higher education by storm. What is holding you back from getting started in this transformative work? 

Happy innovating on your career ecosystem task force! 

Let’s stay in touch! Would an outside expert facilitator who can guide your task force and save you time, effort, and resources be helpful? We’d love to walk alongside you in the process. 

Monique Frost

Consultant

Monique Frost is a consultant and facilitator with The Collective. She brings over a decade of professional experience in higher education, including roles in Career Services, Residence Life, Student Orientation, and Student Counseling. Monique values learning, growth, and development, and seeks partnerships to assist constituents in achieving excellence. Her focus is on contributing to the success and growth of institutions, teams, and individuals.

Jeremy Podany

Founder and CEO of The Career Leadership Collective

Jeremy is the Founder and CEO of The Career Leadership Collective, a consultancy that has done business with over 1,100 colleges and universities since 2017 on the systemic career development needs of higher education. Jeremy is the author of the 2025 book The Career Ecosystem Era in Higher Education. The Collective is the inventor of the National Alumni Career Mobility (NACM) survey and the EMBARK first destination data service, which were both acquired by Lightcast in 2023.

Jeremy enjoyed nearly 20 years working in higher education, primarily in career services. His inventions and consulting solutions have systemically helped thousands of university leaders and hundreds of thousands of college students with career education and career mobility.