You’re Probably Collecting More Career Outcomes Data Than You Think

Around every graduation, Career Services staff send out a survey asking recent graduates where they landed.

It’s the tool most institutions reach for first, and often the only one they think of.

But here’s something we’ve noticed after working with colleges and universities across the country: the survey is rarely the only place career outcomes data exists on campus. It’s usually just the only place someone is looking for it.

Career outcomes data often already exists because someone else needed it for an entirely different reason. A department isn’t tracking internship placements to help Career Services. They’re tracking them because they have to verify hours, confirm site quality, or meet accreditation requirements. A certification office isn’t asking where a graduate is teaching out of curiosity. They need it for state reporting and program evaluation.

In many cases, some of the information you’re looking for is already being collected. It’s just being collected by someone else, for someone else’s purpose.

That reframes the real challenge. It isn’t collecting new data. It’s discovering who on campus already has it, and building a relationship that lets you use it too.

We recently saw this with two institutions. At one, the career outcomes survey produced a 38.5% response rate. LinkedIn research added outcomes for another 21.7% of graduates, and departmental data and National Student Clearinghouse information added another 11.2%. At another institution, the survey produced a 23.7% response rate, while LinkedIn added another 25.5% and VMCAS added another 2.7%.

The sources were different, but the pattern was the same: the survey was only one part of the picture.

Why a More Complete Picture Matters

Of course, the goal isn’t simply to collect more data from more places.

Career outcomes data is valuable because people use it to make decisions. Students and families want a clearer picture of where different degrees can lead. Faculty and administrators want to understand what graduates actually do after leaving campus. Career Services professionals need that same information to help students explore their options and make more informed choices.

The challenge is that no single source is likely to tell the whole story. A survey may reach some graduates. LinkedIn may help identify others. Departments, graduate school records, certification offices, and other campus systems may each fill in another part of the picture.

Bringing those sources together gives you a more complete view of what happens after graduation. That matters because an incomplete picture can leave out experiences and pathways that would be useful to the people relying on the data.

That’s why looking beyond the survey is worthwhile. The objective isn’t to collect data for the sake of having more data. It’s to build a reliable enough picture of graduate outcomes that people can use it with greater confidence.

Two Kinds of Data Worth Looking For

The experience students had before they graduated. Internships, co-ops, clinical rotations, student teaching, field placements, service learning, study abroad, undergraduate research. This data doesn’t answer “where did they go,” but it adds real depth to an outcomes report. It shows that a degree wasn’t just coursework. It shows students were building experience long before commencement, which matters to prospective students, parents, and accreditors alike.

Where students actually landed after graduation. This is the data closer to what a destination survey is trying to capture, but sourced from somewhere other than the graduate answering an email.

Sources Worth Checking

Before graduation:

Career Services usage data. Who came in for advising, resume review, or mock interviews, and did that connect to their eventual outcome?
Department and college records on internships, co-ops, practicums, clinical rotations, and student teaching.
Field placement management system exports (platforms like Tevera, EXXAT, or InPlace). If a program uses one of these to track clinical or field placements, the outcome data is often already structured and exportable.
Service learning, study abroad, and undergraduate research participation records.

After graduation:

StudentTracker reports from the National Student Clearinghouse, often already pulled by your Registrar or Institutional Research office for other purposes.
Registrar reports identifying recent graduates who enrolled in a graduate or professional program at your own institution.
Departmental or college graduation surveys, which sometimes ask outcome questions independently of the central career outcomes survey.
Graduate and professional school application portals. If your institution has strong pre-health, pre-vet, or pre-law populations, portals like AMCAS, PTCAS, CASPA, or VMCAS may already show where students applied and were accepted.
Offices of Educator Preparation or Certification. Colleges of Education often have a certification office that helps students apply for licensure, complete state requirements, and pass required exams. Because certification and program approval depend on knowing where teachers end up working, these offices frequently already track that information for accreditation purposes. It’s rarely built for Career Services, but it’s often exactly what Career Services needs.

Getting the Data Shared With You

Knowing a source exists is one thing. Getting access to it is another, and the offices holding this data aren’t being difficult, they’re just focused on their own responsibilities.

The offices most likely to say yes are usually the ones where sharing the data helps them too. A certification office wants to demonstrate its graduates are getting placed. A department wants to show its internship program is producing real outcomes. Framing the conversation around what they get out of it, not just what you need, tends to go a lot further than a formal data request.

It’s often easiest to start with the office most likely to say yes, build that relationship, and let word travel from there. One successful partnership on campus tends to make the next conversation easier.

A Question Worth Asking

The next time you’re talking with a colleague in another office, try asking:

“What information does your office already collect that might tell us something about where students go after graduation, or the real-world experiences they completed before graduating?”

You may be surprised how often the answer is “actually, we do have that.”

Many of the ideas discussed here are things the COutcomes platform is built to help pull together. If you’re trying to map out where your own institution’s data might already live, we’d be glad to share what we’ve learned.

About the Author

Mark Fischer is the founder of COutcomes. For more than two decades, he has worked with colleges and universities to improve career outcomes reporting by increasing response rates, identifying additional sources of outcomes data, simplifying data collection, and helping institutions communicate the success of their graduates.