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November is Canada Career Month, which makes it a natural time to make the case for the work. Demonstrating value involves two related tasks: gathering evidence that career services make a difference, and communicating that evidence in terms the audience actually cares about – a funder, an employer, a government department or an institutional leadership team. The Canadian and international resources below cover both, and all have been published or updated within the past few years. This is not a comprehensive list, so tell us in the comments which resources you rely on.
5 Ways to Measure Career Center Effectiveness (Career Everywhere Podcast) [Podcast]
Career services leaders often report on appointment counts, event attendance and employment rates six months after graduation. In this 2025 episode, consultant and former career services director Rebekah Paré argues that effectiveness has to be defined through the eyes of each stakeholder group, since students, faculty, employers and senior administrators all judge success differently. She walks through five areas to measure instead, including equitable access, academic integration and whether colleagues outside the office can articulate what the centre does.
Economic value (Career Development Institute) [Research directory]
The UK’s professional body for career development maintains a research directory, and this page gathers the evidence connecting career guidance to economic outcomes. It is a curated summary rather than a single study, pulling together qualitative arguments about labour market function alongside quantitative return-on-investment estimates. Among the figures: international evidence puts the return on career guidance at 2.5:1 in schools and 3.2:1 for unemployed adults. Last updated in June 2025.
Good Career Guidance: The Next 10 Years (The Gatsby Charitable Foundation) [Report]
Ten years after introducing the eight Gatsby Benchmarks, Gatsby revisited the framework through two years of consultation, a literature review and analysis of public data. The resulting report is worth reading less for the benchmarks themselves than for how thoroughly it documents their impact, including the link between higher benchmark achievement and fewer young people not in education, employment or training at ages 16 and 18. It also cites research suggesting government recoups at least £3 for every £1 invested in personal guidance.
Hidden Sector, Hidden Talent: Mapping Canada’s Career Development Sector (CERIC) [Report]
Produced by Challenge Factory in partnership with the Canadian Career Development Foundation, this CERIC-funded study set out to establish who does career development work in Canada and where, on the premise that the sector has been largely invisible to the public, policy-makers and employers. It builds an evidence base for the socioeconomic impact of the field and closes with 62 recommendations. If you need Canadian numbers to describe the scale of the sector you work in, start here.
Investing in Career Guidance (Interagency Working Group on Career Guidance) [Joint statement]
Seven international agencies – Cedefop, the European Commission, the European Training Foundation, the International Labour Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, UNESCO and the World Bank – put their names to this 40-page statement on why governments should fund career guidance. Released during Global Careers Month in November 2025, it covers the benefits of guidance, what quality provision looks like and how systems should be organized. The weight of the signatories is the point: it is hard to argue the field is a nice-to-have when these organizations jointly say otherwise.
Lessons for career guidance from return-on-investment analyses in complex education-related fields (British Journal of Guidance & Counselling) [Journal article]
Return on investment has become part of the policy toolkit, but little had been written about how it is applied in career guidance specifically. This systematic review examines 32 ROI studies across nine countries, spanning school-based guidance, adult guidance, widening participation in education and behaviour in schools. Useful if you are being asked for an ROI figure and want to understand what these calculations can and cannot credibly show before you produce one.
Meet the Moment: Essential Value of Career Development in Uncertain Times (CERIC) [Tip sheet]
This messaging guide gives career professionals shared language for explaining their value during economic disruption, positioning the field as both first responders to career crises and long-term partners in building workforce capacity. It sets out seven key message areas that frame career development as a personal investment and a public good. CERIC suggests using it in conversations with elected officials, in funding proposals and as a starting point for team discussions about how you describe your own work.
PRIME (Canadian Career Development Foundation) [Tool]
PRIME is an employability assessment and client data tool that lets practitioners record where someone starts, track progress across career development dimensions and indicators, and generate evidence of change over time. It was designed to capture the kinds of progress that standard funder reporting misses, such as confidence, resilience and job readiness, so services are not judged on employment numbers alone. Of everything on this list, it is the one that changes what you do on Monday rather than what you say in a presentation.
