Clemson Center for Career and Professional Development

Career Development & Recruiting

Student Survey: The Most Used Job-Search Resources

Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals
September 17, 2014


When researching potential employers, students most often use employer websites and the input of friends and family to gain information and insight, according to results of NACE’s 2014 Student Survey.

Nearly 97 percent of graduating seniors from the Class of 2014 used employer websites as job-search resources, while more than 80 percent consulted friends (88.3 percent) and family (84.6 percent). (See Figure 1.)

Beyond these resources, graduating seniors from the Class of 2014 also regularly turned to career fairs (83.2 percent) and faculty (80.1 percent).


NACE collected data for the 2014 Student Survey from February 15 to April 30, 2014. A total of 43,864 students responded from 696 NACE-member institutions throughout the United States. Of these responses, 10,210 came from bachelor's degree seniors who indicated that they would be getting their degrees by August 2014. This story is based on the responses from this group of seniors. The executive summary of the 2014 Student Survey is available at www.naceweb.org/surveys/student.aspx. The 2014 Student Survey was sponsored by Enterprise.