Best questions for student survey about career services

Here are some of the best questions for a student survey about career services—with tips on crafting them for better insights. If you want to quickly build your own, you can generate a student career services survey in seconds using Specific’s AI survey builder.

The best open-ended questions for student survey about career services

Open-ended questions give students space to explain what’s really working, what isn’t, and what could improve. They’re perfect for revealing real stories, motivations, and unmet needs—stuff you’d miss if you only asked multiple choice. In fact, research shows that open-ended questions yield valuable qualitative data: one study found that 93.5% of students gave detailed answers to open-ended prompts about their learning experiences. This demonstrates just how much nuance and depth these questions capture compared to rigid alternatives. [3]

1. What has been your overall experience with the career services offered at our institution?

2. Can you describe a time when career services helped you make a career-related decision?

3. What resources or support do you wish career services offered but currently does not?

4. How would you improve the career guidance you have received so far?

5. What are your main concerns or challenges when preparing for your future career?

6. What types of career events (workshops, job fairs, networking, etc.) have you found most useful, and why?

7. In what ways could communication from the career services team be more effective?

8. Have you faced any barriers in accessing career services? Please explain.

9. If you could change one thing about career services, what would it be?

10. Can you share any success stories or positive experiences as a result of engaging with career services?

The best single-select multiple-choice questions for student survey about career services

Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to quantify common experiences and sentiments—especially helpful if you want quick stats or want to spot trends. They work well for starting a conversation too: choosing from well-defined options is easier than coming up with a complex answer, which helps break the ice and guides the follow-ups for richer insights.

Here are three strong examples:

Question: How often do you use the career services at our institution?

• Never

• Once per semester

• Several times per semester

• Monthly

• Weekly

Question: How would you rate your satisfaction with the effectiveness of career services?

• Very satisfied

• Satisfied

• Neutral

• Dissatisfied

• Very dissatisfied

Question: Which career services resource have you found most valuable?

• One-on-one career counseling

• Workshops or events

• Job board access

• Resume/cover letter support

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Asking “why?” is helpful any time a response could mean different things to different students, or if you want to get at motivations. For example, if a student selects “Very dissatisfied” with career services, following up with: “Why do you feel dissatisfied?” can uncover actionable issues to address.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including “Other” as an option is smart when you can’t confidently list every possible answer. Follow-up questions after “Other” prompt unexpected insights you might otherwise overlook.

NPS question—does it belong in a student survey about career services?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a powerful, industry-standard metric that quickly tells you whether students would recommend your career services to others. You simply ask: "How likely are you to recommend our career services to a friend or fellow student?" followed by a zero to ten rating.

This works especially well for student feedback, because it’s actionable and easy to track over time. NPS not only captures satisfaction but also student loyalty—plus, you can tailor follow-ups based on whether the respondent is a promoter, passive, or detractor. See how you can instantly create an NPS survey for students about career services.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-ups transform how surveys work. Instead of flat, one-off answers, you can dig deeper just like a real conversation. Automated follow-up questions are what make surveys on Specific especially insightful—these tools use AI to zero in on context, clarify details, and gather richer information in real time. If you want to understand how this works in practice, here’s more about our automated follow-up questions feature.

• Student: “Career counseling felt unhelpful.”

• AI follow-up: “Could you share what made the career counseling feel unhelpful? Was it the advice, the format, or something else?”

How many followups to ask? In most cases, two or three targeted follow-ups are enough to fully understand the issue (and avoid respondent fatigue). Specific offers settings to let you adjust this—and you can let the survey skip to the next question as soon as you get the context you need.

This makes it a conversational survey, where every reply can drive the next question—making feedback feel much more engaging and natural.

AI survey analysis, large-scale feedback, and unstructured data are a breeze—because AI can instantly summarize, categorize, and let you chat with your feedback. See how to analyze responses from a student career services survey using AI.

Automated, conversational follow-ups are a game changer—try generating your own survey and watch the difference in the quality of the feedback you gather.

How to compose a prompt for GPT to generate great student survey questions about career services

If you want to use ChatGPT or another AI for brainstorming your own survey questions, start simple, then get specific. For instance, you could ask:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for student survey about career services.

But the more context you give, the better your results. Try framing it with extra information about your goals or your institution’s situation:

I'm a student engagement officer at a medium-sized university, aiming to improve our career services for a diverse student population. Suggest 10 open-ended survey questions to identify gaps, measure satisfaction, and uncover ideas for new resources.

Then, once you have an initial list, go deeper with:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Finally, if you notice certain categories are priorities (say, “access to resources” or “event usefulness”), specify those for more depth:

Generate 10 questions for categories ‘event usefulness’ and ‘access to resources’.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey brings the format of chat apps or messaging into the world of feedback. Instead of filling out stiff, static forms, students interact with a smart AI assistant, which adapts its questions and language in real time—like a real conversation. The key benefit? Higher engagement and richer, clearer answers. One field study even found that AI-driven conversational surveys prompted more informative, specific, and clear responses from participants than traditional surveys. [4]

That means students are more likely to complete the survey, and their responses offer more actionable substance—no more vague “it was fine” answers or skipped fields. In fact, despite 31% of students saying they've never interacted with their career center, those who do engage via conversational surveys are more likely to provide context-rich feedback, making it easier to spot what works and what doesn’t. [1]

Why use AI for student surveys? There’s simply no faster, smarter way to launch a focused, high-quality student feedback study. An AI survey example adapts to each respondent, probes for details you’d never think to ask manually, and serves up a seamless chat-like experience on mobile or desktop. The Specific platform leads the way in conversational surveys: it’s mobile-friendly, enables instant edits with its AI survey editor, and is designed to minimize friction for both the creator and the respondent. Want to see how easy it is to create a student survey about career services? We’ve mapped it out step by step.

See this career services survey example now

Create your own student career services survey with AI—explore Specific's conversational approach for deeper insights, higher response rates, and instant analysis. Get started and experience a new level of student feedback.