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84professionally operating career advising services are not just an example of spending universitymoney to please students (as it may be considered at first glance). Career advising services cancontribute to the ranking of the universities and constitute an important element of universities’marketing and development.A university with career advising services is considered (and may be marketed) as a valuablepartner for business: a place where the employers may get professional, well-structured informationabout the present and future supply of a highly-skilled workforce. Successful contacts inone area may contribute to other areas such as scientific cooperation with partners from industryor promotion for the recruitment of future students.Furthermore, in organising its promotion strategy, a university with a career advising servicesmay focus on the fact that its students may count not only on sound knowledge receivedduring their education period, but also on individual assistance as to their professional development.In this way, the university sends a clear message: that it cares for its students (which isimportant, since student-centred institutions are one of priorities in the Bologna Process).6.2. Areas of operationThe main customers of career advising services will be students, employers and academia. Regardingspecific activities of career advising services, priorities are of course to be decided byuniversity authorities. However, the main operation areas of career advising services are alwayslikely to be the following: information, education and cooperation.“Information” is to be related to job market opportunities, administration of databases ofjob-seeking students and job offers from employers, as well as to what to do to be successful onthe job market. “Education” means individual and group job counselling, soft skills training andworkshops (presentation skills, career planning, time management). By “cooperation” I understandestablishing contacts with employers, government and international partners, as well asorganising university events related to the job market such as conferences, seminars, job fairs orpanel discussions with employers. Through such cooperation initiatives, career advising servicescan attract employers as real partners for the university and can make a sound contribution to themarketing of the university (both for potential students candidates and business partners).Regarding the work of career advising services in the early stages, I would recommend focusingon group-based and large scale events, on soft skills training, conferences, companypresentations and recruitment events at universities, rather than on individual counselling forstudents. Students are generally unaware at the beginning of the benefit of meetings with advisersand for this reason may not show up in big numbers. Such a situation would both waste time ofemployees and damage the image of an institution that without customers may seem obsolete.In Poland, the need of young people to think about the future and make career developmentplans was not so familiar until quite recently and I suspect that young Croatians are similar in thisrespect. Such awareness emerges at a later stage, when the concept of career advising servicesbecomes more widely recognised and accepted, and when the attitude of students changes.Since career advising services may focus not only on students and employers, but also on cooperationwith academic departments and the university as a whole, it is worth considering theseoptions as well. The possibilities include research activities such as employability research ofFuture outlook: Final recommendations for launching career advising services in Croatian universities