Benchmarks for career development services at tertiary institutions have been developed by Careers New Zealand. The benchmarks are intended to provide standards derived from international best practices to guide career development services. A new career development service was initiated at a large New Zealand university just after the benchmarks were published. This provided an opportunity to develop the new career service by implementing the benchmarks. In this article, we employ a participatory action research approach to study the process. Outcomes of a participatory action research cycle are reported and recommendations for using benchmarks are provided.