About one-third of all students will use services provided by the University Career Center during their time at the University, Everette Fortner, University associate vice president of career and professional development, said in an email statement.
Amy Jorgensen, the associate director of marketing and communications, said Career Center staff help students in the “exploratory process” when they are trying to figure out what to major in and, later down the road, what to do with their majors.
“It’s kind of every step, from choosing a major and seeing how that could potentially relate to careers, to getting their resume and their [recommendation] materials together, all the way to finding an internship or a job,” Jorgensen said.
Jorgensen also said frequently asked questions tend to differ depending on a student’s year, which can drastically impact suggested services.
“With a first-year, often times we’re helping them choose their major and helping them understand how their major can potentially relate to different career options,” Jorgensen said. “Once you get up to the fourth-years, it’s much more job development.”
Jorgensen said services include “tailored content” specific to each student and focused on his or her personal needs through “career communities,” which are based on a certain industry a student is interested in or a job he or she may want in the future. In this way, Jorgensen said, career counselors can best address individual need in a variety of different ways.
There are six career communities: Business; Education; Engineering, Science and Technology; Media and Design; Government and Law; Creative Arts; and Public Service.
“If I’m interested in becoming a computer engineer, we have an engineering, science and technology community, and that gives [the student] personalized, tailored content for what to do with interviews and what types of industries and groups they could look at,” Jorgensen said.
The Career Center connects students with clubs, associations and various opportunities to gain experience in a relevant field, Jorgensen said.
Rob Morris, career counselor and assistant director of the Government and Law Community, said the Career Center puts on various programs to help students find jobs and market themselves to potential employers, as well as to address the questions many students seem to share.
Morris specializes in advising for students who are interested in interning for local, state and federal government, Super PACs, political campaigns and consulting firms.
“We have our large scale programs like career fairs, we have a marketing symposium coming up,” Morris said. “I think that we have a variety of different types of programming to hopefully make it as accessible to all the students here.”
Morris said students can use the Internship Center within the Career Center to learn about and take advantage of internships through programs like the upcoming “Internships Unplugged” event.
“We’re having an ‘Internships Unplugged’ event which will sort of go in depth for students that are interested in exploring internships, giving them direct tools on how to go about searching … [and] hopefully from that, gaining internships,” Morris said.
First-year College student Noah Jones attended a job fair hosted by the Career Center earlier this semester. Although he wasn’t seeking a job, he said wanted to learn more about the process of looking for one.
“I thought the fair was an effective way to connect students and employers,” Jones said. “I think the Career Center is really helpful when connecting students with the real world.”
Jones said he was surprised by the job fair he attended.
“I expected to just go and feel it out. I was surprised … I actually might apply to a company that I met at the fair for a summer job,” he said.
Second-year College student Kevin O’Boyle said he has sought out help from the Career Center for a variety of reasons.
“I was getting my resume looked over, asking about what I could do as a second-year to access info about internships, get kind of a feel for how the finance recruiting process works and basically get an explanation about CavLink,” O’Boyle said in an email statement.
Although the center was helpful, O’Boyle said his experience “didn’t change my life.”
“I know my resources better now, but I didn't really take much of his resume advice,” O’Boyle said. “Definitely would go back, but I don't think they are the be-all and end-all of resources for help in the internship/job finding process.”
The Career Center’s “Internships Unplugged” event will be held March 15.
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