The Halloween season presents plenty of tricks and treats to kick off the holiday season, as well as a fang-tastic opportunity to utilize various resources on-campus to further your career development. As the fall semester progresses, don’t get frightened by all the possibilities you have to activate your career potential. Beware of the key steps to promote your career development and stay on track towards achieving your career success:
Attend upcoming events on campus to increase your personal and professional connections.
1. Attend a skele-ton of upcoming networking events to broaden your professional network. Networking and career events on-campus offer the perfect occasion to explore potential experiential learning opportunities, practice your professional skills, and increase your personal and professional connections. The O’Brien Center for Career Development kicked off the fall semester with several events for students of all majors to create and expand their professional networks, and the remainder of the semester is no exception. If you were unable to attend the Fall Internship and Job Fair, Liberal Arts Career Night, the Accounting and Finance Networking Breakfasts, and any of the other networking events hosted earlier this fall, don’t miss out on all the other upcoming events this semester for the opportunity to create meaningful connections with potential employers! You can check out the full list and descriptions of events for the rest of the semester, including the Human Development Panel on Wednesday, November 6th, from 5:30pm – 7pm, and the Careers in Life Science event on Thursday, November 7th, 4pm – 6pm, by logging-on to Handshake or heading over to the “Featured Events” tab on our website.
Visit your career advisor during walk-in hours or schedule an appointment on Handshake to touch-up your resume and cover letters.
2. If there’s something weird with your resume and cover letters, and they don’t look good, who you gonna call? Your career advisors! Don’t let your resume and cover letters rest in peace. You should update your resume and cover letters several times throughout the academic year, or at the very least, once a semester. Updating your resume allows you to highlight the new skills you’ve obtained from your most recent internship and co-op experiences, as well as to recognize the skills you may need to work on acquiring in your future professional positions. Additionally, potential employers at any networking or career event on-campus will expect you to have a regularly updated resume with your most current and relevant experience and skills on-hand. By constantly revisiting and refurbishing your resume and cover letters, you can understand and confidently discuss your current strengths and achievements, recognize areas in which you may need to improve, and remain prepared for any professional event or potential interview you may attend during the year. If you’re not quite sure how to touch-up your resume or cover letters, or if you need assistance constructing a resume for the first time, schedule an appointment with your career advisor on Handshake and get started! Need to meet with a career advisor as soon as possible? Visit us during walk-in hours, Monday through Thursday from 1-3 PM – no appointment needed!
Utilize our mock interview tool, Quinncia, in order to practice and brush up on your interview skills as often as you’d like right from your home or dorm.
3. Get into the spirit of interviewing and improve your skills by utilizing Quinncia, our mock interview tool. Quinncia enables you to sharpen and practice your interview skills for any job right from within your own home or residence hall. The mock interview tool assesses the amount of discourse markers and hesitations you use while speaking, the rate of your speech, and the mood of the interview in order for you to increase your confidence in your professionalism and understand the areas of conduct in which you could improve. While meeting with your career advisor certainly serves as a vital step in the preparation process for any interview, Quinncia allows you to continue to brush up on your skills as often as you’d like until the actual day the interview will take place. Whenever you’d like to practice or refresh your interview skills and increase your confidence in your abilities, simply head over to the “Students” tab on our website, visit the “Resources” subheading, and utilize Quinncia to your advantage.
The Internship Institute offers an opportunity for all majors to attend a series of bootcamps to prepare for career success and receive a guaranteed internship.
4. It’s not a bunch of hocus pocus: sign up for the Internship Institute program for a guaranteed internship! If you’re looking for a guaranteed opportunity to receive real-world experience and preparation for a career after college, the Internship Institute program may just be exactly what you need. The Internship Institute offers an opportunity for all majors to attend a series of three bootcamps to prepare for career success, engage in several networking opportunities to build professional connections and networking skills, and receive a guaranteed internship to develop and put new skills into practice. If you’d like to gain impressive, real world experience in order to enhance your skills and strengthen your resume, you can sign up for the Spring 2020 Internship Institute by registering on Handshake today! The program occurs every fall and spring semester, with the first bootcamp training session for the inaugural Spring 2020 Internship Institute starting on Wednesday, February 5, 2020.
If you’d like an experiential learning opportunity for your spring semester or during the summer, start applying during your fall semester.
5. Securing a spring or summer internship or co-op is pumpkin to think about now: log-in to Handshake and begin the search for experiential learning opportunities. If you’d like to secure an internship or co-op opportunity for the spring semester or over the summer, you should actively look and apply for experiential learning opportunities on Handshake during the fall semester. Internships and other experiential learning opportunities allow you to acquire crucial professional skills for your desired career and create meaningful connections with individuals in the working world to advance your career success while still at the undergraduate level. Utilizing your Handshake account equips you with the ability to search for internship and co-op opportunities and on-campus employment, connect with potential employers, build an additional professional online presence, and even book an appointment with your career advisor.
With Halloween serving as the midpoint of the fall semester, it becomes increasingly important to take all the steps necessary to further your career development. Don’t let the end of the fall semester creep up on you – take advantage of all of the opportunities available to you on-campus to ensure you achieve both academic and career success. Put a spell on the advancement of your career by employing each of these five tactics, and make sure to stop by the O’Brien Center for Career Development to assist in brewing up the perfect concoction for your career development this Halloween!
Written By: Kerry Reynolds, Class of 2021
