Tag Archives: Career Services
Employers: Recruiting Your Interns
Entry by Pat Patterson
If you plan on hiring interns for the summer of 2011, plan to begin recruiting soon if you have not started already. As a general rule of thumb, employers should begin recruiting for an internship six months in advance of its start date to allow for a large candidate pool.
Collaborating with high schools, colleges, and universities, is one of the best, most common ways to recruit interns. Indiana high schools, colleges, and universities offer many opportunities for intern recruiting on campus. Employers may participate in career/internship fairs, conduct presentations, perform on-campus interviewing and/or get involved with various career services sponsored events. It may be best to target two to three schools in close proximity with academic programs that match your ideal criteria.
Employer Presentations
Presenting on campus is a convenient way for students to learn about your organization and its job openings – both …
Looking for a Speaker? – Think Indiana INTERNnet for Your Next Event
Indiana INTERNnet welcomes the opportunity to be included on the program for your next event. Service organizations, member-based associations, employers, students and universities all benefit from the experience and knowledge included in an Indiana INTERNnet presentation.
Students and Universities
Allow the Indiana INTERNnet staff to assist with your next career fair workshop. Presentations on the following subjects are available:
• Interview etiquette
• Resumé critiques
• The power is in the connection: networking 101
Employers
Invite Indiana INTERNnet to present a brown bag lunch series to your staff. In just three short weeks, your staff will learn how to establish an internship program with the goal of mutual benefit for your company and Indiana students. One topic will be covered in each 45-minute session:
• How to find interns
• How to identify meaningful project work
• How to manage your intern
…
Career Services: Taking Advantage of Social Networking
Entry by Pat Patterson
Social networking may help you reach your student body, keep in contact with alumni, connect students and alumni with employment opportunities, and market your events. John Hill, alumni career services director at Michigan State University (MSU), has had a lot of success with social networking:
The MSU career services network’s social networking strategy is to have alumni help it access industries, interest areas, and professions that it wouldn’t be able to reach through traditional on-campus recruiting or career fairs.
“The MSU alumni who get involved in these groups through social and professional media are our low-hanging fruit and it’s up to us to mobilize them,” Hill says. “Social media gives us a ready-made repository to identify them.”
MSU primarily focuses on LinkedIn as there are 135,000 MSU alumni and students using it. Through information and data on resumes, the career services network creates communities that …
Knowing Your Audience: The Mindset of the Class of 2014
Entry by Pat Patterson
If you are a career services professional or faculty member enticing freshmen to visit the career office for the first time, it is important to know more about your audience. Consider Beloit College’s mindset list for the class of 2014:
Few in the class know how to write in cursive. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. Al Gore has always been animated. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren’t afraid of immigration…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate …
Last Call for Nominations – Indiana INTERNnet IMPACT Awards
Friday, October 29 is the deadline for Indiana INTERNnet IMPACT Awards nominations in the categories of Intern of the Year (both college and high school), Employer of the Year (both nonprofit and profit), and Career Professional of the Year. Last year’s winners were honored at the annual IMPACT Awards Luncheon and we’ll be doing the same this time around recognizing finalists and winners on February 10, 2011.
Nominations are open to interns, employers and educational institutions statewide. Share your story of internship success by nominating yourself, your organization or another who is making an impact on stemming the Indiana “Brain Drain” through internship connections. And, remember to mark your calendar for the luncheon in February. Registration for the luncheon will open in late November.
Temps are Dropping, but Career Services is Heating Up
Entry by Bobby Wade, Peer Career Advisor, Wabash College Career Services
It’s been a hectic first half of the semester at Career Services, and it promises to get even busier. As students returned for fall, the scramble for on-campus jobs was in full swing the first few weeks back. As a result, all 14 peer career advisors, including myself, were busy every day with resume and cover letter critiques. Now that campus jobs are mostly filled and recruiting season has begun, I’ve kept busy helping seniors who are flooding the office with questions about post-grad job applications.
I’ve had a number of independent projects this semester that I am very excited about, one of which began this past summer. In June, I was notified that Paul Wineman, former president of my national fraternity and current negotiations consultant, was going to visit my house for homecoming weekend. With the help of …
Indiana Chamber Launches Higher Education Web Site
Entry by Pat Patterson
For all career services professionals – today, the Indiana Chamber launched a new web site, Achieve Indiana, focused on higher education in Indiana:
The Indiana Chamber of Commerce seeks to advance policy innovation and change in higher education finance, management and instructional delivery to substantially increase the number of students who complete postsecondary education. Currently, the Indiana Chamber is leading Indiana’s participation in the Lumina Productivity Initiative, a national program aimed at increasing the percentage of college graduates in the U.S. from 40% to 60% by 2025. The Indiana initiative, funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education and conducted in partnership with the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the Governor’s Office, is focused specifically on performance-based funding, engagement of university trustees and productivity of regional campuses.
From the Achieve Indiana site, you can download a new higher education report, Crossing the Starting Line: An Examination …
Immersing Yourself in Career Services
Entry by Jake Zielinski, Peer Career Advisor, Wabash College Career Services
I’m Jake Zielinski, a junior Rhetoric major from South Bend, IN. I’m a Wally with high entrepreneurial spirits. In the last year I have been involved in various business activities and programs; however, I’m not exactly sure where I would like to be in a few years. Dealing with business, social environments, traveling, and negotiation are all very important aspects in whatever my future shall bring.
During last summer, I was fortunate enough to work for the Wabash College Career Service office. My official title was: Event Management Intern. Within the time allotted, I was able to collaborate with two fellow interns, Brady Young and Bobby Wade, to coordinate the 5th Annual Wabash College Community Fair. Being a large event, we started preparing months in advance. Duties included communicating with local business owners to increase event participation, marketing the …
Educators: Preparing Your Students for the Internship/Job Hunt
Entry by Jackson Ding, Peer Career Advisor, Wabash College Career Services
My name is Jackson Ding and I am a peer advisor at the Career Services Office at Wabash College, a liberal arts college for men in Crawfordsville, IN. Here at Wabash, we, Career Services, organize many events throughout the year to help students with career development and graduate school application.
The project I am working on now is a four-week long internship/job class. Prepared by career services staff and peer advisors, these once-a-week classes teach students various aspect of job hunting, including job search, resume and cover letters, and interview preparation. Offered during lunch/dinner time with the company of free pizzas, these classes are often well received among our students. For example, the last session attracted more than 5% of the total student population. We also regularly bring in guest speakers to give lectures. In the …
Career Services Team Building
Entry by Kristijonas Paltanavicius, Peer Career Advisor, Wabash College Career Services
My name is Kristijonas Paltanavicius. I am an international student from Lithuania at Wabash College. I am a junior theater major and aspire to have a career in theatrical directing. During my two years at Wabash I presented at a few scholarly events, received three grants to do research, did two major directing projects and found many other ways to express my creative self. This semester is particularly exciting to me because, besides all my projects and classes, I am a part of the peer career advisor team at the Career Services.
Just two months ago I was in Washington DC, and somebody at the airport asked me about my accent and where I was from. “I’m from Indiana,” I said. It came out unintentionally, and I immediately realized it was true in terms of how I felt about …
College Touring: Don’t Forget the Career Services Office
Entry by Pat Patterson
In the current competitive job market, students need to begin thinking about and planning for their potential careers early on in their college experience. Since students go to college to attain an education that will eventually be used to secure a career, students (and parents) should explore each college’s career services office on their campus visits. A recent news release from Wake Forest University echoes this sentiment:
As high school students and their parents begin the annual fall ritual of campus visits, experts are recommending that families make the career office one of the first stops on any college tour. “In this competitive job market, the tools and resources that a career office provide have become nearly as important as academics when choosing a college or university,” said Patrick Sullivan, Associate Director of Experiential Education at Wake Forest University.
In fact, college internships can be one …
Call for Nominations/Indiana INTERNnet IMPACT Awards
Entry by Pam Norman, Indiana INTERNnet Executive Director
Today is your chance to recognize internship excellence as Indiana INTERNnet makes a call for nominations in the categories of Intern of the Year (both college and high school), Employer of the Year (both nonprofit and profit), and Career Professional of the Year. Last year’s winners were honored at the annual IMPACT Awards Luncheon and we’ll be doing the same this time around recognizing finalists and winners on February 10, 2011.
Nominations are open to interns, employers and educational institutions statewide. Share your story of internship success by nominating yourself, your organization or another who is making an impact on stemming the Indiana “Brain Drain” through internship connections. And, remember to mark your calendar for the luncheon in February. Registration for the luncheon will open in late November.
Career Services Professionals: Best Practices
Entry by Pat Patterson
Now that students are back to school and somewhat settled in, it is likely that more students will start visiting their campus career services office. As career services professionals, it is important to keep on top of the best practices in the current market to help students acquire internships and jobs.
The following is a list of advice from the Intern Bridge’s blog The Intern Advocate, which will help you help your students:
Get a RSS reader account. Find blogs that dole out daily or weekly advice pertaining to job searching and career centers. Add each blog to an RSS reader, such as Google Reader, and make a point to check it at least three times per week. If your career center has social media accounts, be sure to share helpful articles with your students directly!
Read new literature available. There are countless …
Let Your Interests Guide Your College/Career Choices
Entry by Pat Patterson
If you have not declared your college major yet, try not to be persuaded to pursue a degree solely based on the current economic conditions. Statistically speaking, in our current economy, students with certain majors have landed more job offers after graduation than students with other degrees. However, it is important to pursue a major that you are interested in, and let your passions guide your career decisions. After all, you are more likely to perform well when you have an interest in what you are studying, and it is uncertain which courses of study may “increase your odds” of landing a job one, two, three, or four years from now.
A recent article in the Chicago Tribune echoes this sentiment:
The key is to think ahead about which jobs would also let you capitalize on your interests. And the earlier you start, the more opportunities …
Highlighting Your Summer Internship on Your Resume
Entry by Pat Patterson
Now that your summer internship is complete or may come to an end soon, there is no better time than now to update your resume. It is a great idea to update your resume with your recent internship as soon as possible because your experience will still be fresh in your mind.
Remember to highlight your tasks, major projects, and also the results of your work. Whenever possible be specific and quantify your work. For example, instead of stating, “coordinated company networking events”, be more specific, such as, “coordinated three separate networking events, one for each month, which led to a 10% increase in client leads.” Also, if you are still at your internship or keep in contact with your employer (which you should be doing), you can ask your supervisor to review the information you add on your resume to ensure it accurately reflects your …