Tag Archives: student

Entry by Pat Patterson

Are you looking for something to do this weekend?  Why not polish up your resume?  Now, I bet you’re all thinking, “Yeah, right…I thought this blog entry was going to be about some fun event or promotion.”  Just keep reading…

I’m not suggesting you spend all weekend working on your resume, but it may be a good idea to add recent internships that you have not yet added.  The more time that elapses after your internship, the more you will forget important details.  You never know when an opportunity may arise when you will need to submit your resume, especially given the fact that college hiring and recruiting is expected to increase:  

NACE’s current hiring index shows college hiring at 126.4, compared with 86.8 last year at this time. The October poll also found that nearly half of responding employers expect to increase …

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Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

When job and internship searching there is one important question we must ask ourselves: am I going to LOVE this position? Salary, benefits, location and values all count when choosing the right position, but passion really trumps them all.

For my current internship with Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development, I conducted a survey, which circulated among liberal arts students. 89.4% of students who responded to the survey (536 students responded) said passion matters most to them in job. I couldn’t agree more. While salary and location are also extremely important to my particular job search, passion is by far the number one thing that drives me.

Picture your life one year from now. Do you really want to be sitting at a desk with nothing to do, a boss you don’t like …

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Entry by Brittney Horn, Membership Intern, Greater Lafayette Commerce

Okay well maybe not the secret because let’s be honest, it’s still really hard to find a job at all. I’ve searched high and low, far and wide for almost a year now and it’s still a rough economy. That doesn’t mean that everyone that is graduating within the year is doomed to be jobless for the rest of their lives but it does mean the more experience you have (ahem, internships), the better chance you have of getting a job. But searching for internships can be pretty frightening too. It can be a daunting task to search through websites, internship postings, and company profiles to find the perfect internship. I have become a self-proclaimed “pro” at finding great resources for finding pretty much any kind of internship you can imagine. Hopefully you’ll be able to use one …

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Entry by Pat Patterson

If you are convinced that pursuing an internship is a good idea, but you are not sure what type of internship to search for, the following information from the November INTERNnetwork may be helpful.  (If you would like to subscribe to Indiana INTERNnet’s montly e-newsletter, click here.)

Here are a few ways to discover your passions and explore different careers:

Career/personality assessments
Career/personality assessments can help provide a clearer understanding of the type of professional work you may enjoy doing by helping you to identify your interests, motivations, work habits and personality traits. Ask your career services office if it administers them. Three of the most popular are Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Keirsey Temperament Sorter, and Strong Interest Inventory.

What can I do with a major in …?
If you have decided on your major (or even if you are …

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Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

All of my weeks tend to have a topic that consistently comes up in classes and at my internship. This week the trending topic is email and texting.

Our generation would much rather send an email or text than talk on the phone, and that’s okay for most people because time is precious and it’s nice to read something at one’s leisure. However, where do you draw the line?

Is it acceptable to text your boss and tell him or her you aren’t coming to work? What about emailing a future prospective employer and addressing him or her with a “Hey what’s up?” Should you secretly blind copy (BCC) a person on an email, or copy someone who hasn’t been on that particular email string? The ethics behind email and texting …

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Entry by Pat Patterson

Have you found an internship that is perfect for you, but you don’t know much about the region in Indiana where it is located?  Are you only searching for internships in certain cities because you are more familiar with those areas?  If so, make sure to check out Indiana INTERNnet’s regional page to learn more about what Indiana cities have to offer, including information about arts and culture, attractions, housing, networking groups, nightlife, restaurants, and shopping – after all, more likely than not, you will be living in the city where you intern. 

Also, if you have your heart set on interning outside of the state, don’t completely disregard what Indiana cities have to offer.  For example, according to Yahoo! Real Estate, Indianapolis-Carmel, IN is rated the 10th best city to move in America:

Indianapolis-Carmel ranked high on both stability and affordability. The average home …

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Entry by Pat Patterson

If you are an international student looking for an internship in Indiana, the following resources may help you adapt to American business culture, etiquette and communication:

Doing Business in the USA – Contains information on business structures, management style, meetings, team work, communication styles, women in business, business dress code and successful entertaining in the United States Business Etiquette in the United States – Offers information on cultural aspects of doing business in America About.com: English as 2nd Language – Provides information for ESL students on beginning English, intermediate English and advanced English. Topics include pronunciation, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, listening skills, writing skills, teaching English, reading skills and business English InternationalStudent.com Resumé Writing Center – A comprehensive overview of resumé writing in the United States Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) – Offers resumé tips for international students JobWeb.com – Highlights differences between resumés …

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Entry by Nicole Goble, Director of Recruiting and Development in the financial services industry in Zionsville, IN

The biggest mistake students make when applying and interviewing for an internship and/or a full-time position is the effort spent researching the company and the career.  We are very lucky to live in a time that allows us to access almost any piece of information we wish at the click of a button – this also leaves little room for employers to empathize with candidates who lack the preparation. 

There are many ways students search for internships, including and certainly not limited to, career fairs, campus career centers, club and class company presentations, Indiana INTERNnet, and many others.  The mistake lies when the proper research is not done prior to applying for these positions and then when getting the first interview, going into that first meeting. 

To make the best …

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Image via CrunchBase

Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

Have you Googled yourself recently? If you’re internship or job searching, I highly recommend you Google yourself to see how others view you in the virtual world. 

Everyone is always talking about setting your Facebook and Twitter accounts to private, and making sure there are no inappropriate pictures of you on the Internet. Okay, we know to do all of that so when employers Google us, they know we are responsible… but when they Google us, don’t we want them to see something that will make an impact on them?

Every job seeker’s goal should be to get on the first page of Google. It’s more difficult with names like “Kayla Smith,” but it’s doable. Rather than having your Facebook pop up, what if a well-written blog came up? …

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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

…

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Entry by Pat Patterson; from the October INTERNnetwork

For some reason or another, some employers are hesitant to hire international students as interns. Gary Beaulieu, Butler University director of internship and career services, believes many businesses have false preconceptions about hiring international students. For example, “many employers think there is a lot of additional paperwork involved, which simply is not true,” he emphasizes.

An issue of the BU INTL – News dispels some of the myths commonly associated with hiring international students. Here are the truths:

International students DO NOT need a green card to intern. Students who maintain an F-1 or J-1 visa status are permitted to intern in their major field of study by federal regulation (up to 12 – or possibly 29 months – for F-1 status and up to 18 months for J-1 status). There is NO excessive paperwork needed to hire an international intern. The …

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Entry by Brittney Horn, Membership Intern, Greater Lafayette Commerce

When I was younger, I went through phases where I would change my mind about what career I wanted.  I had dreams of becoming a hair stylist, chef, nurse, teacher – you name it, I wanted to be it.  However, once I got to college, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

I went with the “undecided” route during my first semester of college to try to figure out what the heck I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  I first decided to try out interior design, mainly because I liked the idea of being able to decorate my own house for free.  Once enrolled in one interior design class, I realized that this was not for me.  Not knowing what direction to take, I began to feel overwhelmed. How was I supposed to figure out …

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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 …

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Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

Preparing for an interview, whether for an internship or job is stressful. It’s simple to answer questions about yourself, right? The hard part is answering those questions in a way that will convey your specific skill set to an employer.

When answering the infamous question, “tell me about yourself,” you must limit the answer to a minute or two. Also keep in mind your future employer doesn’t care about your obsession with the Chicago Cubs, that you like music or if you’re double jointed, UNLESS you can turn those things into experience that would benefit the job you want to do for that employer. In which case it would make you stand out among the hundreds of other candidates.

A fabulous guest speaker came to my class this week and told us the story of …

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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 …

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