27 Nov 10 valuable services at your campus career center
The more you know
The biggest advantage you can give yourself when job seeking is the Knowledge Advantage. Understanding expectations. With that in mind, here are
10 ways to get value from your campus career development centre
- Resume and cover letter review
- Interview preparation
- Job postings: Job boards & Campus job fairs
- On-site campus recruiting
- Evaluating competing job offers and suggesting benefits or salary negotiating techniques
- Understanding Career options as we move into the Future of Work
- Career assessment and skills matching
- LinkedIn review
- Alumni connections – network opportunities to alumni, female leaders, peer job search support groups
- Co-op, internship, campus research projects, summer work opportunities
The obvious
In your final year of study, the prime services you will leverage are those related to targeting, applying for and hopefully landing that dream job before you sit your final exams.
Targeting the right set of industries – saving time and gathering knowledge
Job boards, on-site campus recruiting and information fairs are a tremendous time-saver in a very busy year. Your ability to compare all management consulting organizations, hospitality, or marketing organizations on the same day allows you to sense if the company is the right culture fit for you.
Additionally, most of these companies will have a good relationship with your education institution and your career staff; they bring alumni to their campus recruiting events so you are able to quiz like-minded employees with ‘experiences like me’.
Applications – resumes, cover letters and interviews
With their industry knowledge and vast experience, career support staff can clue you into all the subtle details such as crafting a resume that looks current and represents your accomplishments.
Your career hub will often support you by offering interview preparation.
Interview skills
This is probably the most important advantage you can give yourself. Sitting with a veteran interviewer before your actual interview can help you develop a roster of key answers for the standard and bespoke questions. Increasingly, career support services are using XR/VR/AR tools alongside online modules with a basic set of questions to get candidates over 90% of their nerves. But then augmenting it with in-person face-to-face interview preparation.
As organizations use a variety of screening interview techniques, your career centre is a safe space to understand how to interface effectively with each technology.
Having on-site first-round job interviews is another tremendous time saving, though I would recommend that you visit the office for the final interviews so that you meet more of the people you will soon be spending most of your waking hours alongside.
These are time savers and confidence boosters, which can be very valuable when you are time-crunched in your final year of education. Additionally, the ability to confidently have a meaningful deep discussion can evolve into a key EQ skill.
Evaluating the offer
Congratulations! You have an offer. Or maybe more than one. You can now bring the power of experience to your negotiations through the careers team. They can help you evaluate your offer(s), determine the proper salary band, ensure you have done your due diligence in asking about benefits packages, vacation time, etc.
Q: Is it better to focus on studying vs recruiting in your final year?
It is a matter of personal choice.
- If you are planning to pursue a diploma or post-graduate degree, and have explored those ideas with your faculty and with careers, then marks matter
- If you do not like the competitive nature between your peers during on-campus recruiting
- You have targeted a profession, company or experience that is an outlier, not in the normal range of companies that normally visit your education institution, so a relationship does not exist between your education institution, your careers centre and the company
On the assumption that most graduating students are carrying an education loan that they will want to pay off quickly, the majority aim to have a job offer in hand when crossing that dias and tossing their mortarboards in the air.
Remember that you can still access your career center as an alumnus. (More in the E35)
What did you think?
Would you now engage with your careers group from a different perspective? If you found this information valuable, please share it with others, engage in the discussion on this site or on LinkedIn, and let us know by rating, commenting & following the podcast.
Related episodes in the Visit your Career Center series:
- E33: Can your campus career centre help you find that first job?
- E34: 10 ways to get value from your campus career centre
- E35: New Grads, Students and Alum – using the careers centre for career discovery and work experience
No Comments