Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Tawana Brown. Thank you so much for joining us for our webinar Wednesday. We're excited to have you. So today we're going to continue on the same theme about career action planning and how you can support your student as they start to prepare as a third year student. And so today we have Susan from our Career Center who is going to talk a little bit about that. Susan, I'll turn over to you. Great, thank you. Hi everyone, my name is Susan Coles. I'm the

Speaker 2: director for our satellite office in the Culverhouse College of Business. Just a little bit about the Career Center before we get into the career action planning for third year. We have a main office in the Student Center where we house a lot of the college's consultants and advisors. But we also have three satellite offices, one in the Culverhouse College of Business where I am, one in the College of Communication and Information Sciences, and then we have one in the College of Engineering. So for students, it's a great, it really works out well for them because if they do change majors, we're all connected. So it's easy for us to refer them to another college and really be able, if they're thinking about a different major in a different college. So it's really a smooth transition for the students, which is what we try to do. So anyway, just a little bit about the Career Center, but let's get started on the third year. And as we've mentioned in the other two, if you've stayed in the first and second year, usually what applies to the previous year, you kind of want to read up and look at those because a lot of those will apply to the following years. So some of the things for sophomores that we talked about were choosing a major. Sometimes juniors are still thinking about their major, maybe it's a minor, a double major. So that is something that we can help with if they still are in that decision phase. And then we always ask for them to update their profile and resume on Handshake. That's something that usually and hopefully students have added some experiences, whether it be volunteer, maybe a part-time job, service, just really anything that would show employers what their skills and qualifications are. And so those need to go both on the profile of the student's Handshake as well as their resume. A lot of times what we'll recommend, and I think this is helpful for students, you know, starting as early as their freshman year, but at any time it's a good practice to get into is we have a what we call a master resume. And so that's just a running total of what they have done throughout their college experience. I mentioned in the first year planning, or the second year, their sophomore year, employers really like them to roll off a lot of their high school information. And so we really encourage them every year to get involved in some way on campus. And so a master resume is just a running total, so they really don't forget what they've done in previous years, the details about it. And then they're able to really have a snapshot of their whole college career to which they can then really copy and paste into a resume that's really targeted for that job or internship that they're looking for. So that's one way to kind of help keep them on track and keep their resume and profile updated. And then also being able to find out opportunities, places where they can, you know, learn about job and internships that could be of interest to them. If they don't already have a LinkedIn, we encourage them to create one and, you know, fill that out again, fill it out as detailed as possible, matching what the resume says. Many employers will tell us that they will look at a resume and then also look at the LinkedIn to make sure that they, you know, were both consistent. And so being able to keep both of those up to date is really important. They need a professional headshot, maybe not just for LinkedIn, for other things that they're that they're doing. And so the Career Center within this past year has purchased in partnership with SGA a photo booth called Iris. And it's students get an app, they can take their profile picture, it is sent to them on their phone, they can make any kind of adjustments as far as background, blemishes, whitening tape, just anything that you would normally get if you went and got a headshot, you know, you paid for one. And so these, the booth is in our main office in the Student Center, and they just students just go on a handshake, and they can schedule just a five minute appointment and go in and get their headshot. And it's immediate, which is great, because in the past, when we've had photographers do it, you know, it can be a week or two turnaround, depending on how many photos that they had taken and what kind of things they needed to do before they were ready to send. So Iris is something that we're really excited about, because we don't want students to have to pay for headshots or have to wait a really long time if they're needing it, you know, fairly, fairly quickly. Another thing that that we encourage, again, is continuing to be involved on campus, develop these relationships, either through student orgs, internships, part-time employment, and volunteer. I always say that, you know, when you look at a resume, the education section is just a small portion of what is on the rest of the page, and so that's really what differentiates students from another student, if academics are equal. And so some of the ways that they can be involved, if they're not already, or they want to add some experience to their college career, is they can go on Handshake. Again, that's where our jobs and internships are posted. We have sometimes part-time jobs. I had a call yesterday from a department on campus that was looking for a student. It was all majors to do some research, economic development research, and so she called our office to get that posted. It's not technically an internship. It's a part-time job. So, you know, those are just as valuable as internships, and if a student needed something on campus, there are opportunities like that across campus. So we have those posted. The source is another great resource for students. That's where all of the organizations are housed, where students can go and search for organizations that could be college-related, it could be interest-related, honors, whatever type of organization they're possibly interested in. They can go and search, find out information, find out who the advisor is, maybe who the leadership is, the student leadership team for that organization, and learn how to learn more about it and how to get involved. There's also service organizations too, and you can find those on the source as well. And then one other way to gain experience is to find employment, kind of like I mentioned with the one on Handshake, but there's a student job board on jobs.ua.edu, and they can go on and search for jobs on campus as well as off campus. And these vary from, you know, depending on what time of the year it is. Sometimes there's a lot of jobs available, usually at the beginning of the semester, and then it may, you know, towards the end kind of slack off and then come back. So students just constantly, we recommend just constantly check to see if there's anything that they're interested in, and usually they're 10 or 20 hours a week, depending on the amount of work and the amount of time that students have. And then there's also experience through their college, through their classes. You know, the third year they're really getting into their major, they're going to start probably having projects, teamwork types of things, and so anytime that they can gain that kind of real-world experience within the classroom, those are great resume builders, but also great to be able to demonstrate to student or to employers the things that they've learned and actually put into practice that could be very valid valuable for them when they're in their job or internship. Another thing to just think about is to brush up on dining etiquette and workplace etiquette. We offer workshops and programs and one-on-one appointments to help students understand that. I know organizations will host dining etiquette dinners and lunches and have someone come in and really talk about the etiquette of that, and that's a really good opportunity. So many of the recruiting opportunities that are on campus are now, you know, years ago they would just be information sessions, and so now employers are really trying to figure out different types of opportunities to connect, and one of them is, you know, lunches, dinners, and so that's helpful to be able to brush up on that. And same with workplace etiquette. They can meet with any of us, talk about if they've never, you know, really had a job like they're going to have with their internship or full-time position. We can talk to them about meeting etiquette, you know, how to plan. They may have to conduct a meeting in an internship, you know, and so those are some things that we have workshops on, but they can also meet with us one-on-one. And then they really should start to research the types of careers that they're interested in. There's ways to interview professionals in either maybe a company or an industry or a particular job that they want to learn more about. We have resources for them. Candid Career is one. It's a technology that website that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of professionals that will talk about their job, kind of how they got into that role. They'll talk about the maybe the challenges that they have in that position, but also the things that are very rewarding to them. It's a really good just conversation, real-world type conversation, so students can get a glimpse at what it is like to be in that position. So that's free to students. They can just log on and search there. Onet is a website that is really helpful to find out really details about particular careers. It also has something called My Next Move, which allows them to search different types of careers. There's an assessment that once they take that can help them understand based on their interests what types of jobs might be a good match for them, and that's available through Onet. There's also Occupational Outlook Handbook, and then talking to faculty. Faculty really are connected. They have networks of professionals within their industry, and that's a really good way to find out if there's somebody that they could connect students with to learn more about. There's always our office. We're always willing to try to make the connections to, it could be alumni, friends of the university, and we really try to make it a point to help students make that connection just to get more information. I had a student yesterday that called or emailed me that we had met last year in a career advising appointment, and she was choosing her major, and she updated me and said that she had changed her major, and she was happy with it, but now she was interested in trying to find out about careers, and she remembered that I had mentioned, she's finance, I'd mentioned about underwriting as one of the opportunities, and she said, I think you told me that your daughter was in that, and I'm like, yes, she's an alum of UA, and so she asked if she could connect with her, and I said, of course, and I'll, you know, we connect. I've got graduate assistants. We've got student assistants in the career center, all of our satellite offices that are great resources when students are just trying to find out more about, you know, the area of study, maybe if they've done an internship, so lots of ways to get information about the career that they're interested in going in. We also encourage them to attend career fairs. If they didn't their sophomore year, certainly junior year is a great time to go in. Employers are really focused on juniors and seniors for the most part, and they can go to our career fairs. We have one in the fall semester in September, and then another in the spring in February. It's actually two days. One day is our general interest in business, which is pretty much all colleges and majors except for the more technical and engineering majors, which is at a different fair, the technical and engineering career fair. This fall, we just had it the week of the 21st, 22nd. There was 151 companies that came both days, and really was a wide variety of opportunities for students just to talk to employers. A lot of them are alumni and are really willing and able to let students know what they can do and what their career options are. This year, we started with You'll See the Stars. This is just a snapshot of some of the companies that came. This was from our program that we handed out at the career fair, but you'll see the stars. Some companies are actually interested in talking to students as early as freshman year, so any of the ones with stars, students that were first year could go by and talk to them. They were really getting a good experience to be able to start at their freshman year and see what it was about. Definitely junior year, we really encourage students to attend and get networking experience at the very least if they're unsure maybe what they want to do. The networking opportunities are really, really incredible. Then, some students may not be necessarily wanting to go into a job right after they graduate, so starting to think about if they're interested in graduate programs, looking into what the requirements are, when they need the timeline of when they need to start thinking about applications. Again, this is a great topic to bring up with faculty there. If it's not research, they are connected within that industry, and they are a great resource to give students some advice as to possibly what are some really good programs that would benefit them to check into for their graduate studies. We also have a graduate school fair. These are graduate programs from all over the country. We had this the first week of October. 56 programs came. They travel. All of these schools travel throughout the state, and they made a stop in Tuscaloosa. We were able to have them come, and so students could really ask them any questions, maybe clarify some things that they saw on the website that they weren't sure of. Being able to speak in person to people who represent the graduate school programs is a great opportunity to, again, get more information. Again, update the resume, mainly so, not only for their job search, but also it would be helpful to give to professors, supervisors, academic, either academic advisors, or organization advisors, because they're going to start thinking about who they're going to need to who they're going to need to have listed as references. If they hadn't already started thinking about that, we've mentioned in previous webinars that really getting connected with faculty is a great way to be able to have those references, and that's something to definitely think about if they haven't already. Again, these references could be from part-time jobs, internships, organization advisors, faculty, anybody that could really speak on their behalf to a prospective employer. So, that is pretty much the third year career action plan. Again, these are the services that we offer. Again, we offer these in all of our locations, in all of our offices, and so, again, at any time a student needs to reach out, we are always more than willing and available to help them whatever they need to talk about. So, thank you again, and I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Susan, for this presentation. It was very helpful. If you have other students that are first or second year, please go back and watch those videos. It will be very beneficial to you as well, but again, thank you for joining us and Roll Tide.