The Office of Career Education and Development teamed up with the College of Business, Information and Social Sciences to present the resume-building event “Resumania” Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the ATS Auditorium.
The event was the start of the three-month long Jump Start Your Job Search program.
John Rindy, the Director of Career Services, noticed that too many students are not searching for jobs early enough in the year.
“Too many people wait until their senior year and then think, ‘Oh, now it’s time to turn on the job-search switch,’ but this is really something that should be prepared for much earlier,” Rindy said.
According to Rindy, that was the main reason that the Career Department and the School of Business decided to come together and create the three-month Jump Start Your Job Search 2012 program.
The majority of the program is designed for seniors within the Business, Information, and Social Sciences realm, but some of the seminars are a great way for underclassmen to begin learning what to expect in a job search and what skills they may need to begin working on for the future.
“It is never too early for students to come to these events,” Rindy said.
He added that even if all the first-year students do is get a feel for the environment, “there is no reason why [they] should not [dress up] and come to at least the ‘Job Search 101’ job fair on campus.”
The entire three-month program incorporates several seminars that will help to improve students’ interviewing and networking skills, and also give them the basics for setting up a professional resume.
The students are then expected to put their knowledge to the test at the job fair on campus on Sept. 27, and also the WestPACS Job Fair on Oct. 17. Students do not need to attend every seminar included; however, each part tends to build off of one another and will be more of a benefit if the majority of them are attended.
“When we fused it all together, there is a nice selection of opportunities here for students to really engage in and really develop themselves,” Rindy said. “I credit the foresight of Dr. Kurt Schimmel, Dean of the College of Business, Information, and Social Sciences, as well as several School of Business professors including Drs. Culp, Buttermore and Orvis for helping to make this happen for the benefit of their students.”
Rindy said that he feels students have not taken advantage of these career-related activities in the past, and is hoping to bring in much more of a crowd this year, especially because many of these seminars that are usually only offered in the spring are being brought to students at an earlier date.
“We love to do the one-on-one appointments, and we are going to continue doing that,” Rindy said. “But if I can work with 30 students at one time and talk about how to do something like a resume and give them the framework, then that is 30 people who can not only go on and do it themselves, but also as we have found in our surveys, about 83 percent of students pass it on to at least one friend. So, now we are reaching 9,000 students in various ways.”
Another way they will be reaching students in is through the Alumni Association and the Green and White Society’s “Backpacks to Briefcases” program. During this program, students have the opportunity to meet with alumni who share similar career paths and begin to network among them.
This has been quite a successful program and the Director of Alumni Engagement, Kelly Bailey, said that it has definitely benefited students in the past, and should help even more so in conjunction with the rest of the Jump Start program.
“For students exploring career paths, they were able to discuss options with alumni in the field and get a sense of how these varying careers would suit their own personal and professional goals,” said Bailey.
Both Bailey and Rindy agree in saying that networking can be one of the most used skills that a college student can walk away with.
“There is a tremendous benefit for the students who participate to practice networking. For some, it’s very natural and for others, it is outside of their comfort zone,” said Bailey. “Sometimes the hardest part of any conversation is starting it. At this event they already have something in common with the room: their shared history at SRU.”
