This Is Not My
First Career A Case for Non-Traditional Hiring in Fraternity/Sorority Advising Viancca Williams
When I was twenty years old, I served as chair of our
university’s Homecoming Committee. The committee’s advisor paused in the middle of the meeting, looked at me, and said, “You need to do this.” The “this” she meant was student affairs; that was the first time anyone suggested I consider working in this field. Following that encounter, a few other influential student affairs professionals in my life (including my fraternity/sorority advisor and the Dean of Students) reiterated the suggestion. The thought was appealing, but at the time, I was not economically or developmentally ready for graduate school or the field of student affairs. Additionally, I had my sights set on a particular prize: to land a full-time job with an amazing non-profit organization that helped develop me during high school and much of my college career. Throughout college, I worked for the organization part-time, creating training manuals and developing resources for the organization’s programs. As I saw older peers I looked up to and learned from land full-time jobs with this organization, I was inspired to follow a similar path. The August after my graduation, my wish came to fruition. In my first postgraduate career, I worked for a nonprofit organization where I created and piloted two programs from the ground up. I also facilitated multiple
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programs focused on diversity, inclusion, and leadership development concepts for high school and middle school students as well as non-profit and for-profit organizations. This role gave me a wealth of knowledge I find myself using in my work as a fraternity and sorority advisor: strategic planning, budgeting, grant writing, outcomes assessment, volunteer management, mentoring skills and learning strategies. I also learned what it means to work for an organization strategically guided by a board of directors and operationally run by its employees, how to cultivate donor relations, and the effects the economy can have on operation. While I did not recognize it at the time, the parallels to higher education were uncanny. Unfortunately, within a year, I was job searching as the post-September 11 world started to have its effect on the economy, and my position was eliminated due to lost funding. I found myself in a frenzy trying to make sure I was able to sustain myself, and I landed upon an interesting opportunity in the insurance industry. This role was another great pre-higher education boot camp, and I did not even realize it. While not lucrative, my time in corporate America taught me a few things: the importance of customer service and maintaining your cool in high stress situations, how to ask the right questions to understand the full
