Occupation exploration Staff from Career Services urge students to use school resources to assist them in selecting their careers BY LAUREN GOODWIN & ALEXANDRA CLENDENNING
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YU–Hawaii’s Career Services offers students resources to help in their pursuit of degrees and future careers. Resume feedback, mock interviews and remote appointments with a career mentor are just a few options the department offers. Career Development Manager William Numanga, from the Cook Islands, described Career Services to be full of success stories. On its website, he explained the department’s goal is to inform students about BYUH alumni who have gone on to succeed in different career fields and to inspire students to connect with them. He said alumni can share their experiences with students and help connect them to future career opportunities. Career Services offers online and in-person resources to help students discover what they want to do in the future. Among these recourses is the Ohana Network, which is available to all BYUH students. Once students create an account, Numanga said they will instantly be able to connect with thousands of BYUH alumni. He explained the Ohana Network consists of over 36,000 alumni and acts as a directory for students to connect. “There are alumni who are ready to assist and mentor students along their journey to a future career,” he added. Numanga said students need to create a profile and answer some questions about themselves in order to be connected with alumni. Once students have created a profile, employees at Career Services look over their profiles and their MBTI reports, which are the results from the personality test offered at Career Services. Viema Taito, a sophomore from Fiji studying social work and a student specialist at Career Services, said taking her MBTI personality
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test helped her discover her interests and helped her understand herself on a deeper level. Taito said Career Services connects students to mentors who can guide them along the path to a future career or to choosing a major that best suits them. They can also help students find jobs and internship opportunities related to their majors, she added. Taito even said she has her own career mentor who helped her decide on a major. Tserennyam Sukhbaatar, a 2012 marketing graduate from Mongolia, stressed gaining real life experience is important when deciding what to do in the future. He said real working experience will help students know if they need to apply to grad school or understand what company they want to work for. Sukhbaatar said an internship can give students real life experiences without entering the industry fully. Through internship experience, he said students worth as future employees will increase, as well as their understanding of the field. Nasanbold Sukhbaatar, a 2019 hospitality and tourism management graduate from Mongolia, said he did extensive research about what career path he wanted to pursue in his chosen field and started to learn necessary skills related to his career. Doing an internship or academic training will bring students a greater perspective about the industry and the career, he said. To learn more, visit the Career Services page on the BYUH website, where there are links and resources that can help students along their journeys to future careers. •
The Ohana Network
MBTI Personality Test
Virtual Appointments
