Year by Year Guide to Support Students in their Career

Freshman

Career exploration within interests is a great thing to do at this time. Encourage students to put themselves out there with opportunities they see within the college or on campus. This is the time for exploration and experimentation to help students find clarity in the professional direction they want to go in. Students who get involved early often times experience increased success throughout their college and professional career!

For students in a more direct major to career path, or for students who feel confident in the direction they’re already moving, encourage them to start getting involved now to build that resume up strong.

Introduce the Career Services Office and encourage them to meet with their college specific career consultant, even if just for a meet and greet to learn more. You could even incorporate extra credit or a class assignment for meeting with a career consultant. We would even love to come to your classroom and introduce ourselves. This is a great way to make freshman students aware of their resources on campus and comfortable with utilizing them!

Sophomore

As students enter the spring semester of their sophomore year, they are starting to blast through their general education requirements and moving into more degree-specific coursework. This is such an exciting time as they start to learn more about topics that they are passionate about. Sophomore year is an ideal time to really press into some degree specific involvement. That may be a club, picking up research in a lab, joining a student association on campus, applying for work study, or applying for their first summer internship. Refer them to a career consultant if they need help finding these opportunities and applying to them. Most sophomores are competing against Juniors so getting their applications documents to a competitive level and doing great on their interview, will help them land opportunities.

Junior

Encourage students to get an internship for the upcoming summer. This is one of the last chances to get some relevant work experience in before applying to permanent positions in their senior year. It could be helpful to have an internship/job announcement at the beginning of class, informing them about positions you know about in their field. If they need assistance in getting application documents dialed to submit, feel free to refer them to career services.

Senior

Most students are looking to apply to permanent positions in their field, graduate school, or a temporary job in their field while taking a gap year. No matter what path they’re following as they wrap up their undergraduate degree, it is always a great idea to sharpen up the resume and make sure everything they’ve done during the last four years is communicated well on their resume. Send them our way at the beginning of their senior year to get a jump on this!

As spring semester closes in and students continue applying for jobs – interviews start and so do the nerves that come with that. We are here to help with interview preparation and practice interviews.