Monday, October 25, 2010

Tap into Your Alma Mater’s Career Services

If you’re a recent college graduate or one from years past, tap into the career services and alumni offerings at your alma mater, particularly if you’re job searching. College and university career services offerings are almost always free, and alumni membership usually has either no, nominal, or an affordable tiered structure to annual dues.
The following are just a sampling of offerings alumni may find at their college's or university's career services department or through alumni groups:
  • Access to assessment tools to identify interests, values, and skills
  • Access to resource libraries that can link users to business databases, company databases, industry and salary information, and more
  • Assistance with researching and applying to graduate school
  • Help in interview preparation including mock video interviews
  • Assistance with writing resumes and cover letters including samples, templates, and critiques
  • Access to college-sponsored job boards for posting a resume and perusing job listings
  • Invitations to in-person and virtual job and career fairs
  • Input and guidance from career counselors
  • Help in identifying and implementing effective job search strategies
  • Access to alumni mentoring program
  • Invitations to alumni networking and career development events
  • Access to alumni business directory with information, such as contact names, companies, positions, locations, and industry
  • Information about alumni LinkedIn group, Facebook page, blogs, and other online networking groups
Remember, one of the key goals of the career services department at colleges and universities is to help students and graduates, including alumni, with job placement and their professional success. Career services professionals, therefore, work to foster relationships and partnerships with employers, and contribute to the employer’s job candidate pool. This is often viewed as one of the most valuable benefits offered by career services.

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