One of the biggest connections between these articles is the use of a Career Development Center early, and looking into a professional career early. It has been highlighted many times that it will be easier to find a job if a student starts early, sometimes as early as high school. This can be done by creating the networks that might be needed in ways such as LinkedIn and Facebook. When using these platforms, it is important to remember to present the self as professional. Many people, especially within the younger generation, tend to use their social media platforms in ways that can give them a negative interpretation, and this can be a problem if employers are using these platforms to form an opinion on your character.
One thing that really stood out to me in 6 Things You Must Do To Get Your First Job After College was the mention of finding an internship early and creating a mentor relationship with a role model early on. These are two things that I believe in the most in terms of success after college. Once I realized my calling career, I immediately took to the networks that I already had to find at the very least a one day shadowing experience. I thought this would be necessary for two reasons: 1) The experience would help me decide if I was ultimately making the right decision to head towards that career path, and 2) I needed the experience from other University’s and College. It became immediately clear that Not everyone school was run the same way as Kutztown University, and that peaked my interest, I needed to get a taste of how other schools did things. I found a shadowing experience at Alvernia University with a mother of one of my connections in their Orientation program for both new students and for transfers! I decided that it was necessary that I continue to find these opportunities, and was recently one of five undergraduate interns selected to attend the Delaware Valley Student Affairs Conference, and this is where the mentor relationships became apparent. While at the conference, I was witness to how detrimental networking, especially in the field of work that I was headed for, was to bettering myself. Throughout the day I was able to talk to employers from different fields within Higher Ed, but I also established a mentor. This person is someone I feel comfortable coming to with questions (and if you are anything like me, you have a million and one questions that need to be answered before you get to the job), bouncing ideas off of, and receiving feedback from. This relationship is someone that guides me through the necessary steps to joining the field of Student Affairs, while letting me know some of the mistakes and lessons that have experienced.
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