Is it too early to get a head start on your future career?
Lauren Fitch // Organizations Editor
High Point University’s Career and Professional Development Services helped me score not one, but four internships over the course of my college career. I’ve worked at an investment firm, a fashion magazine, a literary agency, and this summer I will be heading off to work for a law firm before I begin law school at University of Maryland in the fall. I know that freshmen don’t always feel like they should be taking up space in Career and Professional Development Services, but if I’m being honest, that’s my number one piece of advice to freshmen. Get an early start.
Not only can career and internship services help you to perfect your resume, but they can also help you decide which electives to take or what class to choose in order to best match what you want to do. They can also help with graduate school, and they have connections at some amazing companies.
I started working when I was 15 in the Parks and Recreation Department, so I was pretty good at learning how to do a resume and cover letter myself. However, I really struggled with motivating myself to start. I’m from a pretty working class area of Baltimore, and searching for white-collar jobs and networking just wasn’t covered in high school. My father owns a construction company and my mother cleans houses, and neither of them went to college. While I was definitely taught the value of hard work and dedication by my parents, they couldn’t exactly help me with connections. I had no idea what the word “LinkedIn” even meant. I had received invites to join from friends, but it was a foreign world of business and professionalism that I just had never experienced before. To be honest, I didn’t go in earlier because I was embarrassed.
Unlike a few other experiences I’ve had, Career and Professional Development Services made me feel completely at ease. The woman helping me understood my background and that I had no idea how to network or even put myself out there. She helped me find out how to get business cards, how to fit my resume to my industry, and how I should match my cover letter to my resume. She also helped me to decide which skills to include; after all, “childcare” is not a great skill for journalism work. I felt less lost and more on par with my fellow students. I learned where to look for work, and that LinkedIn can be a great tool for networking. I even got my first internship specifically because I attended HPU.
Career and Internship services aren’t just there to help you find internships, write resumes and set up your LinkedIn profile. They are also there to help you figure out what you would like to do for a career after school.
One of my friends struggled freshman year with figuring out what major she wanted. She came in as an exercise science major on a pre-physician assistant track, but once she started to not do well in her science classes, she decided to look into a new career path. She went into Career and Professional Development Services and they had her take a bunch of personality tests to see which major she fit into best. Through this, she discovered that her passion was photography and videos, so she declared a new major in electronic media production. Overall, the Career and Professional Development Services should be utilized all four years, because every year here you could be preparing for your future career.
It can be embarrassing to have to ask your friends how to apply for jobs, so as a graduating senior, I offer this advice: start early. Every time you apply to a job or an internship, it gets easier. I’ve had constant internships for the past two years, and I’ve held at least two jobs at a time since coming to college. Career and Professional Development Services is there to help. Just remember to take advantage of it.