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Encourage your Â鶹´«Ã½ to visit Career and Student Employment Services

Next time you visit Â鶹´«Ã½, drop into the office of Career and Student Employment Services and pick up a business card from one of the career development specialists. When your Â鶹´«Ã½ is feeling anxious about their future, offer the card and say, "Please call this person. They can help you."

Many Â鶹´«Ã½s use their first semester to "settle into" college life, and so the spring semester of the freshman year is the optimal time to start using Career and Student Employment Services. Ask your Â鶹´«Ã½, "Have you visited the career services office?" If you hear, "You only go there when you are a senior," then it's time to reassure your Â鶹´«Ã½ that meeting with a career development specialist can take place at any point—and should take place frequently—throughout a college career.

Career and Student Employment Services offer a full range of career development and job-search help, including:

• Practice interviews
• A network of alumni willing to talk about their jobs and careers
• A library of resources on a wide range of careers
• Workshops on writing resumes and cover letters
• A recruiting program
• Individual advising

Advise your Â鶹´«Ã½ to write a resume

• Writing a resume can be a "reality test" and can help a Â鶹´«Ã½ identify areas that require improvement. 
• You can review resume drafts for grammar, spelling, and content, but recommend that the final product be critiqued by a career coach.
• High school to college transition resume sample

Challenge your Â鶹´«Ã½ to become "occupationally literate"

Ask: "Do you have any ideas about what you might want to do when you graduate?"

If your Â鶹´«Ã½ seems unsure, you can talk about personal qualities you see as talents and strengths. You can also recommend:

• Taking a "self-assessment inventory," such as FOCUS2 or the Myers-Briggs Type
• Talking to favorite faculty members
• Researching a variety of interesting career fields and employers, using resources such as .

A career decision should be a process and not a one-time, last-minute event.

Emphasize the importance of internships

Career and Student Employment Services will not "place" your Â鶹´«Ã½ in a job at graduation. Colleges grant degrees, but not job guarantees, so having relevant experience in this competitive job market is critical.

Your Â鶹´«Ã½ can sample career options by completing internships and experimenting with summer employment Â鶹´«Ã½ or volunteer work.

Why an internship?

• Employers are interested in communication, problem-solving, and administrative skills, which can be developed through internships.
• Employers look for experience on a Â鶹´«Ã½'s resume and often hire from within their own internship programs.
• Having a high GPA is not enough.
• A strong letter of recommendation from an internship supervisor may tip the scale of an important interview in their favor.

To learn about experiential learning Â鶹´«Ã½, such as internships and other part-time employment, have your Â鶹´«Ã½ log into .  WMU Internship Catalog offers ideas for internship employers by major. 

Encourage extracurricular involvement

Part of experiencing college life is to be involved and active outside the classroom. Interpersonal and leadership skills—qualities valued by future employers—are often developed in extracurricular activities. Review at WMU.

Help your Â鶹´«Ã½ to stay up-to-date with current events

Employers will expect Â鶹´«Ã½s to know what is happening around them. Buy your Â鶹´«Ã½ a subscription to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Teach the value of networking

Introduce your Â鶹´«Ã½ to people who have the careers that are of interest. Suggest your Â鶹´«Ã½ contact people in your personal and professional networks for information on summer jobs. Encourage your Â鶹´«Ã½ to "shadow" someone in the workplace to increase awareness of interesting career fields.

Engage with Career and Student Employment Services

Call Career and Student Employment Services at (269) 387-2745 or email wmu-handshake@wmich.edu when you have a summer, part-time, or full-time job opening. The staff will help you find a hard-working Â鶹´«Ã½. If your company hires interns, have the internships listed in . Join the WMU Career Mentors Group in and use your "real world" experience to advise Â鶹´«Ã½s of their career options. 

Adapted from Thomas J. Denham's "A Parents' Guide to Career Development". Courtesy of the , copyright holder.

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