Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

Written by Alex Bolten

   

         Happy Groundhog Day! While this post may have nothing to do with the actual Groundhog Day, it does have something to do with advancing your career. This time of year, we get so caught up in things like our school work, the bad weather, and so on that we shirk our responsibilities to ourselves to advance our careers.

            This week and next, there will be career fairs all over campus with companies from all over the country. It’s important that you make sure you’re doing what you can to get ready. These companies are hiring people from all kinds of majors, so there’s a spot for you somewhere! Now, this can be a repetitive process, like the movie “Groundhog Day,” but, as in the movie, you should keep at it until things go right.

            Here are some tips to get you started:

1.              Resume: take your resume to the CCO and have them critique it for you. It may be hard sometimes to get it just right, and the CCO is the place to go to help you do this.

2.              Research: make sure you sit down and research the different career opportunities being offered by the companies that are going to be at the fairs. Don’t just blindly walk in there expecting every company to be hiring for your major. This will just get you nowhere.

3.              Network: long lines at the “big” company’s booths? No problem! This would be the perfect opportunity for you to check out some of the “smaller” companies and work on both your interviewing and your networking. It may not be your “dream company,” but it could still give you the opportunity to get to know some people in that particular industry.

4.              Practice: make sure you do mock interviews before you go to the fairs. You can do these alone, or, for better results, with a friend who can ask you random, curveball questions. Again, you don’t want to be unprepared and the recruiters will not think highly of you if you can’t confidently answer a question that’s thrown at you.

Those are my tips for the careers fairs. You can research more, but this should be a good start for you. One important thing to remember is to not get discouraged if things don’t go your way right off the bat. You should consider it practice for either a later company that you visit, or a future career fair. In these types of situations, there’s no such thing as “doing something wrong,” but rather it’s a great opportunity to learn and grow in your career journey.