Who Am I?

How amazing would it be to have a career that properly fits you and keeps you excited to come back day-after-day?

You're thinking, "impossible BUT that'd be great if it was possible." Be assured, it is indeed possible! Finding your ideal career field becomes slightly easier once you can concretely answer the question: Who Am I?

Though it may not be in the forefront of your mind, you are a combination of your interests (what you do in your spare time), your skills (what you do well, what others tell you that you do well), and your values (qualities important to you). A complete mixture of those personal components also equates to your career goal(s).

Just think about it, a career that allows you to do what you like doing (interests), utilize those things your good at (skills), and all while upholding your values - sounds fairly ideal to me.

Don't freight, developing a career goal your absolutely satisfied with will not happen over night. But take the first step now - list out your interests, skills, and values (5-8 in each category should suffice).

By having your career goal in mind, finding that ideal career field will becoming a lot easier. If you're still in a pickle, reach out to Career Services {414-288-7423}. We love and are happy to help.

PS - if you like the CSC blog and find it helpful, share it with a friend or classmate :-) Spread the CSC Joy!!

Knowing & Owning Your Skills

PSST… those of you hoping to begin a career after graduation read this!

A very wise person once told me that a résumé gets you an interview, and an interview can
then lead to you getting a job/career. Now I know we’ve all heard before, from some person or another, to just try our hardest and put our best foot forward during interviews. Here’s the problem with that, if your résumé is not impressive enough to get you the interview, you’ve just missed out on your opportunity to wow the interviewer(s) in person.

So you ask, “How do I create a résumé that will shine above the rest and put me closer to the top of the interviewing list?” There are countless ways to make it happen, one being, knowing and owning your skills. MU CSC very recently had an On the Road event that presented the topic of “Identifying and Building Your Skills.” We learned that employers have standards, along with expectations. They desire for potential new hires to possess good communication, technology, critical thinking, problem solving, and leadership skills, just to name a few. A significant amount of job descriptions will list (directly and indirectly) the skills new employees should have.

So now you ask, “what does this have to do with my résumé?” Well, here’s a simple exercise to aid you in pulling all of those pieces together:

1. Grab a blank sheet of paper and write down all of the skills and job qualifications the employer has mentioned in the job description
2. Now place a check next to each skill/qualification you feel as if you possess
3. Next, think of an experience, or two, in which you’ve displayed that skill
4. Last step, and most important, incorporate those skills into your résumé so that
   employers can clearly see why you’re the ideal candidate for the job.
   

That’s it! With three easy steps you’ve just intensified and enhanced your résumé.

“WAIT”, you scream, “I’m not sure if I can do this on my own.”

My reply, “No worries, that’s what the MU CSC Career Counselors and Advisors are here for.
Either stop by – Holthusen Hall, first floor – or give us a call at (414) 288-7423 to set up an appointment.”

What are your skillz?

What do scrapbooking, keeping a planner and talking like there’s no tomorrow all have in common? Well, maybe nothing for you, but for me, they comprise the things that I am best at doing. In short, they are my skills; skills that I have used to create a major, develop an internship experience and begin a job search in my four years at MU. These "skills" might seem odd…what exactly does scrapbooking have to do with drafting a successful press release, you might ask? However, it’s important to realize that skill sets don’t always envelope only the talents that you learn in class.

Take my example. I have kept a scrapbook since I was about 10, when I first understood that combining pictures with stickers and wacky scissors was way more fun than playing legos with my dweebie brother. Sibling disputes aside, scrapbooking taught me to be creative, to take pride in a final project and to mind details. I started my first planner in 8^th grade, and while I mostly used it for writing down friend’s phone numbers and upcoming school dances, it instilled a discipline for keeping commitments and fostering organizational skills that I still use as a senior in college. Talking? Well, that might be the least impressionable of the three, but public speaking in front of my senior high school class on graduation led to a love for communication that has become more obvious since coming to college (meeting with clients, giving presentations and working in groups, for example).

In brief, these skills helped me decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Want to figure out what your best skills are? Or better yet, how and where you can use them? Sometimes, your skills are more obvious than you think. The Career Services Center is offering their monthly On the Road series in November just for you! Join us as we build and identify individual skill sets with career counselors and a professional representative from Kohl’s Corporate. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention—the free lunch of the month is Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes (yum!). Perfect for chilly November weather, so we’ll see you there!

November's On the Road to Your Career
Powered by Kohl's
Date: Thursday, November 10
Time: 12:30  – 1:20pm
Location: AMU 157
Topic: Building/identifying skill sets
Menu: Swedish meatballs, salad, mashed potatoes, with coffee, hot tea, iced tea and water

“What are my skills?........I don’t even know where to start.”

As a Career Counselor I frequently as students to tell me about their skills and a common response is "I don't even know where to start." That is a very normal response simply because we don't usually go around talking about our skills to everyone we meet. Students gain skills through coursework and class projects, colunteer experiences, internships, part-time jobs, as well as through campus activities. Whether you have developed interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, or more specific career related skills, you will need to talk about them to employers in order to land a job where you can use them. Everyone has skills, it just takes practice to communicate them well.

The good news is that the Career Services Center offers individual appointments to help you learn to communicate the skills that you have worked so hard to acquire. Setting up an appointment is easy; just call the Career Services Center at 414-288-7423.

Jeremy Eudaly

Career Counselor

No Internship? No Problem!

Now that all of you are done with classes for another academic year, most of you are set to work in one manner or another over the summer. While those of us in the "real world" work year-round, and therefore basically always know what we're going to be doing during the summer, the average college student spends a good portion of their spring semester seeking out a summer position.

Usually what many students, and especially sophomores and juniors, are searching for in the summer is an internship. These positions are desirable because they give students a chance to work with a company and gain experience in their field of choice. They also are increasingly becoming a primary method for companies to acquire full-time talent.

But what if you don't have an "internship"? Are you doomed to a life in your parent's basement?

Well, maybe, but it wouldn't be because of that. It's not just about having the intern title on your resume. Look at what skills your desired field requires. Once you identify those, you can find any sort of summer position that will help you hone those skills. BusinessWeek has a great article on this with examples of students that have turned "regular" summer jobs into a valuable piece.

Sure, the intern title is great, but remember what the ultimate goal is. As long as you can put yourself in position to get that job after graduation, you'll be on the right path, fancy title or not.

Me, Myself, and I

There are tons of things you should know about when you are searching for a job. Some of them are simple, like what company you are interviewing with at the time (don't laugh, we've seen this mistake made in the past!). Others can be rather difficult, such as all the trouble shooting problems Google has you answer during interviews.

But if there is one thing you should know more than anything else when looking for employment, it is yourself. After all, you are the product that you are marketing. If you can't talk well about yourself, who can?

So how do you go about knowing yourself? Shouldn't you already know all of these things?

It's very possible that you do know each of these things before the interview. But it's equally possible that you don't know how to articulate them as well as you possibly can. Let's say you tell everyone you are a great communicator. This is a skill that many employers value and covet. If you talk about how you are a great communicator, you better be able to back that up by using your communcation skills to demonstrate that. Otherwise you've lost some credibility right away.

To prepare to talk about yourself, list out all of your skills and abilities. This kind of activity can be daunting for many people, but if you can materialize these traits, it will make it ten times easier for you when speaking with potential employers. In addition to your skills and abilities, make sure you have a solid example that can go along with each of those traits. Again, you don't want to be the person promoting communication skills and not being able to back them up.

A nice way to package all of this together is in what we like to call your 60 second commercial. In just one minute you can market yourself effectively to anyone you meet. The three main points you will want to touch upon are:

1. Where you are now (I'm currently a senior at Marquette University majoring in Chemistry. I am also an intern at XYZ lab where I...)

2. Where you've been (Last summer I worked as a research assistant with Dr. _____ where I worked on...)

3. Where you want to go (I'm looking for a position in _______ where I can use my skills....)

If you can master these simple things about yourself, you will find the job search much much easier. It's not everything you need to know by any means, but the rest of the information is out there for anyone to find. The information on you can only come from yourself.

You Were Working As A Waitress In A Cocktail Bar...

Who doesn't love 80's music?

Lots of students work as a waiter or in a bar. It's pretty good money for a college job. But how do you turn those jobs into something that you can really put on your resume? Does slinging drinks at night really help at all?

The simple answer is yes. Obviously it isn't quite that easy though.

If you are comfortable with it, you should definitely include this sort of position on your resume. It shows you are active while in school, rather than just going to class and studying all the time. Having past experience also can provide for good references too.

So how do you market this? Waiting tables is great, but is a big multinational company going to be looking for that?

Maybe not.

But what you can do is focus on the skills you pick up in your college jobs. Focus on things like inter-personal communication and leadership that can translate across all industries. These are the sorts of things that you can take away from college jobs and turn into assets for your internship or job search. Remember that you're trying to get that next job, and just focus in on the skills that will help you get there from the jobs you already had.