Senior Struggles: what is a gap year and why is it worth my time?

March 14, 2012

A gap year can offer you an open road to opportunity

Follow each week as we present step-by-step suggestions to achieve post-college success with less senior year stress.

What is a gap year?

For most students, a gap year consists of temporarily working, interning or volunteering in between college graduation and graduate school. Career advisers and employers agree that taking some time off from school can lead to valuable life experiences. According to experiential learning coordinator Geni Harclerode, “I’ve never met a student who regretted taking a gap year before beginning grad school.”

There are plenty of benefits to be gained from the experience, however, Harclerode also emphasizes that it’s important to be honest with yourself about the real reason you want to take some time off. A gap year should not be used as a buffer from the “real world” — it should be used as a time to make one-self more prepared for the “real world.” After all, if you’re thinking of taking a year off because you don’t want to go through the agony of the job search, you have to realize that the search will be waiting for you after that year, and that opportunities don’t tend to come through osmosis, you have to chase them.

What can I gain from taking a gap year?

1. Potential to explore career options- some of us didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do when we got to college and some of us still don’t know what we want to do with our lives when we finish college. The best way to solve this issue? Try something! You’ll either like it or not, and you can move on with that knowledge.

2. Opportunity to hone leadership skills- Many programs such as Teach for America and City Year offer a chance to practice real-life leadership skills, the benefits of which will last far beyond the 2-year commitment period.

3. A chance to “give back”- giving back is a great feeling and you probably won’t ever have the opportunity to devote an entire year (or two) doing it once you’ve settled down.

4. Time to travel or try something different before getting tied down- a gap year can be a great time to simply diversify yourself, to try something new and different and to become a more interesting person. You’ll have plenty of cocktail party stories to tell for the rest of your life if you spend two years in Malawi working for the Peace Corps or teaching in a disadvantaged school in Detroit.

5. Opportunity to beef up the resume and gain experience that you might not have had time for in college- many of us didn’t join as many clubs as we would have liked or participate in as many extracurricular activities. For some it was because we had too much home work, for others, there were just too many um, social events to go to. A gap year is your chance to do all the admirable things you didn’t have time to do in college. Work for a presidential campaign, volunteer in Detroit or work for a non-profit, it’s never too late to become an over-achiever.

What if I’m making the wrong decision?

Ultimately you need to be honest with yourself about your true motives for taking time off from school. Are you doing it because you’re anxious about taking the next step in your education or career? Or, have you weighed the benefits and risks and determined that taking some time to explore something different is a valuable way to spend the year?

Photo credit: noizephotography / CC BY 2.0

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Posted by Nell Gable

Winter Break: Career Advice for the Holiday Season

December 30, 2011

Winter Break is a time to relax and spend time with friends and family, but it can also be a great time to network, re-vamp your job search and reflect on exactly what it is you’d like to do with your life — after all, you’ve probably been asked about it a few times already the past couple weeks! The Career Center is giving you the gift of great advice this winter, so check out these previously posted blog articles before your New Year’s Eve party:

Freshman Friday: Thanksgiving Break Questions

Senior Struggles: Revamp your job search over the holidays

How to Network Over the Holidays

The View from the Thanksgiving Table

Happy New Year from The Career Center!

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Posted by Nell Gable

Senior Struggles: Revamp your job search over the holidays

November 16, 2011

Follow each week as we present step-by-step suggestions to achieve post-college success with less senior year stress.

Many companies take a break from hiring from Thanksgiving until after New Years, so this time can be ideal for regrouping and preparing for the next phase of the job search. In between holiday parties this winter, take some time to evaluate each aspect of your job search approach. It’s easy to get tired of the daunting process, so take a break from applying to jobs to reflect, rejuvenate and refresh. Here are some things to consider:

Resume and Cover letter(s): have you done anything worth adding to your list of credentials/experience this semester? While you’re home, try asking some family members or family friends to take a look at your resume and give you some feedback. This could be a great opportunity to do some networking as well as gain career advice.

What is your focus?: Have your career interests changed in the past semester? If you’ve been taking advantage of the career fairs and networking events then chances are you’ve become aware of some new opportunities. Perhaps you don’t want to go into finance after all! Again, use holiday parties and family gatherings to seek career insight.

Informational interviewing: Before you go home for the holidays, try reaching out to someone in your hometown area for an informational interview in a field you might be interested in. This can be advantageous for two reasons. First, you will learn about the field. Ask why they chose their career, how they got to where they are and what the job involves. The other benefit is the chance to build your network. By asking for advice, not just a job, you open the door to building a relationship with that person. Once you’ve gotten to know them and their work, you can eventually shift the conversation to helping you find a job.

Practice your elevator pitch: make sure you can tell someone who you are and where you want to go in 30 seconds or less. This doesn’t have to be the exact position you want, but at least the type of work you’re interested in and why. You never know who you’ll be standing behind at the grocery store.

Read, Read, Read: It’s easy to get stuck in the college bubble and forget that there is a whole world outside of Ann Arbor. Yet, any career person will tell you that up-to-date knowledge of the field you’re interested in entering is essential to success. So, take some time to catch up on news about your dream job or industry.

Update your Social Networking Profiles: Flesh out your LinkedIn profile, delete those scandalous pics, and start tweeting about things that are relevant to your chosen career field. Social networking is hugely important to hiring managers and should not be ignored.

Catch up on sleep: somehow the future always seems brighter after a solid 8 hours of sleep.

There’s nothing like some turkey, sleep and free-time to remind you that all will work out. Take plenty of time to relax over the holidays, but use the breaks wisely. By revamping your approach to the job hunt, you can return to it in January ready to search for a job like it’s your job (pun intended).

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Posted by Nell Gable

Start preparing for Fall Career Expo 2011

September 22, 2011

Fall Career Expo is just around the corner (October 4th and 5th, to be exact), and we know it can be stressful trying to prepare for a career-related event so quickly after you get back to campus. We’ll be providing more advice about Expo in the upcoming week, but here are a couple things to get you started:

10 Days of Expo
Last year we wrote 10 blog posts in the 10 days leading up to Fall Career Expo. The posts covered quite a few topics that will help you prepare, and it’s still very relevant:

Day One – Kick off your search
Day Two – Should you attend?
Day Three – What’s in a name?
Day Four – Researching organizations
Day Five – What do I say to recruiters?
Day Six – What should I wear?
Day Seven – Management/Leadership Development Programs
Day Eight – Take your preparation to the next level
Day Nine – How to follow-up with recruiters
Day Ten – Last Minute Tips

Resume Help
You’ll want to bring copies of your resume to the Expo and, knowing that many students need help with that, we have a few extra offerings. You should first check out our Resume Builder, located within Career Center Connector. The Resume Builder offers step-by-step help and formatting options, so you can just focus on the content! We’re also staying open late on 9/27, 9/28, 9/29, 10/3 for Resume Review Nights. Many of the times are booked, but you might still be able to squeeze into one of the last few spots if you hurry.

Be sure to stay connected to The Career Center for more help over the next week in preparing for Expo. You can also stay up to date by keeping an eye on the constantly updated list of participating organizations.

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Posted by Scott Tsuchiyama

10 Days of Expo: Last-minute tips

September 29, 2010

The Career Center’s Fall Career Expo is finally here!  You can take a look at our previous nine days of advice and featured employers if you missed anything, but we’re not going to inundate you with too much additional info today.

With that in mind, here’s just a few last-minute things to think about today before heading to the Expo:

  • Print copies of your resume beforehand.  Sure, you could print copies at the Union when you get there, but be prepared to wait in a huge line for a computer.  The basic printer paper in those machines isn’t great anyway, so your best bet is to print at home using some nicer quality resume paper.
  • Don’t forget a pen/pencil and notebook so that you can write down a few notes about who you’ve talked to and what you talked about.  This will come in handy later when you follow-up with recruiters.
  • If you expect that your shoes/heels will hurt your feet, consider wearing sandals or tennis shoes for the walk over.  You can change when you get to the Union and at least stave off that uncomfortable feeling for a little while.
  • Even for the most confident person, Expo can be a little intimidating at first.  We’ll have a Career Center info table set up, so you can stop by and chat with us if you need some in-the-moment pointers or a confidence boost!

Remember, these organizations are here to see you!  Smile, offer up a firm handshake, and go meet some potential employers!

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Posted by Scott Tsuchiyama

The Career Center’s Guide to…The Career Center.

September 1, 2010

Welcome (back) to campus! Jobs and internships might not be the first thing on your mind when you get to Ann Arbor, but if you wait to take advantage of some Career Center resources, you might be missing out. Here’s a quick guide to some of the services and resources we offer, broken down by academic year:

Our home, 3200 Student Activities Building

Freshman Year

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to know exactly what you want to do with your career before coming in to our office! As a freshman, we can help you explore a variety of interests and career options in order to give you some ideas, or narrow down the list that you already have. Along with your academic advisor, we can also help you think about how your choice of major will impact your career, and recognize the skills that you’ll develop inside the classroom. While your first job may seem far off, a couple discussions with a career advisor during freshman year can start you on the right track for future years.

Sophomore Year

As a sophomore, you’re likely exploring a few career options in greater depth (or may have already chosen a career path). Along with your academic advisor, we can help you think about selecting a major, and the skills that those courses will allow you to develop. We can also show you a number of resources that will come in handy as you try to understand which potential career is the best fit for you. Experience outside the classroom is important, so make an appointment in the fall or early winter semester to discuss what you can do over the summer (intern, volunteer, work part-time) to help move toward selecting a career path for yourself, or gaining experience in an area if you’ve already started on a particular path.

Junior Year

According to a survey of 2010 graduates, students who took part in an internship program are more likely to have received a job offer than their peers who decided to forgo the experience. The summer after junior year is particularly important, as many employers use those internships as an opportunity to ‘test drive’ potential full-time hires. Just like your preparation for next year’s job search, it’s important to start early as you look for summer internships. Some companies start looking for interns as early as September, attending the Fall Career Expo and posting positions on Career Center Connector. But depending on the industry, timelines can vary greatly. Make an appointment to come discuss what the timeline looks like for your industry, to polish your resume and cover letter, and to learn about how building your professional community and informational interviewing can make next year’s job search a lot easier.

Senior Year

If you’re a senior, the question about what you’ll be doing nine months from now is looming in the back of your mind. Results from a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers show that over 70 percent of seniors with job offers prior to graduation were career center users. The more frequently a senior used career services, the more likely he/she would receive an offer.

If you feel like you haven’t given your career much thought, come in for an appointment early in the fall semester. We can discuss job search timelines, and help you better understand the steps you need to take to prepare yourself for the job search.

If you have a clear idea of your plan after graduation, utilize resources like Career Center Connector and the Fall Career Expo (and other events) as early as September and October. Some organizations complete their primary recruiting right as students return to campus, for full-time positions that will begin during the summer. You can also make an appointment to discuss how to expand your professional network, touch up your resume and cover letter, or brush up on interviewing skills.

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Posted by Scott Tsuchiyama

Making the most of your summer internship: last words

August 18, 2010

Fall is almost here, and that means that for many of you, summer internships are wrapping up. We’ve already talked about ways to make the most of your summer internship, and some next steps. Today I want to add a few final thoughts that build on some of the work you’ve been doing all summer.

"goodbye" sign and stop sign

Wait! Before you leave...

You should have been keeping track of your projects and accomplishments this summer, paying particular attention to how the results you achieved can be quantified. While it’s fresh in your mind, why not update your resume right now? You’ll want to tailor each resume you send to various employers throughout the year, but getting the basics down now will keep you from having to scramble or rack your brain in the middle of a hectic school year to get everything updated.

Hopefully you’ve been fortunate enough to identify a mentor within your industry, but even if you haven’t it’s still important to maintain connections with the professional network that you’ve started to build. Whether you plan to continue with that organization/industry or not, the people you’ve worked with have first-hand knowledge of your skills and abilities, so they’re a natural fit to be able to help you in the future. Send thank you notes (or emails) liberally, and be sure to connect with your former co-workers on LinkedIn. Doing nothing isn’t as bad as burning bridges, but it’s also a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to expand your community of industry professionals.

The last piece deals with reflection. You’ve had the summer to experience what it might be like to work in your chosen profession, and considered what you like and don’t like about it. Now it’s important to evaluate your fit considering things like work/life balance, company culture, and work style. If that dream internship isn’t what you thought it would be, now is the time to consider shifting your career plans. While you don’t want to make that sort of decision lightly, it’s better to start thinking about it now, rather than months down the road when you’re about to graduate and worried about your job search.

(And while you’re at it, consider paying it forward by describing your internship on internshipratings.com. Future applicants will love to know about your experience, whether it was good or bad.)

Remember that The Career Center still has regular hours for the rest of the summer, so if you’d like to come in before classes start to discuss presenting the experience on your resume, connecting with your newly-formed professional community, or further developing your career story and future path, please schedule an appointment online Otherwise, we’ll see you in a few weeks at the start of fall semester!

Photo credit:Peter Kaminski / CC BY 2.0

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Posted by Scott Tsuchiyama

Making the most of your summer internship: next steps

June 16, 2010
red and grey steps

It's time to step up your internship game

About a month ago we talked about how to make the most of your summer internship. Hopefully you’ve had some time to get your footing, so we’re back this month to revisit the three topics we covered last time, and build on them:

In part 1, I mentioned that you should be trying to take initiative. If you’ve been able to take on any of your own projects since then, it’s important to track them. Toward the end of the summer, you’ll want to be able to make the case that you should receive a full-time job offer, or at least use this experience on your resume while you’re applying for other jobs/internships. If you don’t think about how you’ll incorporate this experience into your resume, you’ll have a tough time articulating it later on, when it’s been months since you’ve thought about it. Come up with ways you can measure the impact that you’re having right now, and write down some specifics about what you’re doing so that you can remind yourself later on when you need to talk about it in an interview, or write a bullet for your resume.

I also discussed the importance of networking, and you might have had the chance by now to meet a few full-time employees that are working in a role you’d love to have 1, 3, or 5 years from now. If the two of you have developed a strong rapport, you should consider developing a mentor/mentee relationship. Brazen Careerist’s Penelope Trunk offers some advice on how to get started:

This person can be any age, but the most effective mentor is someone approximately five years ahead of you in your career. A person at this level will know how to navigate your organization at the spot you’re in, and the person will remember what it is like to be where you are. This person should be someone you admire and someone who has good communication skills.

Be sure to check out her other mentorship-related tips in her post, 7 steps to finding and keeping a mentor.

Lastly, I encouraged you to take the summer to evaluate the company and industry while you’re actually living in it. As a next step, start keeping track of these likes/dislikes and reflect on them. For instance, if you’re finding that your internship leaves too little time to enjoy yourself outside of work, think about what your ideal work/life balance situation would be. Every industry (and company) differs in this respect, so it’s important to think about how much of your time and opportunities outside of work that you’re willing to give up in order to be successful in your chosen profession.

It’s also a good time to dig deep and isolate whether the characteristics that you like/dislike about your internship are due to company structure and culture, or due to the leadership and management style of your immediate supervisor (or both). For example, you may like your boss’ open-door policy, but is that practiced throughout the organization? It’s important to figure this out, because you don’t want one particular aspect of your internship (bad or good!) to completely color your experience in this field if it’s not the norm.

I’ll be posting a few more things geared specifically toward interns this summer, so be sure to subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already. And don’t forget that we’re also available for phone appointments if you’re not in Ann Arbor, so you can still speak to an advisor even if you’re out of town!

Photo credit: judepics on Flickr.

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Posted by Scott Tsuchiyama

The Value of a Summer Job

May 19, 2010

Landscaping

Summer jobs can provide valuable skills if you market them the right way

When I was in undergrad, I thought I was too busy trying to pay for college and searching for a career to look into internships. Many of my friends pursued internships or went abroad, but I needed to be making money in the summer. I had no idea how to find an internship that paid nor did I know what I was looking for, so I always settled with wage-earning positions each summer. One year I worked for a carpenter as his assistant. Another two summers I worked for a landscaping company and picked up some hours at a retail store. The rest of my summers (I was in college for six years, so there were a lot of summers!) I worked in a dining hall here at Michigan.

As I went through each of these experiences, I thought they were only good for the wages that they gave me. I thought that they were just something to help me pay for school and that I was missing out on ‘more relevant’ experiences like internships and study abroad. While it would have been nice to have those experiences, the ones I did have were still very valuable and helped me develop a very marketable skill set.

So how are retail positions, food service positions, and manual labor positions, and the like valuable? Well, what makes any experience valuable? Employers and graduate schools are looking for applicants who have great verbal and written communication skills, who are flexible, can work in a fast-paced environment, are problem-solvers, and have great interpersonal skills among others things (see the 2010 Top 5 skills according to NACE’s Job Outlook Survey of employers). You may not know this yet, but I guarantee no matter what summer job you had, it probably developed and demonstrated at least some of the skills listed above.

I challenge you to think about those different summer jobs and write down how you demonstrated or developed each of the skills listed above. Once you have done this, try to edit this language into bullet points for your resume. Believe it or not, by completing this exercise, you have done most of the work of presenting your summer experiences as valuable ones. This exercise is the basis for writing content for your resume and cover letters and it also helps prepare you for interviews.

Still lost on how to market these experiences? Come into the Career Center for an advising appointment so that we can work together to determine how to best market your experiences no matter how little confidence you may have in them. We can help improve your presentation of your summer experiences and build confidence around the experiences you had whether they were internships and study abroad programs or jobs working at the local pool, mall, restaurant, or landscaping company.

Photo credit: sidewalk flying on Flickr.

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Posted by jungaz

Resume Writing: The Art of Story Telling

November 2, 2009

Madeleine L’Engle, author of many young adult books including the classic A bedtimestoryWrinkle in Time, once wrote about writing: “No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.”  I’m sure L’Engle was not speaking of resumes, but I think her message applies.  Your resume must engage the reader — the search committee or hiring authority.  And it must do so quickly and consistently.  This is always true about resumes; it becomes even more critical for anyone changing or shifting their career focus.

How do you tell your story in engaging ways?  In particular, how do you keep your story relevant for non-academic employers?  Consider these tips as a starting point:

* Your best stuff should come early in your document, and it should have the most space devoted to it.

This becomes especially important when considering jobs outside the academy.  Your best experiences may or may not be the traditional academic experiences of teaching or research.  Or you may decide that significant volunteer experiences say more about your value to your target employers than your list of awards.  The bottom line is that your resume structure and format — what you include, where, to what extent – should be based on the added value of each experience.  So you’ll need to think critically as you structure your document to highlight your best stuff.

* Your academic experiences may need to be reconsidered in ways that speak important truths to the reader.

For example, you could probably describe the value of your dissertation process in many ways.  An academic vita may include committee members and a dissertation abstract.  For a resume, these parts of the process may be less important, or not important at all.  On your resume you may decide that other aspects of the dissertation may add value.  Perhaps this value is defined as being able to understand and synthesize large quantities of information; or forming and defending independent conclusions; or working effectively under pressure to meet deadlines.  Your task for the resume is to determine how your readers will value your experiences, and communicating that effectively.

* Guide your reader through your resume in intentional ways so that your strengths are obvious.

You can control how someone reads your document by how you present your information.  For instance, some career changers believe that an opening section labeled something like Career Highlights or Summary of Qualifications provides the chance to define yourself on your own terms, highlighting themes for the reader to look for.  Remember that things like section headings are prime real estate on your document, often bolded and set off in margins.  Generic headings like “Experience” or “Volunteering” won’t have the same punch as something like “Leadership Experience” or “Community Involvement.”

I hope these tips generate some creative thinking as you develop the content and structure of your resume.  Feel free to comment below on what has worked best for you, or ask your questions.

And if the L’Engle quote does not ring true for you, consider this advice from another prolific novelist, the suspense writer Elmore Leonard: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Photo credit: superhua on Flickr

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Posted by tomlehker

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