As many seniors can relate, I, too, have been conducting a job search. These two words in and of themselves can inflict a look of pain on most people they are mentioned to, especially if the person has experienced one before. The process is long, tedious, and time-consuming. I know that I, as well as many others, have found myself asking what the Career Development Center is honestly there for. I’ve always slightly doubted its usefulness and therefore barely attempted to use its service.
I recently learned that they can actually be helpful and that they don’t just take up room in the DCC. After becoming horribly frustrated with searching and searching for jobs, applying for them, following up, and everything that goes along with it, I decided to schedule an appointment to see if it would amount to anything. In the end it couldn’t hurt and it would be a good excuse not to be doing work. So I went online to their website. It was hard to find on RPInfo because it is oddly classified as Career Services as opposed to Career Development Center or CDC. Once I found it though, I scheduled an appointment online. This made it easy since I didn’t have to pick up a phone or anything.
I got there early and at the time of my appointment we sat down in the CDC Café and I quickly realized that these people really do want to help you and eventually saw that they have looked into places and sites that can help make job searching a lot easier. They gave me some pointers on how to present myself to others and even mentioned things about my resume I hadn’t thought of before.
My half hour appointment ran long. When I left an hour later, I had a lot of good ideas and even some hope about that eventually the job search would end and hopefully without too much more pain.
This got me to thinking—I’ve been here for four years, spent many hours looking for internships and summer jobs, and they probably could have helped me with this. I paid the $5 charge to use their services and even have searched the RedHawk JobLink for openings but never actually asked them.
So if you are a freshman, sophomore, or junior out there I recommend stopping in and giving them a shot to do their job. It may actually surprise you, and they can really help.
