In this issue:

Articles:

• Reaching Out
• Intern Bridge Publishes Best Practices Book Specifically for Employers
• Career Services in a Post-Modern World
• When a Career Fair is Successful, Students are, Too
• Get to Know your Board
• A Word from Our 2007 Ernie Andrews Scholarship Recipient
• The World is Flat: An Address to Career Centers and Their Responses Towards Diversity and Diversity Recruitment Initiatives
• Framing Career Expectations in Graduating Seniors

Announcements:

• Contribute to Bridges!
• EACE Diversity Advancement Scholarship Call for Applications
• Get Involved with the EACE Public Service Network!
• 2008 Conference Update
• EACE is Growing!
• What’s Happening in Professional Development
• Nominations for Awards & Research Grants Now Being Accepted
• Get Your Students on the Road...With Road Trips to the Real World!
• Welcome New EACE Members!

Reaching Out
by Tom Tarantelli, EACE President; Director, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

I want to take this opportunity to reach out to all the members of EACE and wish you a happy holiday season. The holidays are a time for family and often a time for reflection and renewal as we look forward to a new year.

I also want to use this opportunity to speak about some of the great activities that are taking place throughout EACE and the opportunities that they afford us.

Registration for our annual conference is now open. For all you early birds, this is a chance to save money by registering early. The conference is your opportunity to see friends, build recruiting relationships, and network. The conference is in Providence, Rhode Island, June 18th through June 20th. Mark your calendars, register, and get ready to “Come see things in a new light!”

The Liberal Arts network has put together a wonderful sequence of “Road Trips to the Real World” that are scheduled in January. This is an opportunity for our students to see and ask questions about what it is like to work in some very interesting places.

Keep an eye on our web site and your email for announcements about professional development activities that will provide a means to meet colleagues and hone our skills as recruiting professionals. A small sampling of past activities includes:

Show Me the Money II - The "Ins" and "Outs" of Funding and Collaboration
December 07, 2007

Taking Career Counseling to the Next Level
November 27, 2007

How about Bridges! This is your opportunity to write an article, a book review, or just get your opinion out there! Contact the editor with your ideas. Bridges offers a superb means of communicating to the membership.

Lastly, I want to encourage all members to reach out and tell their colleagues about EACE. We are looking for new members in all categories, but particularly employers who we work with and who can benefit from the networking and professional development opportunities offered by EACE.

If I can borrow from a familiar refrain among some of our college members, “WE ARE EACE!” We are proud and we are moving forward with an exciting agenda for this year and the future. Be a part of it!

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Intern Bridge Publishes Best Practices Book Specifically for Employers
by Rich Bottner, CEO, Intern Bridge, Inc.

When I started Intern Bridge two years ago, my goal was to create innovative ways to improve the internship environment for my peers. Since then, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to speak at several conferences, grow our Internship Study projects (this year with over 100 participating universities), and network with more people than I could have ever imagined.

Last February I realized that despite the progress we were making in the greater Northeast, we could be doing more in other parts of the country. Since it was already on my “life to-do list,” I figured now was as good a time as any to write a book. After many months of what has seemed like endless writing, revisions, and revisions of revisions, the book was finally scheduled for print and was scheduled to become available in late November.

Total Internship Management: The Employer’s Guide to Building the Ultimate Internship Program is targeted to employers, helping them build effective internship programs based on the data gathered by the more than 6,000 student responses to last year’s Internship Study. The guide provides a valuable resource to employers who want to start a brand new program by hosting as little as one intern, and to employers who are interested in improving their existing program.

It examines all the facets of an internship program, including knowing if an organization has what it takes, choosing the best supervisor, marketing the program to students, the importance of working with universities, coaching and evaluating interns, compensation, benefits, and much more. And the guide also includes articles from industry experts, including a legal section and a section on the topic of understanding the millennial generation. My hope is that the book will be utilized by employers throughout the country as folks continue to increase their understanding of the importance of effectively managed internship programs. You can learn more about the guide at www.TheInternBook.com.

The Editor has also asked me to comment on the experience of writing a book. I know that many people (especially in academia) ponder the idea of writing a book on a variety of topics. I must admit that I almost didn’t go through with it. I remember thinking that it was going to be an incredibly daunting and difficult task to complete. But once I started, I quickly realized that it was actually quite a bit of fun. My biggest piece of advice is to take it chapter by chapter. My biggest problem was that I was focusing on the finished product (how “millennial of me”). The project seemed much less goliath when I starting doing that, and ten months later, here I am at completion. I’ve also had the chance to learn about the publishing industry and the pluses/minuses of going with a publisher versus self-publishing. If anyone is considering a book of their own, I’d be happy to share information!

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Career Services in a Post-Modern World
by Andrew T. Cronan, M.A., Director, Fordham University; Adjunct Professor, Fordham College of Liberal Arts

Historically career services offices began as a specialized offshoot of the college counseling center. They were classically designed around a binary relationship between counselor and client and measured results in a qualitative manner. As the field evolved, career service centers began to embrace more quantitative measures and incorporated job offerings, event planning, and other services. Computerization and the internet has more recently further evolved our field into a very modern profession.

In the future I believe that post-modernism will replace modernism in our profession. Post-modernism has many advocates in many fields, but most share a pluralistic worldview, and value complexity. Post-modernism is typically more accepting of diversity and the ambiguity inherent in a complex world. I believe that career professionals will need to move from a modern manner of delivering services to students to a structure that is post-modern.

The first and perhaps most significant change that I experienced in this field was the introduction of the idea that we serve many clients, and not just students. Opportunity lies on the post-modern side of a transformed world. One of the first places to experience this post-modern viewpoint in career services is by re-envisioning our relationship with employers. To do so in the complicated and structured environment of higher education requires a solution that satisfies to a significant degree the needs of all involved stakeholders. Hence the creation and implementation of the program described here.

The Challenges to the Career Center
Career Centers should:

• Educate students in decision-making and job exploration
• Create job opportunities for students and promote them in a fair and equitable manner
• Assist employers with their recruiting needs
• Supply outcomes data to interested parties (board of trustees, alumni, potential donors, employers, prospective students and their parents, etc.)
• Assist faculty to facilitate student placement
• Meet university guidelines, for fundraising and web content for example
• Improve perception of university benefiting alumni/ae of the university
• Work within ethical guidelines as described by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)
• Find creative solutions in complex environments with many stakeholders

Core Partnership
The best interests and needs of all the involved parties dictate that a workable solution must appeal to students, employers, career centers, faculty and other administrators, as well as Alumni/ae. The career center should accept the burden of finding a solution or risk becoming irrelevant. Furthermore, career centers have accepted the responsibility of being the leader in this function, per the ethics of the NACE.

Career centers receive a budget from the university, including compensation for employees, office space, and supplies. To provide many of the services expected of the university, career centers have traditionally charged fees for services (such as career fairs, on-campus recruiting, and job postings). Increasingly career centers accept sponsorship from employers in the form of advertising in the brochure circulated on the day of an event. Some career centers have embraced and even sought out sizable contributions from recruiters, accepting center naming and building creation.

At Fordham University, Career Services underwent an evaluation of the services provided and the revenue generated. We discovered the need to increase service offerings to students and provide greater recruiting return on investment for employers. By analyzing the recruiters who supported the career center with regular attendance at events and maintained a presence with our students, we identified a core base of employers with whom we could start to build a solution.

In conversations with these employers, the career center repeatedly heard the desire amongst recruiters to “increase their presence/brand on campus,” or to “reach students,” or to “tell their story.” This must be balanced with career centers’ responsibility to provide a fair and equitable recruiting environment.

A plan to bundle services to recruiters was devised. By packaging the entire year’s service offerings (fall and spring career fairs, on-campus recruiting, Diversity Networking Banquet, and advertising in programs and brochures distributed for these events), we thought initially that it would be appealing to recruiters to cut just one check. We then embarked on a solution to further assist with the branding efforts by considering offering a website presence to these recruiters. Our current students look to the internet for information. We established a fee of $1000 per year for the internet logo placement. The business savvy in the audience will recognized this as a “value-added” benefit.

This core partnership placement on the website is a logo that links exclusively to the recruiter’s employment website, not their products or services.

To make this more appealing, we decided to offer a discount to the recruiter based upon the length of time that they would commit to recruiting at our university. If the recruiter would commit to three years, they could receive a sizable discount for these services. Payment would be paid over time, but in an accelerated rate as compared to piece-meal payments. A one-year commitment would require one up-front payment. A two-year commitment would be invoiced at (three-quarters of total in year one and one quarter in year two), while a three-year commitment would be billed at (two-thirds of total in year one with the remaining one-third due in year two, and no payment necessary in year three).

By weighting the payments at the front end, the career center will be able to make needed improvements to amenities and services that are out of reach when working with a roughly equal equation of revenue to expenses each year. We expect that this program will continuously bring in new partners and thereby continuously infuse revenue. Downturns in the recruiting market are inevitable, and by securing multiple-year commitments, the career center provides some measure of insurance against recruiter abandonment.

Results
Fordham University administration was satisfied that the above suggestion would meet all the necessary constraints, and Career Services rolled it out in the fall of 2006. Director Andrew Cronan and Associate Director Catrina Cunningham were primarily responsible for implementation, which involved creating documentation and approaching prospects. We made this offering available to all employers from all fields.

In the first year of offering, Fordham University received four core partners. In the second year, we renewed all four and attracted five more. Upon the writing of this article we have partnered with ten organizations and begun customizing the program with an upgraded option known as Core PLUS partnerships. These involved a higher level of involvement in either additionally (newly created events, including our newly created Accounting and Finance Career Fair in the fall) and additional years (one recruiter committed for five years).

This fiscal year Fordham Career Services has generated $26,000 through this program, much of this is in addition to the typical revenue brought in by the department this year. These commitments allowed us to further grow our Diversity Networking Banquet (one of the programs intentionally included in the “bundle”) to 19 employers from 13 in 2006.

This solution can be described as post-modern in that it satisfies many constituents’ needs. Ideal modern solutions could be described as win-win. This post-modern solution is a win for more than two stakeholders, and is thereby pluralistic. Students benefit from greater employer presence and increased revenue generated by the career center. Employers receive the greater exposure they desire and hopefully hire our students. The university benefits because career services has demonstrated a solution to its challenges without the need to seek additional university funding. Career services benefits by steady, longer- term commitments from recruiters and can assist faculty with a ready reserve of experts and hiring managers developed through these Core relationships. With a diverse membership in our Core partnership program, we benefit both business and liberal arts students.

College administrators recently reviewed the viability of this program and gave it a clean bill of health. They found no favoritism, no appearance of it, and only true benefits to students. The website links were deemed appropriate since they were not advertisements of products and services. As this program becomes more well known, it should serve as a talking point for the recruiting of future students and assist in university rankings and recognition, benefiting alumni/ae as well.

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When a Career Fair is Successful, Students are, Too
by Bill McCarthy, Associate Director, Binghamton University and Eileen Bauer-Hagerbaumer, Employer Relations Manager, Binghamton University

You want your students to be at an advantage when they look for jobs. You want them to have all the information they need, and be able to find it as efficiently as possible. However, as we all know, it can sometimes be tricky to get students’ attention, even when it comes to something as important as their futures. So, how do you hold a successful career fair, make sure the students know about it, and more importantly, that they know how to succeed at networking and presenting themselves when they get there?

We’ve found a good strategy to promote career fairs is a lot like advertising. Don’t buy one ad and hope the word gets out, instead, use different channels to cover all your bases. If students are bombarded with too many emails and notices from the career center, they will ignore them. At Binghamton, many of our efforts go into reaching students through their professors and through their peers, including student groups and advisors. The Career Development Center staff have established liaison roles with the individual schools within Binghamton University and built relationships with faculty who help us spread the word in each department. We also post announcements on “B-line” (our student information site) and run a Facebook ad.

The emails we send go out well in advance of a fair and simply include a short summary of what’s happening. Through our partner Experience, Inc., we also use Experience Career Fairs, a career fair administrative tool in sync with our comprehensive eRecruiting career services management application. eRecruiting has an extensive database of employers we work with, which automatically updates as employers register for a fair, so students always have up-to-the-minute information.

It’s a good idea to promote visibly on campus as well. We generate awareness by hanging up huge banners in the student union and setting up table tents in dining halls about a week and a half in advance to get the word out. We also use a branding strategy by placing the same logo on all the materials for our fairs, which helps the students mentally connect the information from many outlets.

Once the students know about a career fair, we make sure they’re prepared for it by extending our office hours for resume reviews and advice and holding workshops to discuss interview etiquette, proper dress, and how to ask questions at a career fair. Because our fairs are so large, we recommend students go to eRecruiting via Experience.com and research employers beforehand to plan their time optimally.

Planning and attention to detail become crucial during a career fair. We organize the employers’ booths to allow for a constant flow of traffic throughout the room and provide maps with the employer information handouts we give to students when they arrive. Over 20 percent of our students come to the fairs, many of whom try to fit the fair in between classes. To make sure they get all the information they need in the time they have, we place staff members around the room to provide additional support to the employers and answer students’ questions.

It’s also very important to show good customer service to the employers. They are in the fair all day meeting an enormous number of students. We take care of all of the setup before they arrive, are punctual with starting and ending times, and are attentive to even small details, such as offering them bottles of water throughout the day. Employers are very impressed with our coordination and really appreciate the extra help and consideration.

We’ve had a high success rate with the fairs we’ve hosted. A significant number of students secure interviews for jobs and internships, many of which the employers return to campus to hold. Employers have actually begun to seek us out on eRecruiting – five of our employers this year approached us through it! When I began at Binghamton in 1999, this entire process was on paper. It’s such a huge improvement to be able to use this software and to communicate and plan online.

Overall, however, I think we’ve seen that technology isn’t the only trick to holding a successful career fair. What’s really key is to be diligently organized and pay attention to detail, as both of these will streamline and improve the entire process. It’s also important, as we advise students, to be prepared.

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Get to Know your Board

Name: Angella Griffin
Title & Organization: Associate Director, Employer Relations at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University
Years in EACE: 10 years

Board Position and Responsibilities: As Treasurer, I monitor the funds and securities of the Association; manage EACE Headquarters' administration of expense reimbursement process; and monitor committee/network expenditures. In addition, I serve as the liaison to the Finance Committee and Annual Conference committee and work with Finance Committee to establish/review financial objectives and concerns of the Association.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? I think it is the realization that it is a new day, and once again, I can communicate with friends and colleagues, and make a positive contribution to my field. It's another opportunity to learn new things and continue to grow, share with others, and be a part of something good.

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? M&M Mint Chocolate Chip with fudge.

Name: Nathan Elton
Title & Organization: Associate Director, Oberlin College
Years in EACE: 3

Board Position and Responsibilities: Director of Professional Development and Professional Exchange

What gets you out of bed in the morning? My dog Dunkin. I love taking him for walks first thing in the morning!

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Lately I have really been in to pumpkin flavored ice cream from Trader Joe's. It tastes like pumpkin pie! Once January hits I will probably not touch the stuff again until October.

Name: Amy M. Feifer
Title & Organization: Senior Managing Director, Career Development, Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges
Years in EACE: 23 years - More than I ever imagined (in a positive way)!

Board Position and Responsibilities: Director of Leadership
Development. In this new strategic board position, I am helping to create a more effective structure for leadership development. I am helping to provide a support system, leadership identification and training, and connection to experienced members. I also deal with overall strategic issues for the Association.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? I am a morning person, and look forward to starting the day by walking for 30+ minutes outside, winter or summer. A very meditative way to start the day, which will be full of interesting possibilities!

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream.

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A Word from Our 2007 Ernie Andrews Scholarship Recipient
by Tara Blackwell Malone, NCC, LMHC, Assistant Director, Internship & Diversity Programs, Purchase College

I was thrilled to learn that I was the recipient of the Diversity Advancement Scholarship to attend the 2007 EACE Conference in Baltimore, MD. When I read about the work of Ernie Andrews as well as the biographies of the previous scholarship participants, I was truly honored to be recognized as part of such an impressive group of individuals.

The conference was a great opportunity to network, learn best practices, and gain new skills. Some sessions that were of particular interest to me were “Creating a Positive On-line Image” and “Employing the Millennial Generation.” Our Career Development Center at Purchase College recently launched a new workshop called “NETiquette” to address some of the concerns regarding the social networking, text messaging, and email practices of our tech-savvy millennial student population. It was great to participate in these and other session topics that are cutting-edge and relevant to our current needs as career counselors. In addition, the social gatherings and recreation options, such as yoga and belly dancing, were a fun way to connect with colleagues.

I look forward to continuing to work with the wonderful career professionals at EACE. This year, I am happy to become more involved with EACE by serving as Co-Chair for the Diversity Advancement Committee.

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The World is Flat: An Address to Career Centers and Their Responses Towards Diversity and Diversity Recruitment Initiatives
by Catrina Cunningham, Associate Director, Manager of Employer Relations, Fordham University

Talk to a career educator about diversity recruitment initiatives and engage in a conversation about ethical implications and legal pitfalls. And in the midst of all the rhetoric, you’ll find that career educators would like to do more to assist employers in their diversity hiring needs, as well as provide services that drive awareness of cultural differences, and the diversity of students. Why, then, in NACE’s Top Ten Issues and Trends (NACE, 2005) facing colleges and employers did responding to diversity hiring needs rank lowest for career centers, even though it ranked as one of the highest for their employer stakeholders?

Currently, career centers are feeling the institutional pressures of accountability and assessing learning outcomes as part of their struggle to demonstrate validity in career services functions. This means changing the lexicon in how career educators relay their practice, and striking up a different culture in how their work is judged. Things like pondering new metrics to evaluate how students are developing, and reevaluating career development pedagogy, are all conversations on the table for career educators. In addition, career centers must assess learning outcomes, like their academic affairs counterparts, without a captive student audience, as students are not required to utilize career services. Indeed, this is a daunting task that some career centers have taken by the horns. But is pioneering meaningful approaches to diversity through ethical and legal terrain any more daunting? Isn’t addressing this issue equally urgent? While the Higher Ed enterprise experiences pressures of accountability, which has apparently filtered down to career centers, it has also experienced the long historical charge of preparing American citizens with the basic skills and career training to work in a diverse society (Aldaberto and Martinez, 2006). And as more of the world endorses the Tom Friedman novel, The World is Flat, it is going to be imperative that our country’s workforce becomes more diverse in order to sustain as a superpower. Why issues surrounding diversity are not as high a priority to career centers as accountability calls for investigation.

In the interim, career centers have notably made efforts to respond to employer diversity hiring needs. Some examples include co-sponsoring events with multicultural student organizations, fortifying relationships with multicultural and minority affairs departments, innovating ways to help employers gain more visibility on campus, connecting employers with faculty, and making a more conscious effort to outreach to racial and ethnic groups (NACE, 2006). While all of these efforts are well and good, sustainability is questionable. Factors like administrative turnover weakening departmental relations, limited ownership on diversity issues due to co-sponsorship of events, limited revenue to sponsor events, and unreliable faculty support can stunt long-term momentum (Brown, 2006). Moreover, these factors can develop the perception of these efforts appearing as mere window-dressing. This can be avoided if diversity is included in the very foundations of what we do, in order to provide a meaningful response to employer and student needs.

Of course, educating on cultural awareness and responding to diversity is a working issue, and a conversation often shunned because of heightened sensitivity. With that stated, this article is not meant to provide all the answers, but to charge career centers to make diversity recruitment initiatives and awareness a higher priority now, as opposed to later. In addition, to illustrate equal urgency as accountability issues, and instill confidence that career centers can be successful since they have been in other unfamiliar territory. However, in realizing that this is a very loaded article, I will conclude with some suggestions to help percolate thoughts around solutions.

First and foremost, career centers should review their understandings of diversity. Surprisingly, there are many practitioners in Higher Ed that still use diversity interchangeably with race and affirmative action (Aldaberto and Martinez, 2006). In addition, newly hired staff may carry their own inherited definitions that could be inaccurate. And since most of us would not claim to be experts on diversity, this would be a good time to solicit information and resources from your multicultural affairs department or minority office. Our career services office at Fordham University attended a training session given by our multicultural affairs office, and it was interesting to learn how the term diversity has matured in American history, and at our institution. We learned that it was important that we as career educators are trained in this area, and are able to speak comfortably on diversity issues.

Second, you may want to revisit your career center mission/vision statements, and evaluate how it incorporates diversity and inclusion. It may also be worthwhile to mirror your mission statements with your institutional mission and see how you can draw connections there.

Third, find time to visit Scott C. Brown’s article titled “Educator or Entrepreneur,” in the winter 2006 NACE Journal (Brown, 2006). In this article, Brown (2006) coins the term educational entrepreneur, which suggests that career educators combine market research, business strategy, cognitive strategy, pedagogy, and learning theory to achieve learning outcomes. His formula not only introduces a great opportunity for career centers to strategically adapt to a new era in higher education, but can be used to incorporate diversity and inclusion into the foundations of your career center. However, his section on market research of the millennial generation can be deconstructed. There is plausible evidence as to whether the millennial theory is applicable to students of low socioeconomic backgrounds, which contradicts certain characteristics of the millennial generation. For example the “helicopter parent”, which is a term to describe parents that have too much involvement, may not be true for students of low socioeconomic backgrounds in which lack of parental involvement is a premiere issue. International students can also vary from the millennial theory, as their experiences may include a different set of ideas and values.

And fourth, research success stories and talk to fellow practitioners to exchange best practices. Once in a while, we are granted the opportunity to read literature on a career center that has been successful in a particular area that challenges our profession. If not, often times there are career centers confronted by similar issues in which your connection with one another can lend support and inspiration for new ideas.

The overall contention is to begin a meaningful conversation in how career centers respond to diversity and diversity recruitment initiatives, and to place it higher on the list of priorities now, rather than postponing it for the future.

End notes:

• Future Directions Task Force (2005) Into the Future: Top Issues and Trends for Career Services and College Recruiting. NACE Journal, pp. 27- 32
• Future Directions Task Force (2006) Diversity Recruiting: How Career Services Can Help Employers. NACE Journal, pp. 37 – 40
• Aguirre, A. & Martinez, R. (2006) Diversity Leadership in Higher Education, ASHE Higher Ed Report, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
• Brown, S. (2006) Educator or Entrepreneur? NACE Journal, pp. 26 – 34.
• Brown, S. (2006) They’re Just Not That Into You, NACE Journal, pp. 28 - 32

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Framing Career Expectations in Graduating Seniors
by Laura Demarse, Career Services Coordinator, School of Business and Economics, College of Charleston, SC

Many of the students I work with in the business school at the College of Charleston are smart, savvy, motivated, and ready to make their first million dollars by age 25 while starting out as corner office executives. While I commend and admire their drive and ambition, many of these same students do not want to leave the warm and sunny enclave of Charleston (a tourist-based economy) and are generally not industry-specific about career aspirations. The challenge my colleagues and I face is to provide a positive, yet realistic, vision for our students. There are many ways to make a lot of money, especially through lucrative sales positions (where small starting salaries are supplemented with large bonus potential), and new graduates can obtain these jobs with relatively little training and professional work experience. Many students have unrealistic expectations of large starting salaries, often because they have not been exposed to the aggregate data that career services professionals are well aware of.

Our role as career professionals is to provide a framework for success, a career plan to help students bridge the gap between academia and the increasingly competitive business world. I like to understand what the student's goals and aspirations are immediately upon graduating as well as further down the line. What do they want to achieve, accomplish and gain? A litany of ideas rolls off the tongues of my more ambitious students, while others are confused and less focused on what is both happening and about to happen. Nevertheless, what are the realistic and tangible goals achievable for the students who want to make a significant amount of money with little prior time or experience in the business world?

Internships and Experiential Learning

In an effort to align the expectations of students in the business school, I use a number of critical, and actionable, points in every counseling session. First, I highlight the importance of internships and experiential learning, linking this valuable experience with career goals and objectives before and after the experience. What have they learned about the place young professionals hold in an organization? Have their objectives changed or been enhanced based on these observations? I stress that students often increase their starting salaries by completing undergraduate internship experiences. Companies are also more likely to extend job offers to students already familiar with their culture and structure. This is a helpful framing technique because it reinforces the direct connection between business philosophy learned in the classroom and experiential knowledge.

The Value of Bilingualism

Another trend I have observed is the increased desire for students to "travel internationally" on the job, which seems to be high on the students’ list of priorities when they look for employment, even though the opportunities are scarce. Many companies are cutting down on travel due to use of computer technology, outsourcing, etc. If this path is truly a high priority, it is essential that students understand the value of bilingualism and that we support those efforts within our programs. There are other options for students who aren't multi-lingual. For example, many sales positions offer a territory that must be covered, which may satisfy the graduates eager to hit the road.

Developing Marketable Skills

I also like to speak with students about what marketable skills they think they need to develop. Perhaps now more than ever, "soft skills" (i.e., people skills) are highly valued and of tremendous importance to employers. I highlight the importance of public speaking abilities, teamwork, motivation, and being a self-starter. "Getting along" in a work environment is often not as easy as most students may think; however, framing the importance of these skill sets is imperative in career development. Business etiquette is something we also touch on in our programs. How comfortable and well-versed are the students in interacting with employers in a social networking environment? Eye contact, hand shaking, confident articulation, and professional appearance are all important aspects of making a great first impression; this contributes to a realistic framing of how the business world functions for the student's future reference. We incorporate developing these skills into most aspects of the curriculum at the School of Business, through offerings such as a career development class, alumni networking events, and other professional development seminars and speakers.

Landing the First Job

Another area of discussion with students is the importance of finding and landing that first job (and the next). Many students fear that this first job will keep them in an entry-level, low-paying position for years. I encourage the students to take that first job to get experience and build their resumes for their future dream jobs. The first job might be low-paying and not particularly interesting, but it allows a student to get the proverbial foot in the door and build a "center of influence." This early experience is essential to creating professional relationships and contacts, finding mentors, and learning about other employment opportunities for future growth. National statistics suggest that 80% of available jobs are filled through informal personal contacts. First jobs are not intended to make recent grads fabulously wealthy; they offer an opportunity for exposure and direction in terms of interests, fit and continued growth. Most recent grads will not stay in the same job for longer than two years, switching jobs for more desirable salaries and interesting work. But that first job is the key; it's selling the students on this experience that is the challenge for us!

Creating One's Own Success

I have recently had the pleasure of working with several young alumni who are doing fantastic and exciting new things. They have started their own businesses and are doing really well. They work harder and more hours than many of their peers; however, they enjoy the benefits of setting their own hours and being their own bosses. I like to present this option to students and see their eyes become wide with the possibility of creating their own success, sometimes with little start-up money and one great idea. A few examples I share with graduating students include one enterprising alum who is a freelance energy trader in Chicago, mainly getting paid in company stock, taking small fees to cover his living expenses. Another graduate has created a successful model for importing cashew nuts from Western Africa. Students hungry enough to do it can be very successful and well compensated for their entrepreneurial endeavors. Framing this idea is tricky, but available for the taking now more than ever.

It is ultimately up to our students to decide their paths and create their goals. However, it is our responsibility as career professionals to aide, facilitate and collaborate in this process. This means we provide support through both positivism and realism; we guide students, but we should also dream with them.

This article originally appeared in NCDA's web magazine, Career Convergence at www.ncda.org. Copyright National Career Development Association, May, 2007 Reprinted with permission.

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