Author: Barbara Hewitt

Barbara Hewitt is the Executive Director of Career Services.

A Few Handshake Updates and Reminders

It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been successfully using Handshake for almost six months. We’ve had over 10,000 students and alumni activate their accounts, approved over 7,600 employers to use the system, and had over 12,000 jobs and internships posted for Penn students and alumni. (In case you are curious, the top job functions have been education/teaching, finance, data & analytics, business development, and research – but there are lots of others!)

We hope the Handshake system has been working well for you! As a reminder, we wanted to post a few ways that you can optimize the system over the winter break to make it even more effective!

  • Complete your profile! If you haven’t already done so, take a few minutes to add details to your profile about your work experience, activities, educational background, and skills. You can even upload your resume so you don’t have to start from scratch. Once your profile looks great, you can make your profile public to employers so that they can find you for positions for which you might be a strong candidate. (If you have already finalized your plans and are not currently seeking, you can make your profile private so that you are not contacted.) As a new feature, you can also make your profile public to other Penn students and check out profiles from classmates who have opted to share theirs. Handshake can be a powerful networking tool.
  • Fill out the Career Interests section completely! The more Handshake knows about your career interests, the more effective it will be at populating your homepage with opportunities that are a good fit for you. Be sure to indicate what type of opportunities interest you (job, internship, networking, volunteering, etc.), the industries and job functions of interest to you, and where you want to live. Also, take a few minutes to indicate which CareerMail Communications you would like to receive. These are industry based e-newsletters sent out by the Career Services staff on a regular basis. It is one of the primary communication channels we are using this year, so don’t miss out on it.
  • Take a look at the Resources tab to find other career related resources available to you as a Penn student.
  • RSVP for events! (We will have lots more events listed in the spring once we get our room assignments from facilities!)
  • Schedule an appointment with a Career Advisor through the on-line scheduling system.
  • Download the mobile app, so you can do all of these things on the go! (Note that currently a mobile app is only available for the iPhone – an Android app is in the works- but even without the app Handshake’s website is mobile ready.)

Submit Now for Recruiter Add-On Interviews!

On-campus recruiting for full-time positions (which started on September 26th) is well underway and interviews for internship positions will start on Monday, October 23rd. The semester is flying by, so I thought now would be a good time to remind students about the Recruiter Add-On Interview process. If you were not able to get on an interview schedule (either because you did not apply through the original resume collection or you were not selected for an interview), the Add-On Interview can be a great second opportunity to speak with an organization of interest to you.

It is fairly common for employers to have open slots on their schedules when they arrive on campus because of candidates accepting other opportunities or because of unforeseen situations like students being ill. Many organizations opt to fill these open interview slots on the day of their on-campus interviews by accepting “Recruiter Add-On Interviews.” If you wish to be considered for an “Add-On” Interview, complete the “Recruiter Add-On Interview Request Form” for each position that interests you, attach the form to your resume, and deposit it in the “Recruiter Add-On Interview Request Box” outside of Career Services (Suite 20, McNeil Building). Collection hours are 9:15am-2:00pm one business day before the interview date. The OCR staff will notify students who are invited for an add-on interview as soon as an employer invites the student to interview. Note that there is no penalty for declining an Add-On invitation if the time doesn’t work for you. Use the “Weekly List of Employers Scheduled to Recruit On Campus” link to determine which employers to submit for each day. The spreadsheet will be updated weekly on the On Campus Interview website.

We see students every day who are invited to fill these last-minute open slots and often they go on to receive second round interviews and job offers because they took the time to submit requests for Add-On Interviews. We invite you to do the same!

Take Some Time This Summer for Self-Assessment Using SIGI3

Some students arrive at college already having a pretty clear idea of what career path they plan to pursue and the path winds up being fairly straight forward and linear. For the majority of students, however, that is not the case, and the path has many twists and turns. Students may take an amazing class and discover whole new career areas they had never even thought about. Others might land an internship thinking it would be a great fit, but discover that the day-to-day work just wasn’t quite as interesting as anticipated. Some students may simply find a particular path extremely hard to break into, so would like to widen the scope of careers they are considering to increase the number of possibilities available.

There are many reasons why people choose to assess their career options and the summer is an ideal time for self-assessment and exploring how your values, skills and interests relate to a variety of occupations. Luckily for Penn students, Career Services offers a great FREE tool to help you explore your options. SIGI3 (System of Integrated Guidance and Information) helps students create a career plan that’s right for them by integrating self-assessment with in-depth and updated career information that is easy to use and provides individuals with a realistic view of the best educational and career options for future success. SIGI3 helps each user examine key motivators and matches work-related values, interests, personality, and skills to educational and career pathways, and then helps individuals explore a range of options based on their personal choices.

Career Services has purchased a license for Penn students to use SIGI3 for free. Student can access it from the Digital Resources link on the Career Services home page. (Note you must use your PennKey to gain access.) Enjoy the exploration!

Option B: Making the Most of Your Job or Internship (Even If It Wasn’t Your First Choice)

I recently listened to an interview with Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s COO) and Adam Grant (one of our amazing professors here at Penn). Sheryl has long impressed me with the huge amount of work she has done in empowering and inspiring girls and women to take on leadership roles through her book, Lean In, published in 2013. The book became widely popular and topped the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list. It inspired an immense amount of dialogue about women in the workforce and also resulted in over 30,000 Lean in Circles (small groups of individuals who meet regular to learn and grow together) in over 150 countries around the world. Impressive!

Her newest book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, comes from different circumstances entirely and is focused on the hard truth that sometimes we can’t control what happens to us and life doesn’t always work out the way we had planned or hoped. Sheryl lost her husband suddenly and unexpectedly while on vacation, and Option B focuses on how to move forward after such a devastating loss and finding and building resiliency within. Adam Grant, as a co-author and friend of Sheryl’s, contributes with research on finding inner strength in difficult circumstances.

The idea of an “Option B” resonates strongly with me, as I often talk with students and alumni who are disappointed in how their job or internship searches worked out. Perhaps they had hoped to work for a large, well-known firm with a structured training program, but instead landed a job at a smaller organization that offers more “on the job” training. Perhaps they were hoping to land an internship in New York City, but ultimately could not find one that paid enough to cover the exorbitant housing costs in the city, making it an unrealistic option. Perhaps they were hoping to travel the world and land a job in Europe, but couldn’t find an employer willing to sponsor them for a work visa. These are all discussions I’ve had with students in just the past few weeks, and yes, they were disappointing outcomes. Through the many such conversations I’ve had with individuals, I’ve found that the most successful at navigating these disappointments are those who can acknowledge their disappointment and then move on to make the most of and capitalize on the options that they do have available, rather than focusing on “what could have been”. I believe there is always something positive you can take away from an experience, even if it is learning how to work for a difficult boss or how to tactfully ask for or negotiate different or new assignments if the ones you are initially given are not exactly piquing your interest. (Of course, keep in mind that this tactic always needs to keep the needs of the business in mind!) Rather than coming to work with negativity, focus on how you can make a positive impact and contribute. Good things invariably happen when people enjoy having you as a colleague and can feel your positive energy.

Think creatively about how to move forward with your Option B. For the person who wants to work in Europe, perhaps looking at US based multi-national employers would be a good next step – focusing on working in the United States for now, learning the ins and outs of the organization, and then exploring the possibility for an international assignment at some point in the future. For the person working at a smaller firm with less training, try seeking out online programs, workshops or conferences to learn new skills (and maybe even have it paid for by the employer). We all will experience “Option B circumstances” in our work lives. I encourage you to handle them with a positive and forward looking attitude – do the job to the best of your ability, learn new skills, increase your network, and when the time is right move on to the next (hopefully exciting!) chapter in your work life.

Happy New Year! Time for a New Look?

Welcome back! Hopefully all of you had a restful and enjoyable break. We invite you to stop by the Career Services office (Suite 20, McNeil) to check out the renovations that occurred over the break – with fresh paint, new carpet and updated furniture, we have a whole new look! (Admittedly a bit austere at the present moment as we work to get our wall decorations back up, but that is coming!)

Is it time for you to take a fresh look at various aspects of your career? As you all know, your resume and LinkedIn profile are always “works in progress”. If you haven’t done so in a while, pull out your resume and check to see if it needs updating or refreshing. Have your goals changed? Do you have new relevant classes you might like to add? Does your GPA need updating? How about new roles you have taken on in your extracurricular activities? Is it time to devote more space to your college activities and start deleting more of your experiences from high school? Do your categories still make sense? Maybe you have enough experience now that you could add a section tailored to your area of interest – for example a “Marketing Section” or a “Research Section.” Feel free to update your resume and then send it to a Career Services advisor or schedule an appointment to meet with an advisor to review it in person.

The new year is also a good time to think about how your career goals might have changed and to set some new ones. Is there a new industry or type of job that you’ve recently heard about that is intriguing? Perhaps set aside some time to conduct some online research about opportunities in the field and try to set up a few informational interviews with alumni to learn more about it. Maybe you’ve determined that you need to develop a certain skill set – whether it be technical like learning a new programming language or a soft skill, such as improving your public speaking abilities. Think about how you might find opportunities to further strengthen those areas. (For a structured way to think about competencies that are valued by employers, check out our Penn7 Career Competencies that will walk you through skills that will be helpful to you in your career regardless of academic discipline.)

The New Year is a natural time for reflection about the past and pondering the future. Be sure to include some time to think about your career.