Claire Klieger – Page 3

Taking the “Work” (and Fear) out of “Networking”

By Dr. Claire Klieger, Senior Associate Director

Most people will tell you that networking is an important part of any job or internship search. However, when working with students and alumni, I find that this recommendation is often easier said than done. First, there is a lot of confusion about what networking really means and what it looks like: How do you go about it? Who are the right people to contact? What do you say? What’s appropriate to ask? For these reasons, and many others, I encounter many individuals who are reluctant to do it. If this feels like you, here are some tips for finding networking success by making the process easier:

Don’t think of it as networking. Networking can have a negative connotation, feel pushy, annoying, or awkward. What you are really doing, or should be doing, is information gathering. You’re talking to people in industries and positions of interest to learn more about what they do and how they got there. Since they are in roles that you might ultimately want to hold, they can offer a lot of advice that can help you along the way.

Use warm contacts. Even if you feel as though you do not have a strong personal network, every student or alum from Penn has one very important thing in common—your shared Quaker experience! And common ground is all you need to start a networking conversation. So take advantage of that low-hanging fruit. With Penn’s alumni database, QuakerNet, you have the power of access to hundreds of thousands of contacts at your fingertips. This database can be searched not just by employer name, industry or geographic location but also by major, undergraduate club affiliation or even shared interests.

With the alumni page feature of LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/alumni) you can easily filter the page’s almost 140,000 Penn alumni by other useful categories including “what they do” or “what they’re skilled at” as well doing keyword searches. Browsing profiles not only gives you detailed information, but is also a good strategy for identifying good possible professional associations or commonly listed skill sets. Aren’t connected to interesting people you find? No problem! Just look up their contact information on Quakernet.

If you are a current student, use the Penn Internship Network, our searchable database of current students who have agreed to discuss their summer experience. This can be a great way not only to get information but also gain practice and confidence to help you build up to reaching out to alumni contacts. With all of these online resources, identifying networking contacts has never been easier!

Never ask for a job or internship outright. Part of the reason many people find networking awkward or have trouble making it successful is because they assume that it is purely a means to an end—getting that job or internship. In reality, though, the best kind of networking is the building of relationships. So, employing the approach of “do you have any open positions?” or “If you could help me find a job that would be really be great” does not get you very far. This is because people either don’t know you well enough to want to help you in that way or they aren’t in a position to offer you a job. So, those kinds of emails tend to just up in the Bermuda triangle of cyberspace.

Be brief, personalized, and to the point when reaching out. If you want someone to respond to networking request from you, it is critical for you to convey your message in an effective way. The easiest way to do this is to request informational interviews. Explain who you are, how you found that person, and why you are contacting them—because you think the work that they do at XXXX organization is really interesting and you would love to learn more about their career path and what advice they can offer to someone just starting out in the field. Would they have 20-30 minutes for an informational interview over the phone (or in person)? We even have a sample email on our website! Check out our additional tips on informational interviews, including what kinds of questions to ask.

It really isn’t as awkward as you think. Often, when I give this same networking pep talk to students in person, I can tell that some remain skeptical and apprehensive because it may still feel like a big deal, or a big ask of someone they have never met to have a conversation. This is actually my favorite part of the conversation because I know that I have one final ace up my sleeve that turns everyone on its head. Here it is: Have you ever been contacted by family friends or others and asked to speak with someone about your experience at Penn and offer advice—perhaps by high school students who are about to apply to college? In my over ten years here in this office, not once has the answer to this question been “no.” Without exception, everyone says “sure” and almost always with a smile. Why? Because if you enjoyed your experience, you are happy to speak with others about what that experience has been like and it feels good to share advice and be seen as someone who has expertise on something. When most working individuals receive a request for an informational interview, they are flattered, not annoyed, because they are excited that someone is interested in the work that they do.

So, hopefully you feel less intimidated by the process! Go forth and “network”!

A World Without OCR

By Dr. Claire KIieger, Senior Associate Director

It’s that time of year again—students are back on campus, the food truck lines are long, and that general buzz around the start of classes is in the air. Starting tomorrow, you’ll see something else that is as sure of a sign of the beginning of the fall semester as the changing of seasons—lots of people in business attire. For the next two months, Locust Walk will be a wash of ties, blazers and heels that signals the start of something else, the recruiting season at Penn as students attend employer information sessions, career fairs, and on-campus interviews. These sightings are as ingrained in Penn’s culture as throwing toast during football games.

But imagine for a moment that all of these things didn’t exist at Penn…or at any university: no employer information sessions, no career fairs, no on-campus interviews and even no Career Services office at all. Whether looking for a job or an internship, you would be entirely on your own, relying just on family or personal contacts. What’s worse, imagine that having a university degree might make it harder to find a job. Sound like an episode of the twilight zone? Actually, after 9 years at Penn Career Services, this was my alternate reality…living and working in Morocco.

I spent the last year working on a USAID funded program to address the issue of high levels of youth unemployment through the implementation of university-based career centers modeled after the American system. There, 80% of the country’s unemployed are youth, and college graduates have a particularly hard time finding a job—20% of them are unemployed as compared with an unemployment of only 4.7% for those with no education beyond high school. Thus, the idea to introduce Career Centers at public universities through this initiative.

So, as we gear up for this season of OCR and all of the stress and anxiety that comes with it, I ask you to stop, take a deep breath, and remember….that while this is an overwhelming time for many students, we sure are lucky to have the “happy” problem of an abundance of opportunities, both through OCR and beyond via Penn Career Services. For the 2015-2016 year, here is a breakdown of our numbers:

Over 13,000 job and internship postings on PennLink
779 Employers visiting campus
11 career fairs
344 employer information sessions
8,910 interviews held on campus
Over 10,000 appointments and walk-ins at Career Services

And those statistics seems just as foreign a concept to those Moroccan university students as a world without OCR does to a Penn one.

Enduring the Job or Internship Search Race

By Claire Klieger

It’s that time of year again – the excitement of Pen Relays! This iconic event has gotten me thinking about the similarities between it and the experiences of many of the students I’ve seen this week who are still very much still in the midst of their own job or internship search run (and feeling like they are falling behind in the race). So, in honor of Penn Relays, I offer these comparisons between the search and track and field events:

Be prepared for hurdles.

Each step of the search process is like a hurdle that you must successfully clear. To feel prepared for your own race, try to anticipate the hurdles along your own course: what exactly does the application require? How can you tailor your resume for that opportunity? What kinds of questions might you get asked during an interview? Will there be an assessment? Whenever possible, do what you can to get ahead of such challenges by preparing effectively so you come across both confidently and comfortably during interviews (we in Career Services can help!). That said, there may be roadblocks you do not expect so keep your own mental agility in shape by re-familiarizing yourself everything on your resume and staying calm, cool and collected under pressure.

At times you may feel like your world has been turned upside down.

The landscape of your search can change very quickly so that you may go from feeling frustrated by not having any interviews or offers to have several at once or, more likely, a combination of the two. When you feel overwhelmed by the process, touch base with us to chat about how to ask for more time on an offer or let an employer with whom you have an interview know that you just received an offer elsewhere but are really more interested in their opportunity. And, if nothing else, this topsy-turvy positioning can certainly give you a fresh perspective!

Sometimes you are the baton.

Even if you’ve been doing everything right in your search—applying for lots of positions, making sure your resume is in great shape, networking with alumni, and more–you may find that it takes a while to find something. And, it can be very frustrating because so much of the process is outside of your control. In a sense, you are like the baton, being passed from one interview round to the next without control over the outcome. However, just like the perfect baton pass, the opportunity and timing has to be right so if you did not get the offer you had wanted, it may not have had anything to do with your own efforts or talents. In many instances, it is because it was just not quite the right fit or the employer thought it was a slightly better fit for someone else. Take heart in knowing that employers were impressed enough with your credentials to ask you to interview so you indeed have everything you need to be successful.

Endurance is key

When you’ve running what feels like your own job or internship search marathon for months, it can be hard to stay motivated, particularly if you’ve already encountered several situations when you made it to final rounds of interviews but failed to receive the offer. Or, it can be tempting to stop applying for other opportunities while you are in the midst of interviews. The trick to any successful marathon, however, is to keep at it. There are definitely many great things still out there. Employers hire all year round for full-time opportunities and even for internships, we find that some of the most interesting opportunities, particularly with start-ups and in entertainment, do not get posted until late in the spring. So, when you reach your own point of job search fatigue, stop by Penn Career Services to get the boost you may need to get back on track.

Good luck with your race!

Medical School Admission – By the Numbers

By Anne Reedstrom

Some of the most frequent questions we receive from pre-med students are about the numbers. You know the ones I mean – “What GPA do I need to get into Penn Med?” “What MCAT score do I have to get in order to have a chance of being admitted to schools in the top ten?” “Is my (insert GPA or MCAT score here) enough to get an interview at (insert school name)?”

All of the questions above are, for the most part, unanswerable, because there are no magic numbers for medical school admission and admission committees consider your entire application, not just your GPA & MCAT, when they make a decision. But there are statistics which might be helpful to you as you evaluate your readiness to apply to medical school or make a list of schools to which you will apply, and we are happy to provide those to you!

You can find some basics on our new Medical School Admissions Statistics page on our website, such as the percentage of Penn applicants admitted within a certain BCPM GPA range or the percentage of applicants who have taken time off. For even more detailed information, you can peruse the binders of statistics that we have in our office and discover the average GPA and MCAT of Penn applicants admitted to specific medical schools, the schools which have admitted international students, and how many applicants waited more than three years after graduation to apply to medical school, among other scintillating items! Luckily, this information will also soon be available on line as well.

Here are a few tidbits to whet your appetite:

The University of Michigan admitted 9 Penn applicants for the Fall of 2014, none of whom were Michigan residents.
UC-San Diego, UC-Davis, and UC-Irvine admitted 1, 3, and 4 Penn applicants, respectively, all of whom were California residents.
147 Penn applicants for the Fall of 2014 were women, and 115 were men.
In Fall 2014, 10 students matriculated at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 7 at Einstein and 7 at NYU.
More Penn applicants (180) applied to Perelman (Penn Med) than to any other single medical school. (I know, what a shocker!) The school with the next highest number of applicants is Jefferson with 148, followed closely by NYU with 143. We even had 24 students apply to the newest medical school at Quinnipiac University.

Use your knowledge of the numbers wisely, remembering that what we give you are averages, not absolutes, and always, always discuss any concerns you have with a Pre-Health Advisor before having a complete meltdown!

Oh, The Places They’ll go! First Destinations for Class of 2014 Penn Grads in the College

By Dr. Claire Klieger

Working with liberal arts students, I love looking at the data of what our students do after they graduate. Each year, the paths embarked upon by our students are as diverse as they are impressive and continually go to show that you can do anything with a liberal arts degree from Penn!

We’ve just finished our report on first destinations for the Class of 2014 and it’s really interesting to see all of the neat things members of that class are doing. You can see the full report on our website, but here are some highlights:

Most CAS grads from 2014 are working full-time (61%), in 29 different countries. The most popular industries were financial services (18%), consulting (16%) and education (14%). Top employers included the University of Pennsylvania and Teach for America, as well as top banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays), consulting firms (BCG, Deloitte, Bain&Co.) and a range of other name brand employers (NIH, NBCUniversal, LinkedIn, IBM and Nielsen to name a few).
Slightly fewer students went straight on to graduate school (17%) as compared with the Class of 2013 (20%), which is likely a sign of the improving economy. For those entering graduate or professional school, Medicine (22%), Law (16%) and Science (16%) continue to be the most popular fields of study.
While many students had offers in the fall semester (38%), the majority of College students received their offers of employment in spring semester of year senior year (39%) or even after graduation (23%). This stat reflects the diversity of hiring timelines that coincide with the breadth of industries into which liberal arts students enter.
Students continue to heavily use the resources of our office. 68% of those working full-time or attending graduate school reported using Career Services and 40% of employed students received their offers through OCR or other career services leads.