OCR – Page 2 – Penn & Beyond

Looking Forward: The Spring Semester Job or Internship Search

As the fall semester winds down, we’ve had questions from many students about how the spring job or internship search may differ from the fall search. These questions come from students who may have spent the last four months actively seeking full-time or internship positions, as well as those who are just starting their search now.

The good news is…. there are still plenty of opportunities out there! In fact, employers in many industries don’t event start actively recruiting students until much closer to when they can start work – the “just in time” job search. We’ve just finished up the analysis of outcomes for the Class of 2016, and almost half (46%) indicated that they accepted their full-time postgraduate positions in or after January 2016.

We certainly welcome interested employers to conduct on-campus interviews in the spring and we will absolutely have some activity in our recruiting suite. However, the number of employers will be much smaller than in the fall. Students should be aware that employers who will be conducting interviews on campus early in the spring semester are already collecting resumes, so be sure to check PennLink now and periodically over break so that you don’t miss any opportunities that might interest you.

We will also hold three major career fairs on campus in February for all students served by Career Services. (You can find career fair details here, but in the meantime hold these dates!)

Creative and Common Good Fair: Wednesday, February 8
Start-up Fair: Thursday, February 9th
Spring Job and Internship Fair: Friday, February 10th

In addition to our on-campus fairs, Penn participates in a number of consortium career fairs off-campus including:

Philadelphia Not-For-Profit and Public Service Career Fair: Friday, February 24 @ Bryn Mawr College
All Ivy Environmental Career Fair: Friday, March 3 @ Columbia University
Philadelphia Non-Profit and Government Career Fair: Thursday, March 23 @ Villanova University

These will also be an two additional career fairs focused on graduate students: Ph.D. & Master’s Virtual Career Fair on March 2 and the PennDesign Career Connection Day on February 17.

Between on-campus recruiting, employer information sessions, and the career fairs, we will host hundreds of employers physically on Penn’s campus this spring. However, many more employers are likely to simply post jobs or internships on PennLink (or their own website) and then follow-up directly with applicants of interest to them while never setting foot on Penn’s campus. Particularly for the “just in time” search, it is important that students be proactive by researching employers that might interest them, networking to learn more about opportunities (both advertised and unadvertised), and then monitoring the career sites of employers of interest to make sure not to miss posted opportunities, as they may be open for much shorter lengths (and on a completely unpredictable timetable) than what students experienced in the fall.

Best wishes for a wonderful 2017!

CS Radio: Episode 25 – “Fall Internship Recruiting”

Next week marks a first for Career Services – summer internship recruiting for select industries will begin in the fall! Michael and Mylène are joined by On Campus Recruiting Managers Marlene Cohen and Debra Smiley Koita to discuss why this change was made, what students should expect from the process and how you can participate in OCR while studying abroad. All that, plus the usual rundown of this week’s events.

Enjoy!

Not invited, try an Add-on!

There is an employer on PennLink that you have submitted your resume for consideration. You really want to be selected as an invite. You wait – you check PennLink – you’re “Not Invited.” Don’t be discouraged, submit an “Add On” request. Over 150 Add On interviews were held in OCR last season. Most employers will look at and even schedule last minute interviews with students who have submitted an add-on request. Of course there is no guarantee of acceptance, but you never know! Sometimes employers will experience a late cancellation or even a dreaded no show and would like to fill those empty slots. If your resume is in their packet, you may be selected.

The process is very simple. Go on the Career Services website and under the main OCR page, select Recruiter Add-on Interview Request Form. Fill out the form or print several copies to have on hand. Once the form is filled out, attach your resume and bring them to the Career Services office in the basement level of the McNeil Building, Suite 20. There you will find the Recruiter Add-On Interview Request Box. The box will be available to you between the hours of 9:15 am until 2:00 pm. Now please keep in mind that you’re submitting add-on requests for the next working day’s interviews. For instance, submit on Monday for Tuesday interviews; submit on Friday for Monday interviews. The add-on requests will be given to the recruiters when they check into OCR the following morning. The recruiter will review the resumes at their convenience and will ask the OCR receptionist to call the students they wish to interview. There is no need to call and check on the status of your add-on request. The OCR receptionist will contact you by telephone if you are selected for an add-on interview. If you are not selected, you will not be contacted.

Many students who have received add-on interviews have also received offers from those employers. So try it! You might get an interview with the employer you really want!

Marlene L. Cohen
Recruiting Manager
Career Services/On Campus Recruiting

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.

Identify ways to avoid job search stress

by Jamie Grant C’98 GEd’99, Associate Director

I meet with many students seeking internships and full-time positions who are at times incredibly busy with their coursework – and on top of their studies, trying to balance a comprehensive and effective job search. This can understandably be a very stressful combination of activities, and so Career Services is always working to identify resources and tools to help our students not only strike a balance but succeed in both arenas.

To that end, a partnership between Career Services and CAPS has generated an upcoming workshop series designed to help students excel in the career planning and application process – with sessions on different kinds of personality and strengths assessments as well as the aptly titled “Managing Anxiety Related to your Job Search,” participating students will have several opportunities throughout the upcoming year to bring their concerns and identify solutions and strategies to enhance their application process. At the start of the semester, please be sure to check the Career Services calendar and/or the CAPS website for details on specific programs and their scheduled dates/times.

Beyond workshops, Career Services is also always working to identify and provide the latest tools to help students manage their career development. A really neat resource, free for our current students and discounted for alumni, is Jobtreks – your Jobtreks account will allow you to:
     – Access a proprietary database of 9,000+ companies
     – Create your target list of companies
     – Browse 30+ job boards and other job search resources
     – Manage your companies, contacts, & job applications
     – Create to-do lists, notes, & alerts, and
     – Prep for interviews and networking

so that you can keep all of your thoughts, research, contacts and networking resources and more in your own private database!
Jobtreks logins are by academic status, so please see the list below for your appropriate link to register:

So, with these upcoming workshops and tools like Jobtreks, you have a few special resources to help your job or internship search to be a manageable and interesting journey of self-discovery and possibilities. And, if ever you feel the least bit overwhelmed or stressed about career-related issues, please reach out to one of your career advisors to discuss your individual concerns.