Academic and Career Advising held its first event of the year: helping students polish resumes and look for internship and job opportunities.
The career clinic was the first of many events this year aimed toward helping students get jobs after college.
To get students started, Louise Ewing, a career advisor at the office of academic and career advising, said, “[Students] can ideally bring a first draft of a resume. It doesn’t have to be anything wonderful, just a description of things that they’ve done, and it doesn’t have to be just paid employment… so if they do a first draft, that’s a great place to begin.”
Ewing said that oftentimes, students wait until their last year of college to use Academic and Career Advising’s services, but that coming earlier in your time at Keene State can really help students along in their studies.
Academic and Career Advising is open every weekday and offers appointments to students for a variety of reasons, such as getting jobs or internships before or after graduating college.
Career advisors can even help students find what career path is the best for them if they do not know what they want to do after college.
“I hope that students come to visit us early and often,” said Ewing, “not just wait until senior year to come and talk to us because there’s so many wonderful things that they can take advantage of to help them clarify what they want to do once they graduate and we can help them with that.”
Along with career counselors, the career clinic invited Kristin Mehalick, the cooperative internship coordinator at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation and 2011 KSC alumni to talk to students about potential internships and help with their resumes.
“Feel free to contact me,” Mehalick said. “I offer cover letter and resume support and then we work on your application together and I send it to the business and they reach out to the students for an interview.”
At the Career Clinic, Ben Fredericks, a KSC master’s student, said, “I want to boost my resume up as much as possible, so when I get out of my master’s program and back in the career field, I can be a little more marketable.”
Fredericks said he is looking for an internship to fill up his time and also to help him gain real life experience for when he graduates.
“Resumes are your first introductions,” said Fredericks. “It’s really the pinnacle point of if someone is actually going to give you the time for an interview or if you’re just another nobody that has the same stuff as everyone else.”
Alyssa Salerno can be contacted at asalerno@kscequinox.com