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With Welcome Week and Sylly Week under your belt you’re starting to get the hang of this college thing! And if it isn’t coming as easy as you thought it would, that’s okay too! This is all a big adjustment and with a little time and repetition you’ll start to acclimate just fine.
For all of our incoming students and freshman, we want to provide you with some tips for starting your career readiness journey. We don’t expect you to have it all figured out right now, but we do want you to take inventory of where you are now and where you need to grow. Use the career center along with its many resources to help you grow as a professional!
Finding your way
Join campus organizations
- By now, you’ve gotten to attend a couple of events and a couple of classes. Now it’s time to get involved and capitalize on opportunities. Start to get familiar with the organizations and clubs offered for your major. Learn more about each organization on MU Engage or by visiting their official Instagram! Building experiences and learning more about what you do and don’t like will help you in the long run.
Take a career assessment
- Do a little soul searching and set aside some intentional time to reflect on your interests, your strengths and what makes you happy. From there you’ll have a better idea of the career paths you’d do best in, and that would best support your long-term personal and professional goals.
- The career center offers students the opportunity to take the Clifton Strengths assessment. It’s essentially an assessment built to help students identify their top strengths and talents. By becoming aware of these respective talents students can better understand how they can show up best in professional settings and differing group dynamics. After taking the assessment, students can speak to career coaches about how to interpret their results and how they can continue maximizing their talents.
- Along with the Clifton Strengths assessment, students should consider taking the Focus 2 assessment. It’s a free self-assessment that helps students identify their values, skills and personality type. From there, it helps students solidify what career paths align closely with who they are. After taking the assessment, students can talk to career specialists about their results.
Start developing skills
- You can develop skills through a myriad of ways and atop that list is hands-on experience. Whether that’s pursuing undergraduate research, organizational involvement or internships. Learning by doing is a great way to build on what you’re digesting in class every week, getting you one step closer to being career ready. Don’t think that internships or jobs are the only ways you can develop relevant skills. Remaining malleable and open to new experiences is a great way to ensure you’ll see growth.
Create a Handshake profile
- Sign up for Handshake account and start customizing your profile! Include things like your intended major, year of graduation and any relevant work experience. Find career center resources on Handshake and begin expanding your network. If you have created a resume submit it to the career center so that it can be reviewed before its sent to employers. Play with Handshake’s new AI feature to help optimize your resume and ensure its Application Tracking System (ATS) approved.
Use Show-Me AI to research industries
- If you are still exploring majors and career paths or if you just want to dive deeper, try researching career paths on Show-Me AI. If you haven’t played with Show-Me yet, it’s a wonderful tool that allows you to choose which AI search engine you’d like to use depending on the breadth of your search. Considering exploring things like salary ranges, internship opportunities and top companies for your respective industry. This will give you a better idea of what you’re preparing for post-grad.
The good news is you have time! These are just a few ways you can be proactive about your success rather than having to be reactive when opportunities come calling. If you want a little more information about what benchmarks you should be meeting this year, take a look at the career readiness guide for first year students.
By Raigan Clay