Career Center News
October in the Career Center
November 06, 2024
By Katie Chitwood, Career Center Writing and Communications Intern
We hope this October treated you as spook-tacularly as it did for the Career Center! This time of the year is always busy with events like our Fall 2024 Career & Internship Fair and Graduate School Fair, but we wouldn’t have it any other way; seeing students take charge of their career paths and make new connections across campus at our 51 career events and 20 employer showcases was worth every ounce of hard work.
Engage
We’re excited to report that the Fall 2024 Career &
Internship Fair, held on October 9th at the DeVos Place Convention
Center, was a smashing success with students, alumni, and employers
alike. We saw our highest recorded attendance EVER with 2,080 students
showing up to network with potential employers, hand out resumes,
learn about application processes, and hit the ground running on their
career paths.
After surveying students post-fair, we could not be more satisfied that over 85% of students were happy with their experience and 64% were confident they would land an interview with an employer they spoke with at the event.
Connect
Though we saw thousands of employers and students at the event,
they weren’t the only ones in attendance at the Career &
Internship Fair. After many new staff members were hired this fall, a
group of Grand Valley’s academic advisors took a field trip out to the
DeVos Place to experience the event, learn how to prepare students for
networking, and even connect with employers relating to majors they
work with to gather resources for future advising sessions. Attending
the Career Fair is a perfect way for departments across campus to
support their students in taking a leap towards their professional
goals, so we were ecstatic to see increasing support for this event
from Academic Advising.
We had the privilege of interviewing Kayla Bucci, a Career Fair attendee and academic advisor from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, after the event to hear about her experience. We loved hearing her perspective on how educational the fair was for her and other advisors, and when asked how the university can better support this once-a-semester opportunity, Bucci explained, “It’s important for faculty and staff to be on board with the event and promote it, and even potentially offer extra credit for attending because students are here to go to class and graduate to get to their career, so we have to think, how can we put that all together? Bridging that gap would be great.” With the Winter 2025 Career & Internship Fair in the near future, we encourage you to help us bridge that gap further by motivating students to attend or even joining us yourself!
Discover
It’s very common for students to experience anxiety when
answering the question, “What do you want to do after graduation?”
Considering everyone’s unique skill set and the ever-expanding number
of opportunities available in college, it can be extremely difficult
for students to narrow down their interests into one, focused career
path. PathwayU, an online, personalized career assessment tool, is
designed to help eliminate this anxiety by guiding students through a
series of tests that provide insight into which majors and job fields
might suit their passions best. After students take the assessments
(Interests, Values, Personality, and Workplace Preferences), they
receive immediate data-backed results that lay out the strongest
program and career path matches for their unique responses.
Becoming familiar with this free resource is a giant step towards improving student advising; faculty who understand PathwayU can help students interpret their results, making academic guidance sessions more productive and personalized. By encouraging your students to use PathwayU, you are empowering them to take charge of their own academic and professional futures – why not start today?