One key component of Allerton is to share best practices with fellow career services colleagues. Review these submitted best practices and reach out to the appropriate contacts to learn more.
Primary Contact:
KDJ Washington – Director, Employer and Regional Engagement
washington@nd.edu, 615.319.4442
Like many colleges and universities, Notre Dame has a supportive network of alumni and parents. And, as we have all experienced, most “dream employers” identified by our students do not travel to recruit on campus. We have evolved a three-year pilot program in Silicon Valley to advance our approach to building employer relations. We leverage our network and hire part-time staff across the country to cultivate relationships with leading employers, empower students to build connections with professionals in cities where they want to work, and raise awareness of our work with our community of alumni and parents. This regional strategy has been implemented in Silicon Valley / San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York City, and set for future expansion in the Boston, and Washington, DC areas.
Primary Contact:
Erik Oswald, Graduate Career Consultant
eoswald@nd.edu, 574-631-4424
As we have explored options to scale interview preparation for our students, we have found success with an “Autonomous Small-Group Mock Interviews Workshop.” Designed as a 90-minute program, the first half is a presentation on interview strategies, common questions, and tips. The second half invites students to participate in autonomous small-group mock interviews. In groups of three (ideally), students take turns interviewing each other, rotating through three 10-12 minute rounds (depending on how much time is left in the workshop). Therefore, each student has the opportunity to ask, answer, and observe. The process is scalable, because it requires no external mock interviewers (alumni, employers, faculty, or other staff). By removing the need for facilitators, the event is limited only by the number of three-person tables you can fit in the room or the number of breakout rooms available on Zoom.
Primary Contact:
Kate Juhl
kjuhl@umd.edu, 301.314.4040
Each spring the University Career Center @ ARHU runs 2 successful programs for language students:
Credit-Bearing Bilingual Mock Interviews:
Faculty in upper-level business language courses in Spanish, French, German (and sometimes Arabic and Japanese) embed an assignment requiring students to complete a mock interview in the target language with a bilingual employer/alum (typically 10% of the course grade). Students register through Symplicity and the UCC@ARHU handles all logistics including employer sourcing. These took place in person before Covid but will likely stay on Zoom permanently as it broadens the pool of available volunteers.
Language House Alumni Cluster Conversations:
Students living in the popular “Language House” (language immersion living & learning community) are connected to alumni of each cluster via Zoom for a group conversation in the target language about the alum’s career path. This past spring, cluster conversations happened in French, Spanish, Chinese, German and Japanese. Two of the alumni Zoomed in from France and Japan! The UCC@ARHU works with the director of the Language House on alumni sourcing and then handles all logistics.
These events follow on the heels of our big Language Career & Internship Fair each fall.
-Kate Juhl & Caroline Bodnar, UCC@ARHU, UMD-College Park
Primary Contact:
Paula Caldwell, Associate Director of Career & Professional Development
pcaldwell3@unl.edu, 402-472-7326
One of the biggest hurdles in the workplace is staff turnover and the challenge of training new individuals efficiently. High-quality, comprehensive training is one of the most crucial steps in retaining talent. This raises the question: as teams experience turnover and lose the historical context that comes with time and experience in an office, how can we ensure that critical elements of the training process are not overlooked? To address this concern, the Business Career Center streamlined their onboarding and training process through the development of a “Master Staff Training Notebook” in Microsoft OneNote.
This notebook is broken into six sections for initial onboarding and outlines every training session that needs to occur when onboarding new staff members, providing a comprehensive guide for both trainer and trainee. By clearly outlining all training sessions, learning objectives, and talking points for the trainer, any staff member can step into a training role and grow their professional competencies – while still ensuring the integrity of the training process and that nothing is overlooked.
The Business Career Center has used this “Master Staff Training Notebook” to train 5 staff members over the past 2 years. With having many newer staff participating in the training process for incoming team members, our notebook has increased transparency, communication, and accessibility for both the trainer and trainees, with the ultimate goal of producing career coaches who are knowledgeable and confident in delivering high-quality coaching.
Primary Contact:
Mary Madormo, Associate Director of Operations
mary.madormo@northwestern.edu, 847-467-4736
DEI for the Professional Development course: The MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises incorporated DEI into their professional development course this year focusing on privilege, giving/receiving feedback, and the ecosystem of inequality. Additionally, it asked students to think about their own experiences and featured several guest speakers who spoke on topics ranging from institutional investments in equity, corporate HR recruiting through a DEI lens, and accessibility.
Primary Contact:
Erica Ely, Assistant Director, Career Education & Exposure
eely@umd.edu, 301-314-0362
EDCP108i is a 1-credit fully online, asynchronous, seven module course designed to provide students with the full experience of searching for an internship. The course has been offered for over twenty years and was converted about six years ago from in-person to a fully online course. This past academic year (2021-2022), there were 13 sections offered with enrollment of 404 students total. Of those 13 sections, 5 sections were restricted to students in our College of Arts & Humanities (ARHU), College of Mathematical & Natural Sciences (CMNS), and a living-learning program called CIVICUS that requires their students to have a spring semester internship their sophomore year. The University Career Center oversees course curriculum and content for all sections, however the sections restricted to certain colleges and departments have tailored content specifically for that population and instructed by a staff/faculty member associated with that college or department. For example, in the ARHU-restricted section, students can view sample creative/designed resumes in addition to more traditional ones, see links to industry-specific/niche internship search sites, and learn about select scholarship opportunities available exclusively to ARHU majors. Additionally, information on the college’s “Be Worldwise Get Worldready†initiative and logos/branding representing top employers that hire ARHU students are included. We hope to expand this model with other departments expressing interest in future sections, including athletics and engineering.
Primary Contact:
Garry Klein, Sr. Inclusive Outreach Specialist
garry-klein@uiowa.edu, 319-335-3242
Beginning in the Fall 2021 semester, a pilot involving an embedded coach between the Pomerantz Career Center and the Center for Inclusive Academic Excellence “with the goal to triage, coach, and provide programming in conjunction with CIAE that serves to inform, provide access, and opportunities for experiences was begun. Strategies included additional programming with Trio students, 1st Generation and BIPOC programming with employers and students engaging together, exploring how mentoring can be further developed with students, and helping students to access Hawkeye Internship Grant”. In the nine months the partnership has been active and with the coach dedicating 10 hours a week to the partnership, over 138 students through March have met with the embedded coach (roughly 46% of the caseload), four different outreach efforts have been made to connect with Advantage Iowa students, three events at CIAE have been executed, and co-teaming for future practicums, training and discussions about summer collaborations have occurred. Participation in limited CIAE staff meetings and weekly coach and supervisory sessions have also been part of the experience. Additionally, the embedded career coach has provided career-focused updates to the CIAE student newsletter and updates to success coaches relative to opportunities. The embedded coach also serves as support to TRIO classes and Iowa Edge peer training.
Primary Contact:
Greyson Holliday– Advising Graduate Assistant
HuskerWork is a professional development and skill building program designed for students who work on-campus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). It is facilitated through collaboration between University Career Services (UCS) and UNL departments who enroll their student staff in the program. UCS designs, curates, and manages HuskerWork while participating campus employers provide their student staff paid-time to complete each module. The program is based on employer needs and feedback from student participants. HuskerWork has a focus on both immediate benefit as well as long-term professional development. HuskerWork teaches student staff professional skills designed to enhance their current job performance. It also encourages student staff to identify their transferable skills and experiences which will be available for future opportunities. Another goal of HuskerWork is to increase student Career Adaptability. Both qualitative and quantitative data has been collected for each HuskerWork skill development module. During the most recent semester, 70% of student qualitative responses indicated belief the program was effective and beneficial. Additionally, standardized measures of perceived competence indicate participating students felt competent in the professional skill being assessed after completing the module. Finally, data from 2021.22 suggests there is some evidence that students who completed HuskerWork increased their Career Adaptability.
Primary Contact:
Muge Tuna
mugetuna@iu.edu, 812-855-8803
Integration of employer relations to the curriculum to encourage better employer relations – faculty – alumni collaboration for supporting student success in career readiness.
Primary Contact:
Mary Madormo, Associate Director of Operations
mary.madormo@northwestern.edu, 847-467-4736
International Student Filter in Post Graduation Survey Data: By adding this filter to NCA’s post-graduation data, it allows current international students to identify companies/organizations where international alumni found employment in the U.S (this data can also be filtered by major and by industry).
Primary Contacts:
Emily Wilber – Associate Director for Career Education and Inclusion
Luiza Benvenuti – Career Connections Intern
The Micro-Internship and Mentoring Program is focused on helping our First-Generation students and Students of Color find short-term, paid opportunities to explore and develop skills while also receiving mentorship from supervisors in their fields of interest. Those opportunities are offered by organizations and paid for by our office. They typically range from 3-8 weeks with 10-40 hours of total work.
Primary Contacts:
DJ Washington – Director, Employer and Regional Engagement
washington@nd.edu, 615.319.4442
TA few years ago we evaluated the effectiveness of our employer advisory board and explored new ways to expand meaningful engagement with employers who both recruit at Notre Dame, as well as those who may be interested in recruiting our students. To best meet the needs of our employers and our university community, we launched a no-cost, half-day program each summer which we have named Notre Dame Recruitment Conference (NDRC). This gathering provides a great opportunity for employers to:
- Meet with faculty, and learn about academic programs at Notre Dame
- Meet with students and learn about diversity and inclusion initiatives
- Meet with fellow recruiters to discuss best practices within a particular industry 190 representatives from 143 employers attended NDRC last year, and engaged with 95 faculty members, students, and career services staff
Primary Contact:
Lyn Baier
lyn.baier@rutgers.edu, 248-848-932-0621
Created by Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway, the Rutgers Summer Service Internship (RSSI) Initiative is a joint program between Career Services across New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden campuses and the Eagleton Institute for Politics. After an extensive recruitment process of internship sites and students, 580 students applied for this program. Our inaugural class of 100 students was selected and then placed at 71 different internship sites after several days of virtual interviews. These sites are public service-orientated non-profit organizations and direct-service government offices located in New Jersey, New York City and Philadelphia. With the support of generous donors, students will receive a stipend of $5000 for completing 200 hours over ten weeks this summer.
Interns also participate in a three-credit asynchronous summer course. The course will encourage students to explore and engage in public service while reflecting on the career readiness and professionalism skills they are developing. Summer tuition and fees are covered by RSSI.
In May, students attended a kickoff event to meet each other and President Holloway. A celebratory reception will be held in September to highlight student learning and conclude year one. Attendees will include President Holloway, RSSI students and families, donors, supervisors, and campus partners.
Connie Hughes, one of the first donors to make RSSI possible, and President Holloway greeted our inaugural cohort at our kickoff event. The recording of their empowering remarks can be viewed here.
Rutgers Today featured the kickoff event and overall experience here.
Primary Contact:
Mary Madormo, Associate Director of Operations
mary.madormo@northwestern.edu, 847-467-4736
Senior Seminar: EPICS and SoC piloted a new career preparation course for graduating students helping to ensure students are career ready. The pilot courses revolved around careers in television + film, arts administration and performing arts and featured alumni and industry leaders to help inform the career journey narrative. This course will be a requirement for graduating starting with the class of 2026.
Primary Contact:
LoriAnn Edinborough, Director, Undergraduate Career Services
edinborough.1@nd.edu, 574-631-5200
Senior Seminar: EPICS and SoC piloted a new career preparation course for graduating students helping to ensure students are career As we look for ways to make data more accessible to students, at the end of each summer break the Center for Career Development surveys our returning students asking about any summer experience in which they engaged in over the past summer. We provide this information to our students to assist them in exploring potential opportunities and learn from their peers about their experiences.
Primary Contact:
Rebecca Ryan, Program Director for the University Career Center at CMNS
ryanreb@umd.edu, 248-464-9020
At UMD’s Inaugural Health Professions Symposium, the UCC delivered a conference session to pre-health students on how to tackle Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) and ethical/scenario-based questions about healthcare. Students watched a brief presentation with information on possible approaches for responding to these types of questions and then were broken into small groups to practice interviews. Student volunteers were asked multiple rounds of questions by their peers, who served as “admissions representatives.” At the end of each round, small groups reflected on the experience as a team, noting what went well throughout the interview and brainstorming additional structures and evidence that could have been explored in the response. Career advisors were placed with each small group to assist with facilitation and discussion. This structure of peer-to-peer mock interviewing 1) establishes a sense of community amongst students in a typically competitive pre-health culture and 2) provides students the opportunity to step into the role of an “admissions representative” to consider what interviewers experience throughout an interview. This workshop format could be applied to other industries, as well, as it encourages networking and a shift in students seeing their peers as professional coaches and resources as they prepare for interviews.
Primary Contact:
Ryan Willerton, Associate Vice President for Career and Professional Development
Willerton@nd.edu, 574-631-9421
In an effort to find innovative ways to help connect graduating students with employers and alumni who may be seeking talent, the Meruelo Family Center for Career Development created Talent Showcase, a searchable directory of graduates. Class of 2022 graduates seeking full-time employment have opted into being included in the showcase and have the ability to decide what level of information to share, including:
- Academics: student’s academic major, minor or area of study, as well as their graduation date
- Career Interests: a brief listing of industries, job functions, or career paths a student is interested in pursuing
- Locations: a listing of the cities or regions where the student is interested in working
- Experience: a snapshot of applicable work-related experiences (summer internship, academic research, etc.)
- Connections: clubs, activities, or residence hall which you may have a similar connection
Primary Contact:
Amy Thaci
thaci.1@osu.edu, 614-292-1137
University Career Services Committee (UCSC) is an organization of university professionals committed to responding to the career development needs of students at Ohio State. UCSC members exchange ideas and coordinate the dissemination of career-related information and events. UCSC supports the professional development and promotes the value of the combined talent of its members. Through its unified voice, UCSC advocates policy resulting in practices that enhance the total educational experience of the students at Ohio State.
Primary Contact:
Mary Madormo, Associate Director of Operations
mary.madormo@northwestern.edu, 847-467-4736
Virtual Law School Application Summer Series: A 3-part program in order to help keep students on track who were applying to law school in the fall. Topics included: Preparing for the Upcoming Law School Application Cycle, Law School Personal Statement Workshop, Creating Your Law School List. The program was successful in setting up law school applicants to apply early in the law school application cycle and receiving positive admissions decisions earlier.
