Category Archives: Casey Brown ’14

Casey Brown ’14, English. Lives in Rocky, works in graphic design, and loves music, writing, and dance. She agrees with E.E. Cummings when he says “I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.”

Are you ready for Career Fair 2012?

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Are you think­ing….
Should I go to the career fair? I don’t know…I’m not a senior yet. How use­ful could it be?

VERY use­ful. Here’s the deal. This Fri­day over 116 employ­ers will assem­ble in Dil­lon Gym to meet YOU and tell YOU about their orga­ni­za­tions. If you’re inter­ested in a full-time job, an intern­ship, or a fel­low­ship, the career fair is a great way to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of your prospec­tive career or post-grad path. If you are a junior or senior, you prob­a­bly already knew this. If you are a fresh­men or sopho­more, you may won­der if it is worth your time to go, or if it is too soon in your col­lege career to speak with employers.

No mat­ter what your class year, you are prob­a­bly NOT think­ing: “This is going to be a breeze.”

Why shouldn’t it? Sure, everyone’s in suits (includ­ing you!), but a for­mal envi­ron­ment doesn’t mean that this isn’t also a learn­ing oppor­tu­nity. If you’re a fresh­man or sopho­more, this is a great event to attend to get a feel for var­i­ous indus­tries and to learn how to make a crisp first impres­sion. If you’re ner­vous, here’s the remedy.

Just think: What does camp­ing in the wilder­ness and going to a career fair have in com­mon? Answer: You’ll be bet­ter off doing both if you’re prepared. 

Here are three ways to get the prepa­ra­tion you need to thrive, not just survive:

  1. Check out Career Fair tips here. There’s more that a lit­tle finesse involved in “work­ing” the career fair. These tips will take you from just another stu­dent in the crowd to that student—the one on top of her/his game who makes an unfor­get­tably sharp impres­sion. That can—and will—be you!
  2. Research par­tic­i­pat­ing employ­ers. Tiger­Tracks has a list of all the employ­ers you’ll meet. Pick some favorites, and do a good Google search. Then, plan some company-specific ques­tions to get the con­ver­sa­tion flow­ing. It will look good when employ­ers see you’re curi­ous AND that you know a thing or two about their companies. 
  3. Get feed­back. Career Ser­vices is offer­ing extended walk-ins from 2–5 pm every day this week until Thurs­day. Coun­selors will offer friendly, expert feed­back on your resume and ele­va­tor pitch (the way you will intro­duce your­self to employ­ers). If you’ve never been to a career fair before, this is an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to get prepared.

Okay, if you are think­ing: “This isn’t for me. I enjoy curl­ing up with a good text­book. I’m not a meet and greet type of person.“

I have two things to say to this. One, of course you are! You’re (clearly) smart, tal­ented in your own ways, and, if the median per­son on cam­pus is any indi­ca­tion, you’re really, really, ridicu­lously good look­ing. Two, in that case at least come for the LinkedIn Photo Booth. Career Ser­vices will be offer­ing free pro­fes­sional head­shots near the gym entrance. This is a great way to pro­fes­sion­al­ize your LinkedIn pro­file and get rid of that mys­tery photo at the top of your page. 

Look­ing for­ward to see­ing every­one at the fair—come early and come prepared!

It’s NOT Too Late to Land a Summer Internship!

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Does it seem like every­one has an intern­ship this sum­mer?  Your best friend, your boyfriend, your best friend’s boyfriend, your pre­cep­tor, your preceptor’s boyfriend…just about every­one, that is, except you. If this is the case, don’t give up hope!

Many sum­mer intern­ships aren’t secured until April or May. It’s not too late to find the intern­ship that is the right fit for you. Stay focused,  search smart, and be bold. Here are some tips I found:

  1. A lot of jobs re-open appli­ca­tions right about now. A lot of employ­ers, espe­cially in pub­lish­ing, media, and non­profit, may not even begin hir­ing until the spring months. Check out http://www.mediabistro.com/joblistings/default.asp?gdsr=1&=0&jbdr=10. It has a selec­tion of intern­ships in media—all posted recently.
  2. Are you find­ing intern­ship with expired dead­lines? You can sort your search results by upcom­ing dead­lines in Tiger­Tracks and UCAN. When con­duct­ing your Tiger­Tracks search, go to the top bar of your intern­ship search results, put your mouse over “date posted” and click “Appli­ca­tion dead­line.” Or, go to UCAN and under “sort by:” at the top, select “dead­line.” UCAN still has over 1,300 sum­mer intern­ships you can apply for in a vari­ety of fields.
  3. As you might imag­ine, four times as many peo­ple apply for paid intern­ships than for unpaid intern­ships on Internships.com. If are still con­sid­er­ing an unpaid intern­ship, now might be a good time to apply. Here’s a link to some other advice on find­ing intern­ships late in the game: http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2011/05/04/its-not-too-late-to-find-a-summer-job-or-internship
  4. Keep a dis­cern­ing eye. Watch out for bogus intern­ships and stay focused on your goals. Try going to the pull-down tab at the top of the Career Ser­vices web­site and click on “Online Resources.” The “Specif­i­cally Intern­ships” page aggre­gates intern­ship search engines spe­cific to your inter­ests, indus­try, and pre­ferred loca­tion. Backdoorjobs.com is one of the most inter­est­ing links listed. This site lists adven­tur­ous, short-term sum­mer jobs, from safari guides in Alaska to Inter­na­tional vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties. Here’s a link to Career Service’s Online Resources, which is a good place to start: http://www.princeton.edu/career/about_us/online-resources/. And here’s a link on detect­ing a bogus intern­ships: http://www.wetfeet.com/advice-tools/internships/how-to-identify-a-shady-internship.
  5. Don’t over­look net­work­ing as a way to tap into unad­ver­tised or non-posted intern­ships. Be sure to reach out to fam­ily, friends, alumni, and other pro­fes­sional con­tacts to explore poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties they may be aware of. To search the Alumni Careers Net­work for alumni in your field of inter­est, click here.

Lastly, to pull your “just-in-time” strat­egy together, sched­ule an appoint­ment to meet with a career coun­selor for per­son­al­ized guidance.

Best of luck!

Break into Vault!

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Shhh…this resource is so good, you might not want to give it away. Of course, your efforts would be in vain, since this exclu­sive web­site is free for all Prince­ton stu­dents, fac­ulty, and staff. Nev­er­the­less, there’s a cer­tain ele­ment of mys­tery as you tra­verse Vault, the Gringotts of job and intern­ship search engines. So when I stum­bled on Vault at the bot­tom of Career Ser­vices’ web­site, I was intrigued. I clicked on the link, set up a pass­word, and found myself in one of the job search’s best-kept secrets.

Here are some of the perks:

The Guides: Vault’s web­site con­tains an eye-watering 80+ career guides on indus­tries, employ­ers, inter­na­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties, interviews/resumes, and other career top­ics. I thought I’d never find infor­ma­tion on careers in music writ­ing, my rather nar­row field of choice. Did they ever have what I was look­ing for! From the cre­ative side to the busi­ness side, pos­si­ble inter­view ques­tions, the inside scoop (will I really be fetch­ing cof­fee?), pay rates, and job descrip­tions in the field. Also, check out Vault’s Guide to Top Intern­ships, co-written by senior edu­ca­tion edi­tor and Prince­ton alumna Car­olyn Wise.

The Search Engines: You can search by com­pany, indus­try, pro­fes­sion, or fil­ter­ing through job or intern­ship data­bases. I decided to search pro­fes­sions and typed in “lawyer.” Vault came back with a list of “uppers” and “down­ers” as well as per­son­al­ity “matches” and “misses.”  Among the uppers were “high salaries” and “Large-firm perks such as firm retreats and free meals.” Sounds pretty nice. The down­ers told the other side: “long hours, high stress level, and high level of dis­sat­is­fac­tion.” Hmm…maybe I’ll keep looking.

Blog and Career Advice: From their Career Advice page to their blogs, Vault has infor­ma­tion from every step of the way: the job search, on the job, career advance­ment, etc. The videos and blogs offer a nice, acces­si­ble alter­na­tive for stu­dents. Since sign­ing up for Vault’s emails I now wel­come the arrival of my weekly email with arti­cles on top­ics like unpaid intern­ships (very use­ful), cover let­ter mis­takes (very use­ful), and office romance (not at all use­ful for me, but very inter­est­ing nonethe­less!). I also read an arti­cle warn­ing against using the excla­ma­tion point! …there I go again.

Other Inside Scoop: Do you want to what it’s like to work for a spe­cific employer? Have you ever won­dered how much you’ll make with your prospec­tive job/company? Shhh…this is the secret part. Vault has a sec­tion all about Salaries and Reviews. I won’t tell you the reviews and rates that I looked up—check it out for yourself!

Pinterest for Career Advice and Inspiration!

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Fash­ion, food, art, books—and now career inspi­ra­tion. For all the Pin­ter­est fanat­ics out there, Career Ser­vices has started a Pin­ter­est of its own with 8 dif­fer­ent boards. Get the lat­est career info from inter­view tips and career advice to events and inspi­ra­tion like this pin: “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.” These words of wis­dom from Steve Jobs are enough to get me through a hard week…maybe even through midterms week.

Another one of my favorite boards is “Social Media & YOU!” which has cool info­graph­ics about how to cre­ate a pro­fes­sional online pres­ence, how to use social media in your job search, and how recruiters use social media to find infor­ma­tion about candidates.

Fol­low­ing Career Ser­vices on Pin­ter­est is a great option if you:

  • Want to be noti­fied about the lat­est eventsAre look­ing for inspi­ra­tion to re-pin to your friends
  • Want inter­est­ing, visual tips about how to make a solid impres­sion in the inter­view or at the job fair
  • Are inter­ested in what your peers are doing to jump-start their careers
  • Want to browse visu­als about the lat­est on social media and recruiting

Check it out at http://pinterest.com/princetoncareer/.

Spring Break Career Inspiration

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Spring break—a time to relax, put away the win­ter coat, and catch some rays. But how about catch­ing some inspi­ra­tion while you’re at it? Thirty-four Prince­ton stu­dents will be spend­ing their Spring Break by vis­it­ing Prince­ton alumni hosts in the work­place as part of the Princetern­ship pro­gram http://bit.ly/Princeternshipbrochure. Late Fri­day after­noon while most were pack­ing up to get away for break, I decided to hit cam­pus to see what oth­ers were doing next week. Hear from three other stu­dents who went above and beyond to make the most of their spring breaks.

Princeton Focuses on Careers in the Public Good

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In my role as intern, I assist with the mar­ket­ing of Career Ser­vices’ events.  Since I have an inter­est in the arts, I thought I would ask Abbey Racelis, Assis­tant Direc­tor for Arts, Non­profit and Gov­ern­ment to “guest blog” about the upcom­ing Non­profit Fair.  Here’s what Abbey had to say:

Prince­ton in the Nation’s Ser­vice and in the Ser­vice of All Nations.

The infor­mal motto of Prince­ton reflects a long his­tory of prepar­ing stu­dents for posi­tions of lead­er­ship and lives of ser­vice in many fields. Because of our stu­dents’ con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to mean­ing­ful work, Career Ser­vices is host­ing the Non­profit Career Fair – “Careers in the Pub­lic Good” on Fri­day, March 2nd from 1pm-4pm in Frist’s Mul­ti­pur­pose Room. This fair is designed to be a show­case for orga­ni­za­tions to share infor­ma­tion with stu­dents about cur­rent oppor­tu­ni­ties and the rewards and chal­lenges of work­ing in the non­profit field.  This year we are wel­com­ing 47 orga­ni­za­tions from a wide range of sec­tors includ­ing NGOs, Arts, Sports, Edu­ca­tion, Cul­tural, Envi­ron­men­tal, Human Rights/Social Jus­tice, Health, Com­mu­nity Advo­cacy, Foun­da­tions, and Government!

Some of the agen­cies you can expect to see at the fair on Fri­day include but are not lim­ited to (find full list of par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions on TigerTracks):

Access Now: an inter­na­tional NGO that advo­cates for an open and secure inter­net as a means to free, full and safe par­tic­i­pa­tion in soci­ety and the real­iza­tion of human rights. Founded in the wake of the 2009 Iran­ian post-election crack­down, Access teams with dig­i­tal activists to build their tech­ni­cal capac­ity and to help them advo­cate glob­ally for their dig­i­tal rights. www.accessnow.org

Amer­ica SCORES:  inspires urban youth to lead healthy lives, be engaged stu­dents, and have the con­fi­dence and char­ac­ter to make a dif­fer­ence in the world. Amer­ica SCORES envi­sions a world where all youth find their voice, achieve their goals, and unleash their full poten­tial. Amer­ica SCORES part­ners with urban schools to pro­vide a high qual­ity, team-based pro­gram that inte­grates soc­cer, poetry and service-learning. www.americascores.org

NY Sun Works: New York Sun Works cre­ated the renowned Sci­ence Barge; a pro­to­type, sus­tain­able urban farm and envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­ter on the Hud­son River. The Green­house Project Ini­tia­tive is based on The Sci­ence Barge model, and ded­i­cated to bring­ing the con­cepts of urban sus­tain­abil­ity and envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence to NYC’s schools. www.nysunworks.org

Global Youth Con­nect is a 501 © 3 orga­ni­za­tion founded in 1999 by inter­na­tional youth lead­ers sup­ported by key human rights advo­cates and schol­ars. In a nut shell, GYC advances human rights and cre­ates a more just world by empow­er­ing young activists from around the globe through a com­bi­na­tion of cross cul­tural human rights work­shops, site vis­its, vol­un­teer ser­vice, and sus­tained human rights activism aligned with grass­roots NGOs, pol­icy mak­ers, and other stake­hold­ers. www.globalyouthconnect.org

Depart­ment of Jus­tice: The Fraud Sec­tion of the Crim­i­nal Divi­sion of the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice is respon­si­ble for the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of var­i­ous types of eco­nomic crimes, includ­ing inter­na­tional bribery, cor­po­rate fraud, secu­ri­ties fraud, insider trad­ing, mort­gage frraud, bank fraud, health care fraud, and pro­cure­ment fraud.

 Check out the “Career Fair” sec­tion of the Career Plan­ning Guide for tips on how to pre­pare for the Fair.

If mean­ing­ful work is some­thing you are inter­ested in, please check out the Non­profit Fair on Fri­day, March 2nd from 1-4pm in Frist!

 

Interested in the arts, nonprofit, or government? Meet our NEW career counselor!!

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From dancers and artists to those look­ing toward gov­ern­ment and non­profit, Prince­ton hosts a smor­gas­bord of inter­ests on cam­pus. How­ever, when it comes to search­ing for a job or intern­ship, some choose to leave those inter­ests behind in pur­suit of a more “tra­di­tional” job.

But we don’t have to.

Meet Abi­gail Racelis, Career Service’s new Assis­tant Direc­tor for the Arts, Non­profit, and the Pub­lic Sec­tor.  Since join­ing the team this July, Abbey has ded­i­cated her­self to bring­ing non-traditional job and intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties to cam­pus for stu­dents inter­ested in cre­ative writ­ing, dance, the­ater, visual arts, and the non­profit and pub­lic sectors.

“My main vision is to be an advo­cate for all stu­dents, but espe­cially those who are think­ing about pur­su­ing what some would call ‘non-traditional’ careers. My goal is to bring more expo­sure to (and add  to) all the great things Career Ser­vices offers for stu­dents inter­ested in the arts, non­profit, and pub­lic sec­tors. I hope to use my pre­vi­ous indus­try expe­ri­ence and inter­est in the arts, social jus­tice issues, and pol­icy mixed with my stu­dent a airs back­ground to help bring some­thing new to Career Ser­vices for Prince­ton stu­dents.”
 

If you were pleas­antly sur­prised to see more fly­ers in your inbox regard­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in fields like non­profit, visual arts or fash­ion, thank Abbey. Since begin­ning her new role, she has worked tire­lessly to inform stu­dents about unique fields of employ­ment and build on-campus recruit­ing net­works with new com­pa­nies. In addi­tion to meet­ing with stu­dents indi­vid­u­ally in her role as a career coun­selor, she has already coor­di­nated sev­eral cam­pus events, includ­ing a panel on Careers in Visual Arts, the Christie’s Infor­ma­tion Ses­sion, pan­els on Non­profit and Gov­ern­ment Intern­ships, and she just facil­i­tated a panel on Careers in Fash­ion last week. All of these events were very pop­u­lar with students.

“We brought in the VP of Mar­ket­ing for Lacoste, the Mer­chan­dise Plan­ner from the Gilt Groupe, the Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Sales and Logis­tics from Rosie Pope Mater­nity, an Assis­tant Buyer from Michael Kors, and a Pro­duc­tion Man­ager at Ralph Lau­ren,” all of whom are recent Prince­ton alumni. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, it’s rather com­mon for Prince­ton stu­dents to pur­sue careers in cre­ative indus­tries, she explains, espe­cially on the busi­ness side.

“Stu­dents can use their ana­lyt­i­cal, crit­i­cal think­ing, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, as well as expand and explore their cre­ativ­ity while gain­ing expo­sure to indus­tries that are fast-paced, high energy, and dynamic,” she said.

Abbey’s own career path pro­vides a wealth of ‘in-the-biz’ expe­ri­ence. After grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Con­necti­cut, she moved to New York City and embarked on a career in fash­ion. She started out as an account exec­u­tive in sales for one of the top chil­drenswear man­u­fac­tur­ers, work­ing on small “mom-and-pop” accounts and grad­u­ally mov­ing up to the big depart­ment store accounts, like Dillard’s and Macy’s. Her posi­tion work­ing with char­ac­ter licens­ing and even­tu­ally as a mer­chan­diser gave her unique expo­sure to both the sales and design sides of fashion.

In addi­tion to her expe­ri­ence in fash­ion, Abbey has always nur­tured a life­long involve­ment in the arts, espe­cially dance. Grow­ing up as a dancer in the con­ser­va­tory world, part of her deci­sion to move to New York involved pur­su­ing a career in dance. While work­ing a full-time job she also per­formed in some off-Broadway pro­duc­tions as a back-up dancer, appeared on Good Morn­ing Amer­ica, took (and still con­tin­ues to take) count­less classes at Broad­way Dance Cen­ter and work­shops with var­i­ous  chore­o­g­ra­phers, and even spent a sum­mer work­ing at the School of Amer­i­can Bal­let “pur­su­ing a child­hood dream in a dif­fer­ent perspective.”

Abbey’s inter­est in career coun­sel­ing sparked while she was work­ing in fash­ion and was appointed Intern­ship Direc­tor for a chil­drenswear com­pany. “I needed interns and started recruit­ing at uni­ver­si­ties in the city. It was when I was going to the career fairs, recruit­ing, and work­ing with my interns that I real­ized I loved work­ing with stu­dents.” So, leav­ing the Big Apple behind, she headed for Bowl­ing Green, Ohio to get her mas­ters in Higher Edu­ca­tion and Stu­dent Affairs.

After work­ing for a few years at Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in aca­d­e­mic advis­ing, Career Ser­vices, and ath­let­ics, she found her­self at Prince­ton. “I love the stu­dents here and get­ting to know their sto­ries. I think they’re inspir­ing and they’re doing a lot of things here that I would have never thought to do as an under­grad. They’re very ambi­tious, intel­li­gent, and very moti­vated; I’m excited to see the stu­dents grow.”

This new, smil­ing, fash­ion­ably dressed mem­ber of Career Ser­vices has much to offer stu­dents in fields as diverse as they are. “I’m really excited about this role. Everyone’s career path, just like mine, is not per­fectly lin­ear– there will be unex­pected twists and turns. My main goal is to be some­one that stu­dents can feel com­fort­able com­ing to and talk­ing about their future with.”

Stu­dents can sched­ule an appoint­ment to meet with Abbey by using the online sched­ul­ing sys­tem on the Career Ser­vices website.

Career Resolutions

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The January-February months are a busy time for Prince­ton stu­dents. Still, between exams, inter­ces­sion, and new classes, this moti­vated group has man­aged to keep an eye out on their futures and career. On a bright Jan­u­ary after­noon, I went around cam­pus to ask stu­dents about their career goals and res­o­lu­tions for 2012. Here’s what they had to say:

UCAN

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Look­ing for a job or sum­mer intern­ship? Check out UCAN, or Uni­ver­sity Career Action Net­work, an inter­col­le­giate job/internship data­base and my per­sonal favorite career tool. Main­tained by a 22-university syn­di­cate, UCAN’s expan­sive net­work is a gold­mine for even the pick­i­est job searcher.

Per­haps “you-can” sounds unfa­mil­iar to you. If you’ve ever browsed Tiger­Tracks or another sim­i­lar job/internship search site, you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with the process. Just reg­is­ter with your Prince­ton email address, punch in basic pro­file infor­ma­tion, and you’re good to go. You can also add basic aca­d­e­mic infor­ma­tion, upload your resume, and cre­ate a Onestop Tal­ent Search pro­file. This last fea­ture enters your infor­ma­tion and resume into a search engine for employ­ers that helps them find and recruit their can­di­date of best fit. That’s right, employ­ers search for YOU.

If you’ve ever researched jobs and intern­ships, you prob­a­bly know that effec­tive search tools make all the dif­fer­ence. One of my favorite fea­tures of the UCAN web­site is the sheer mul­ti­tude of ways to approach the job search. On the intern­ship home­page, you can browse oppor­tu­ni­ties by job title, employer, key­word, employer name, descrip­tion, major, and loca­tion, either sep­a­rately or all at once.

Another of UCAN’s perks is its search employer fea­ture. Say you want to search jour­nal­ism oppor­tu­ni­ties in New York City. Just go to the employer tab at the top, plug in the infor­ma­tion, and a list of employ­ers and their cor­re­spond­ing web­sites appears on your page. Tip: if a com­pany does not have an intern­ship posted on UCAN, check out their web­site. Usu­ally under “career,” “con­tact us,” or (of course) “intern­ships” you’ll find details on the posi­tion you’re look­ing for. UCAN also con­tains a list of con­tacts from com­pa­nies listed by indus­try, if you’re look­ing for career advice from some­one in the business.

If you’re moti­vated or just plain curi­ous about your career future, UCAN is the per­fect place to start or refine your search. Just go to Princeton’s Career Ser­vices web­site, click on UCAN on the right-hand side­bar, and check it out for yourself!