If you are any­thing like me, you are pretty darn busy this week.  Midterms + The­sis??  Yikes!!  So in keep­ing with the spirit of the week, I will try to keep this first blog post short and sweet.  In this post, I wanted to high­light the impor­tance of vis­it­ing Career Ser­vices at least once before grad­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly if you don’t have your plans for life beyond the FitzRan­dolph Gate fig­ured out (if you do, con­grat­u­la­tions!!!).  Below are some of the most com­mon rea­sons stu­dents give for not vis­it­ing Career Ser­vices, fol­lowed by my com­ments on how vis­it­ing Career Ser­vices would actu­ally be ben­e­fi­cial for these students:

• “I have no idea what I want to do after grad­u­a­tion, so com­ing in to Career Ser­vices would be unpro­duc­tive.” –  Not at all!  On the con­trary, Career Ser­vices can help you fig­ure out what types of indus­tries & jobs you are a good fit for.  Career Ser­vices offers a vari­ety of self-assessments and career inven­to­ries that can help you iden­tify your inter­ests, strengths, and work envi­ron­ment pref­er­ence (http://www.princeton.edu/career/alumni/career-planning/career-inventories/).  These assess­ments are always fol­lowed up by a one-hour con­ver­sa­tion with a coun­selor to inter­pret the results.  Beyond these for­mal assess­ments, the coun­selors at Career Ser­vices also have years of expe­ri­ence, empa­thy, and above all, hon­est advice to share with stu­dents.  I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence that meet­ing with coun­selors and brain­storm­ing about poten­tial areas of inter­est can be a pow­er­ful tool in help­ing to iden­tify what you feel pas­sion­ate about – it was through the advice of one of the coun­selors, who moti­vated me to “pur­sue my inter­ests and seek a job in the indus­try that you are pas­sion­ate about” that I decided to make the tran­si­tion from finan­cial ser­vices to tech­nol­ogy con­sult­ing for my full-time job, and I couldn’t be any hap­pier about my decision.
• “I already know what I want to do after grad­u­a­tion, so there is noth­ing for me to gain from Career Ser­vices.” –  If you already have a game plan in mind for life after grad­u­a­tion, that’s great!  But this is only the first of many steps.  The vast major­ity of full-time posi­tions require you to sub­mit a resume (http://www.princeton.edu/career/graduates/toolkit2/resumes/resume-tips/) in order for your can­di­dacy to be con­sid­ered, and many employ­ers also require you to include a cover let­ter (http://www.princeton.edu/career/alumni/job_search/cover-letters/).  From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, I can say that it is almost impos­si­ble to put together the per­fect resume or cover let­ter on your first go.  Even if you have a 4.0 GPA, are heav­ily involved in numer­ous inter­est­ing extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, and speak 10 lan­guages flu­ently, it is likely that some employ­ers will throw your resume or cover let­ter out if it is poorly for­mat­ted or under­sells your expe­ri­ences.  The career coun­selors at Career Ser­vices can help you over­come these poten­tial pit­falls and put together the per­fect resume & cover let­ter so that you can give poten­tial future employ­ers the best pos­si­ble first impression. 
• “Career Ser­vices can only help stu­dents inter­ested in cer­tain indus­tries.”  – This is not true at all.  The career coun­selors at Career Ser­vices have years of exper­tise in advis­ing stu­dents inter­ested in a wide range of dif­fer­ent indus­tries (http://www.princeton.edu/career/about_us/meet_our_staff/).  More­over, they are will­ing to go out of their way to help stu­dents, even when they are not directly famil­iar with the indus­tries at hand.  Although none of the career coun­selors knew about micro­fi­nance or intern­ships in Chile dur­ing my intern­ship search in sopho­more year, they went out of their way to do research on the field in order to give me some point­ers to make sure I could sub­mit a solid appli­ca­tion.  Fur­ther­more, a friend who wanted to find a sum­mer intern­ship in China for the sum­mer after grad­u­a­tion ended up find­ing one through sug­ges­tions put forth by a Career Ser­vices coun­selor.  No mat­ter what your area of inter­est is, coun­selors at Career Ser­vices are com­mit­ted to help­ing you suc­ceed in your job hunt.
• “It’s too late in the year to go in/ I don’t have time/ I will fig­ure it out by myself after I grad­u­ate.” – It’s not too late.  You can spare 30 min­utes.  And will you really be able to find a job with no one’s help?  The num­bers say oth­er­wise.  One of the things that impressed me the most about work­ing at Career Ser­vices over the past 3 years is the great num­ber of young alums who call to ask for help in find­ing a job or con­sol­i­dat­ing other post-graduation plans.  While these grad­u­ates typ­i­cally have dif­fer­ent areas of inter­est, nearly all of them share one strik­ing sim­i­lar­ity – prior to that phone call, they had never inter­acted with Career Ser­vices.  Coin­ci­dence?  I think not.  To be sure, career coun­selors are always happy to speak with and help Prince­ton alumni. How­ever, it’s unde­ni­able that it is much more dif­fi­cult to build rap­port and develop a strong  rela­tion­ship with a coun­selor if your inter­ac­tions are lim­ited to over-the-phone con­ver­sa­tions.  Furthermore, it goes with­out say­ing that edit­ing resumes and cover let­ters is a task that is done much more eas­ily face-to-face.  By meet­ing with a career coun­selor before leav­ing Prince­ton, you can avoid the hur­dles that accom­pany start­ing the job hunt after leav­ing life in the Orange Bubble. 

So there you have it, seniors.  There’s really no rea­son to pro­cras­ti­nate get­ting your job hunt off to a good start.  Close out of Face­book, get off Prince­tonFML, and stop watch­ing Jenna Mar­bles videos. Mak­ing an appoint­ment is super easy — just call Career Ser­vices at 609–258-3325 or sched­ule online at www.princeton.edu/career.  Alter­na­tively, come to walk-in hours from 3–5 PM Mon­days through Fri­days (the sign-up sheet goes out at 2:45 PM, so I sug­gest get­ting there a bit early).  Look for­ward to your calls!

P.S. In the com­ing weeks, Career Ser­vices will be send­ing a pre­lim­i­nary sur­vey to the senior class to get a sense of where their career inter­ests and plans are at this point.  The pri­mary pur­pose of this sur­vey is to bet­ter under­stand the needs of the senior class so that coun­selors can address them more effi­ciently in the com­ing months.  Seniors, this is your chance to com­mu­ni­cate with Career Ser­vices and let them know what YOU need help with so that they can be bet­ter equipped to help – don’t pass it up!  Be sure to com­plete the sur­vey when it comes out.

–C