OCP Resources to Support Your Student’s Career Goals

The Office of Career Planning is excited to welcome students as they embark on a new year at Meredith College! As the spring semester gets started, the Career Planning team continues to listen, and we know many students are feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about their career or professional development plans while the world responds to the pandemic and the resulting economic impact.

OCP is available and eager to support your students, serving them in a virtual capacity throughout the Spring 2021 semester. With the health and safety of our students, employers, and community top of mind, we will continue offering a variety of virtual recruitment events and ways students can continue to connect with employers.

Students can schedule Zoom appointments with our career counselors via Handshake, our interactive recruiting platform. Encourage your student to download the Handshake app to connect with us and to stay on top of upcoming career-related events and to view job and internship postings. In response to the pandemic, many employers nationwide are increasing their virtual presence and opening their events to a wider number of colleges and universities, giving students access to employers that are ordinarily unable to make in-person visits to Meredith. In addition to a number of employer events hosted specifically by OCP, students can view and attend information sessions and meet-and-greets hosted by employers such as Target, PepsiCo, Amazon, Capital One, and more.

Additionally, to help students stay focused on their professional development, OCP has planned a variety of career-focused events over the course of the spring semester, including:

• LinkedIn Workshop presented by Allscripts
• Employer Panel: Jump-Start your Search
• Mock Interview Week

As you have conversations with your students throughout the semester, here are a few ideas you can incorporate and ways you can encourage them to be intentional about planning for their career and next steps:

Continue their plans while managing expectations. This pandemic will pass and when it does, organizations will need employees.  Encourage students to think broadly about their skills and how they can be applied. COVID-19 is fueling the gig work economy. Students may wish to consider gig work – temporary or part-time roles in their field of interest.

Engage virtually. Employers have limited bandwidth right now; students can make it easy for employers to find them online. This is a perfect time to improve and complete their Handshake and LinkedIn profiles. Follow organizations in industries that are hiring.

Build their network. Networking will continue to be the most effective tool for job and internship seeking. Talk with your students about building and renewing strategic relationships.

Visit meredith.edu/career-planning for more information.