This is the Spartan Transfer Hub brought to you by Impact eighty nine FM and MSU Transfer Student Success Here's what we've got for you today. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Spartan Transfer Hub, the podcast about all things related to MSU Transfer Students brought to you by the MSU Transfer Student Success Centre, also known as TSSC. I'm your host Zuhair Aranno. I am from Bangladesh.
Zuhair:I am studying mechanical engineering and I am a rising senior. I identify with hehim pronouns. With me in the studio today is our TSSC program coordinator and grad assistant as usual, but we are also joined by Sean Brown, MSU's career center manager. Would you all be able to introduce yourself a little bit and tell us what you do at MSU?
Sean:Absolutely. Thank you for the introduction, Quik. My name is Sean Brown. I'm the career exploration center manager. I've been at Michigan State for about two years now, working in our center over in the Student Services Building.
Sean:We'll dive into a little bit more about what that looks like kind of as we go, but it's nice to be here.
Ashley:Hi, everyone. My name is Ashley Hewlett Lemke, she, her, hers pronouns. So I am the program coordinator with the Transfer Student Success Center. I also was a transfer student to Michigan State. I transferred from Washtenaw Community College, and I've been, I graduated from Michigan State, so I am a Spartan as well.
Lauren:And my name is Lauren Sargent. I use she, her pronouns. I am going into my last year of my master's program at Michigan State, in student affairs administration, and I'm also working as the grad assistant for TSS.
Zuhair:Thank you all so much for your introductions. Before we jump into the we jump into the conversation today, I wanted to make sure our listeners know that this is a special episode of Spartan Transfer Hub all about how to get involved with high impact practices at MSU. For our listeners who might be unfamiliar, a high impact practice is a way of teaching and learning that has significant educational benefits for students. There are a few high impact practices that are supported by research as contributing to student development and educational attainment. One of which is something MSU students can work with the Career Center to get involved with which we will be talking about later in the episode.
Zuhair:Before we get started, I have this dilemma in my head a lot and I keep questioning myself almost like 30 times a day that if success was guaranteed no matter what, what else could I do for my career other than what I'm already studying? Do you guys ever get that feeling? Like do you have any thoughts at all that you want to share with me?
Sean:Yeah, mean I even being in career services I gotta say I deal with this on a regular basis of being like, man, there's a lot of things I'm interested in. It'd be fun to create a career out of them. And I, you know, kinda wandered into my own career path, not by accident, but, you know, kind of taking step by step. And so I deal with that on a regular basis because there's just a lot of cool stuff out there and a lot of cool opportunities. So, yeah, definitely.
Lauren:I agree. Especially with what you said about, like, stumbling into this by accident. Definitely happened to me. But I think if, like, success was guaranteed no matter what and I could like do like the like risky artsy thing, I would be an actor.
Ashley:Yeah, will second the meandering through kinda higher ed. And if you had asked me when I graduated high school if I would be overseeing program coordination with transfer students at MSU, I would have said, what's a transfer student? Because that was not in my vernacular when I was in high school. But, yeah, certainly, you know, I second that, Sean. We all kinda end up we start out at one point, and we find out new things, and we learn more and grow as people, and then we end up in different trajectories.
Ashley:So maybe that's all to say. Just open hearts, open minds, and you know, be be ready for whatever
Sean:Yeah.
Ashley:Kinda comes in your path and and go for it. I think if in terms of like career, I really I realized I really like, I love I love animals and I'm like, I don't know if I would have become a veterinarian someday, but like, I've been doing, like cat fostering, like cat rescue. So like something with like animal rescue and fostering, think would be something that I you know, maybe that's a a retirement gig I can I can do? I it obviously doesn't pay anything, but maybe at that point, it doesn't much matter.
Zuhair:Wow. Man, it's crazy to see how optimistic about these kinds of things you guys are because I am definitely not. I am very hard on, oh, man, like, this this degree is too hard. What could I what else could I have done? So I was gonna second what Lauren said and like that I wanted to be an actor as well.
Zuhair:I've done theater for multiple years. I made short films my entire childhood. But because you already said that, I'm gonna go with I always wanted to be a musician. I've written my own guitar licks and tunes and stuff a lot. So it would be nice if success was guaranteed that I'd be on the Billboard charts that I would start music production right here, right now, but because we have to be a little bit realistic.
Zuhair:And it keeps us grounded, but also keeps us motivated with what we're already doing. It's okay to have these kinds of wishes that we can also convert into hobbies or passions later in our lives when things aren't as busy. But thank you so much for sharing all of you about what we have to say about that. Thank you.
Ashley:I'm looking forward to buying tickets to your first show.
Lauren:We way too similar. My other answer would have been a musician. Nice.
Zuhair:Nice. There you go. That's why we work together. Yeah. Yeah.
Zuhair:But, Ashley, you're getting VIP access. If you want to, I'll get you good.
Lauren:I'll I'll be in the music videos for you.
Zuhair:Thank you. Perfect. So diving into our topic of the day, the first thing that people need to know about the Career Centre is what it actually is. Sean would you be able to give us an overview of the Career Centre and its purposes?
Sean:Absolutely, yeah. I think when people think about career services and our network what most comes to mind is helping get jobs and resumes. Those are definitely two huge things that we do. But our whole focus is just helping you figure out what's the next steps and how do you be as career ready as you can be when you leave college. Now this comes from a variety of ways, finding internships, learning the different skills employers look for, how to talk to employers at career fairs.
Sean:We help with a variety of topics. And so, our network is built in a way that kind of helps, focus in on wherever a student's coming from. And so we have a variety of different staff in our team. We have, our general center, which is where I work. It's our exploration center.
Sean:It's all majors. It's specifically focuses on exploration where that can either be like, I don't know what I want to do, and we'll help you with that. Or you may come in and be like, I really like this major, but I don't think the job I wanted to do is necessarily what I want to do anymore. But then beyond that, we have advisors embedded in many of the colleges on campus. And so what that allows us to do is if you come in and maybe you're a journalism major and you're really excited about it, we have a staff member who's embedded in the communication arts and, sciences college who really helps focus on what does it look like to be successful in that area.
Sean:Same with social science and many of our other spaces too. And so what this does is this allows us to be able to talk to you about what are employers looking like looking for in these fields. How can you make sure your materials stand out and above so it's not just a nice resume, but it's a nice resume for your degree? And so that's a huge aspect that we do. We also help recognize that not everyone wants to go into a professional job.
Sean:Some people might wanna go into grad school or might wanna go into other opportunities. And so we do that level of career planning and helping people kinda figure out what's the best pathway for them. And the really cool thing about our team is we have a group who works specifically with employers. And that's probably one of, I think, the most beneficial pieces outside of the advising is we have that ability to say, employers, what are you looking for? So when we come talk to students, we're coming with information and informed practices, and it's not a situation where we're just kind of being like, well, it sounds good to us.
Sean:So like, yeah, go try this. Like, you know, it comes from a place of actually asking people who are hiring our students, what do they look for? What's exciting to them? Things like that. So we offer a variety of services.
Sean:I could go much more in-depth on those kind of as we go throughout the day, but, that's kind of an overview of our space as a as a whole. So one of the things too that our group can do is we take students with where they're at. And I, you know, I was a transfer student myself. I went to college, was really excited about the major I was in, and then got into the actual lab science and was like, not for me. At the same time, I was homesick.
Sean:I had some other stuff going on. So I ended up transferring back home after about a year. And when I came in there, I was kind of lost. And so many transfer students come in at a variety of places. You may come in because this has been your plan all along to be at MSU.
Sean:You're excited to be here. You may be coming here for a variety of other reasons. And so what our team does is our team meets you where you're at. You know, you can come in with a bunch of experience. You can come in with a little experience.
Sean:You can come in with no experience. And one of the things, especially when we talk about high impact practices with internships later today, I I'm gonna talk more about the value of starting early, but I will say we try and help people when they come in. But the best part is coming in kind of ahead of time and kind of at least mapping out what you need to do. And so I think for transfer students, they have such different lived experiences sometimes. And so coming in and just getting a chance to meet the adviser in your college or meet the advisers who can help you, it can be really helpful to know what does your situation look like?
Sean:How can we like, what advice or suggestions do we have for you as you're getting started? Because you don't need to be, you know, day one getting a job off the bat or getting an internship off the bat. But when does that internship fall? Because you may have students who are planning to have internships after their second year. And if you're starting as a junior, for example, that's not gonna be the same kind of time frame for you, so we need to figure out and look at what time frame is gonna make sense for you.
Zuhair:As you know, Sean, this episode is a part of a miniseries talking about high impact practices. One high impact practice is participation in an internship. Would you be able to talk at all about the benefits of internships on students in a little
Sean:bit more detail? Absolutely. Internships are like one of those important things you can do as a student. And I say that with a small caveat that not every degree has internships. I wanted to be a teacher.
Sean:Teaching doesn't have a lot of practical, like, true internships. You go do student teaching, so there's other ways to get that, active work experience. But most often, like, you aren't necessarily going in and doing interning with a school district for a summer. That's just not really how a lot of those, spaces work. Sometimes, but not always.
Sean:So, I I do wanna emphasize that, again, the the most important piece behind the internship is the practical hands on experience. As I mentioned earlier, I wanna be a high school history teacher. That sounded like a really great idea until I got in and actually worked with high school students. And I was like, woah, you all are locked into a really set curriculum, and I like a little bit more flexibility in my work. And so it was that practical hands on experience that really gave me that sense of like, this isn't really for me.
Sean:And I think, you know, with thinking about inter or, transfer students especially coming in, oftentimes your window may be a little shorter, you know, you don't have that, you know, first year to kind of just get your feet wet. You can still take that time, it just may need to look a little different. And so that's one of the areas where internships can be really, really helpful for transfer students to have that space to practice what they are thinking about doing. You know, add to that the fact that you have the opportunity to get paid, which is really nice for many internships, not all, but many. You get a really, really great like work experience, but internships are also shown to, actually increase, the likelihood of getting hired.
Sean:They're shown to increase the starting salary that you can start with in your ability to negotiate. And for many companies, they use internships as pathways into careers. And so it's a really, really important piece to be considering that because, that is a huge piece to know people in those companies because the top, way in people get hired is through referrals from inside the company. And you can do that from connecting on LinkedIn or doing some of that networking, but it's so much more natural and so much easier if you're working there. You're building credibility.
Sean:You're showing off the skills you're bringing because you're essentially in, a low level interview if the the space is right for you, to kinda show off what you'd be like, and then you don't have to do that same level convincing for that company if they have a position open and they're interested in hiring you later on kind of thing. One other piece I think is really beneficial when considering internships, is really thinking too about their ability to like, kind of explore a field. You know, you may not be totally sure, and you may be in a field where you're like, okay, I have a couple different job areas I can go. This is a great way to practice and kind of feel out what type of work environments you're going into and actually get your hands on the work, start building those things for your resume and some of these other pieces. And as I mentioned at the beginning, not every degree is going to emphasize internships in the same way.
Sean:One of the really cool resources we have online is we do something called the first destination survey where we ask every graduating senior what or where are you going? And as a part of that question, we ask did you do an internship? And so if you go onto our website, you go to career outcomes, which is one of the top tabs, just career services at MSU. You'll see career outcomes, can sort by major and you can see if your field has information about, if students did internships. And that can be a good way to kind of sense, oh okay a lot of students in my field are doing internships.
Sean:I should be looking for these because this makes sense for my field, and it's something that's really important when getting a full time job. Or, oh, wow. Ten percent of students in this major got internships. This must not be something that's super emphasized. Let me talk to an adviser about why that's the case and kind of figure out the logistics of that.
Zuhair:Absolutely. And how can students use the Career Center to connect with internship opportunities? What are some barriers to finding internships and how does the Career Center help students navigate these?
Sean:Absolutely. Internships are they're they're I won't say everywhere from me like they like they're you turn them a rock and you find them kind of thing, but I will say, there are lots of internship opportunities across the board. Now finding your way into them and actually being a strong candidate, those are the pieces that you need to be thoughtful about because, plenty of fields will have them. But if you don't take them seriously, you won't get into them just like a full time job. So what career services does is we have Handshake, which is one of our premium, you know, it's like our kind of a resource we use for all job postings.
Sean:It also has internships, and it's a great place to go on and do some searching. I highly recommend, especially if you're coming in, for the fall or even if you're already here, look at what the internships look like in your field. Pull up handshake, take a look at the different, like postings, see what type of skills they're looking for, see what types of things that they want from a successful applicant. Because if you can see that and then have a semester to prep for it, you're gonna be much, much stronger as a candidate when you actually go for it versus if you kind of get in and you're like, oh, whoops, it looks like they want a bunch of project management experience. I don't have any of that on my resume.
Sean:And you have to probably kind of scramble last minute to figure out how some of your experiences might translate into that. So having that kind of pre look out really helps. And that's also something where career services can help you look at, like, what's the time frame for hiring? What's the you know, when are internships most often posted for your jobs? What are those trends?
Sean:You know, if you're in a competitive field, that's okay. You can be a competitive candidate. You just need to know some of those things in advance so you're not putting in, you know, thirty, forty applications and hearing nothing back and getting really discouraged. You wanna be able to know, okay. It's competitive.
Sean:I might have to do a lot of work with this, but if I, you know, stick through it and I have the strong skill set I've developed ahead of time, it's you know, it increases my chances as much as I can to make sure I can get into those and be a strong candidate. We also do career fairs and so we have lots of opportunities in the fall and the spring. I think there was over 20 fairs, last year altogether, by a good margin. And each of those, we have general fairs and we have, more major specific fairs. And, when you go to those, you'll get a kind of a basically a map of the fair.
Sean:It'll list all the employers who are there, and they'll tell you if they're hiring full time jobs, part time jobs, internships. So it's a great way to kind of see and get there and figure out who is hiring those positions already. So you don't have to do that guesswork because that always is kind of stressful if you're like, wow. I found this company I like. Are you even hiring an intern?
Sean:Because I don't see anything on Handshake. And so there's lots of different ways that we kind of try and set up the space to help make that successful process.
Ashley:I just wanna add a quick side note about Handshake. So Handshake is a great resource that all of our MSU students, any of our incoming students, if you have an active NetID, you can start logging in. It's not only, so Sean has talked about kind of the forward or future jobs, but once you leave MSU, it's also a great hub for current if you're looking for current employment here on campus. Like as a matter of fact, ZooHire, you know, the position that we posted was on Handshake and that's how we found him and hired him. So I think just a message of current positions that you could get hired for, you know, ASAP potentially, or once you actually are starting at MSU, but then also that kind of further down the road kind of trajectory of So looking to the it's an amazing resource, and it's a resource that students have access to after they graduate, correct?
Sean:Absolutely. Yes. Great, great point. And thank you for bringing up that after. You actually do continue to have full access to advising resources and all of our stuff for two years after you graduate.
Sean:This is to help you if you maybe get into a job and you're like, ah, I don't know about this. Or maybe you're really busy. You hit that senior year, you graduate, and you're like, okay. I gotta start searching now. Both of those are gonna help.
Sean:But to your point about on campus employment, amazing resource. And you can actually there's easy tabs to go in and search for specifically for on campus. I don't remember exactly what year it was now, but the last discuss, a campus employed over 17,000 students in different student jobs on campus. And those a lot of them come through Handshake as well as other places. And so lots of really great opportunities.
Sean:So thank you so much. It's also the space where if you want to set up an advising appointment, you'll do that through Handshake to set up those appointments.
Ashley:Awesome. Thank you.
Zuhair:Yeah. And I wanted to track back to what Ashley said that Handshake, as you guys both mentioned, is so well at catering to students' individual characteristics, how they are, what they like, their qualifications. I remember Handshake whenever I'm there it being very specific with what I can bring to the table and I appreciate Handshake for doing that better than a lot of other platforms that I might have used. Like Ashley said, the reason that I'm a part of TSSC is because of my involvement in Handshake as well as almost every part time job or internship that I've applied on campus has been through Handshake. So, yeah, very much a useful beacon that every student should look into being involved in or partaking in.
Sean:Absolutely. And if I can touch on one thing you mentioned, you brought up the you know, kinda asks you about information or you kinda put your stuff in there. That is such an important point. Handshake really tries to learn you. It tries to learn what you're interested in.
Sean:It tries to learn how it could be most helpful for you. So the more information you come out in about your, like, academics, your experiences because employers will actually reach out to you via Handshake. We regularly get employers saying, hey. I'm looking to get, know, get in touch with students, and we push them to Handshake. And we have them search by, you know, degrees, by fields, and it's a really, really great way for them to find you if you put skills, if you put your past experiences, if you put your work or your, you know, education background.
Sean:But the more you search and the more you use it, it's going to generate more jobs like that. And so that's one of the reasons I recommend getting on to it early because you can start setting up passive search filters. As it gets to know you, you'll get to see some of those things more actively. That investment you put into Handshake will pay off in terms of finding stuff relevant. And if you're not loving the amount of emails it sends to you trying to be helpful, you can change the preferences because that is one of the most common things I hear about Handshake is it really likes to send you emails.
Sean:And so you can go in there and you can update your notifications to get stuff maybe every once a week or every other week and kind of have some a little bit more control to like what you're getting and how often you're getting it would be helpful too.
Zuhair:Absolutely. It's remarkable how student friendly it is, how beginner friendly it is, and my props to Handshake for that and thank you for adding so much onto that as well. Know that there are many other services that the Career Center offers including events, workshops, and online platforms for networking and job finding. There were two other resources that stuck out to me that I was hoping we could tell our students a little bit about. The first is the career advising and assessment tools.
Zuhair:Sean, could you tell us a little bit about what a career advising appointment might look like? Sure.
Sean:A lot of that's going to depend on what you're setting up an appointment for yourself on. As I mentioned, these are you can sign up for these via Handshake. And so when you go in, your college will kind of depend or, like, will dictate what you have access to. And you select your own college. You wanna set your own college so you get the most accurate ones to yourself.
Sean:But many of the options include, you know, stuff with your specific staff. So for example, if I'm in the college of, natural science, I would see that, and I would see all the advising appointments with Kyle, who's the main staff member over there. And so that would be helped with like resumes, cover letters, job search, all that type of Then you may also see express advising, which is a space where you can set up twenty minute appointments across campus. These are for, like, a really quick, you know, hey. I have a resume.
Sean:I just wanna get someone's eyes on it. I am looking for a cover letter review. I'm looking for some information about how to set up a LinkedIn account. Lots of kind of general quick help that you can sign up with multiple times and kind of get that follow-up help as well. Then the other one, that's really, I think, important to note is explore or, interest area advising.
Sean:And what interest area advising is is say you're not so sure about your major, And you're not totally sure where you wanna go from here, but you are interested in a certain topic area. You may choose the one that has to do with agriculture and natural resources, and then it'll give you options to meet with the advisers fall into that kind of general scope. So you can go in and ask, what is it like getting a degree in here? Here's what I'm interested in. What are some points and things that I could potentially look for and find some of the pieces?
Sean:The last area of advising I also want to emphasize this goes kind of this goes to the second point that you asked about is the assessments. If you're less sure, we do have exploratory advising as an option as well. One of our best resources that is Focus two, which I'll talk about a little bit more here in just a but what that does is it allows you to kind of explore what type of, you know, careers might be best for you, majors might be best for you. And then you can talk to one of our exploratory, staff to kind of figure out what does that look like? Do you start, you know, practicing and getting involved in those?
Sean:What are maybe is an interest area you can go connect with next to get some more information? And so between those kind of your college, the express, the interest, and the exploratory, we really try to have advising options for students at their different points. And, you know, you also then can choose what type of topic you wanna talk about. If you're not ready to apply for jobs, you just wanna make sure you a resume ready to go, great. Come in and meet with us for that.
Sean:If you're like, my resume is really strong. I don't feel like I need any more help with that. Great. Let's focus more on how you can network, how you can find a full time job, how you can actually interview for those positions.
Zuhair:Brilliant. I want to appreciate, you guys are really ticking all the boxes. You know, like, every single criteria that a student can come to you with. I love how much you cater to every single one of those things. And I appreciate that because in my experience with career services, I've been very pleased with how there was not a single thing that I talked about that wasn't addressed individually.
Zuhair:And I appreciate that a lot.
Sean:And I wanted to, I guess, mention something to your point. We do try and have tools for as many different topic areas as we can. Some of this is we know that job search is stressful. Every one of us who's in career services has been through that process. We know that there's a lot of work, a lot of pieces that go into it, especially if you have other, you know, factors like being a transfer student, where you're working to learn campus, you're working to learn what it's like to be in new classes or, you know, different fields and stuff like that.
Sean:I will say a lot of our stuff is really work to build on the stuff that students are already doing. And so if we see students who come in and have very little predone, that's one of the reasons that's really helpful to come in earlier so we can kinda work with you and assess. You know, it's it's always hard when we have seniors come in who are like, I'm ready to job search. We look at their resume, and they have very little on there. Oftentimes, I think students underplay some of those pieces.
Sean:And, you know, especially if I've talked to transfer students before who are like, I haven't really done anything. I'm like, okay. Well, like, I I don't believe you in the most in the place way possible. But, like, have you worked? Oh, yeah.
Sean:I've been, you know, working as a, you know, pizza delivery driver for the last year. Okay. Great. There's timeliness. There's, you know, operating, you know, company machinery if you're driving, you know, a company car or even your own car.
Sean:There's attention to detail with the orders. There's all sorts of pieces that kinda come with that. Similarly, if you're involved in any clubs, if you volunteer, like, there's a lot of things I think students will often kind of almost underplay because they don't necessarily see those connection points. And so that's one of the things that we do try and help with, is we try and help students kind of pull out some of those experience if they are feeling a little bit more discouraged or they're feeling a little bit more, apprehensive about getting started in the process because it can be a big thing to start if you're starting from scratch.
Zuhair:That's an excellent point that you made about how a lot of students might think like, oh, I haven't done enough. And like you said, you don't believe it because there's so much that students usually have done that can apply or that they can harness into showing showcasing on their resume or their skill set. Right? And I that's a wonderful point that you made because a lot of times I felt like, you know, I haven't necessarily done enough on this particular area that I'm not sure of how to get into in terms of a career or like a part time job. And the fact that you and your advisors, they make these students feel like, no, there is something deep in my background, wherever it is that will help me get this position or get into this line is absolutely brilliant stuff.
Zuhair:There are also online resources available for assessing our career readiness, correct? I know that you touched up a little bit on that. How can students utilize those as they move through the process of applying for internships or jobs in and after college?
Sean:Yeah. That's a great a great question. I will say most of our resources are really more about measuring opportunities or options for you. Focus two is our primary resource we use as a career interest assessment. It's not a test.
Sean:It's not something that's going to tell you the right answer. It's gonna gauge your interests in different areas and give you options that it thinks is a are a good fit. It does have a, kind of a career readiness. So I mentioned earlier, employers have things that they look for to determine if, students are employer or in are career ready. And what those look like, there's, a variety of them that national organizations tied to, like, connecting colleges and employers kind of look at.
Sean:Some of the examples are communication, critical thinking, professionalism, ability to use technology, name just a couple. So what that does is that looks at some of those major areas and then assesses your kind of preparedness in those areas. I I will say it's, you know, it's not a perfect size, one size fits all. You may not take that test and be able to talk about it, you know, because it's asking you kind of a it's almost like a multiple choice kind of questionnaire. So there's a long shot between that and being able to talk about your experiences and be ready to actually show that readiness.
Sean:But this, I think, helps prompt you to start thinking about the types of things employers wanna see. And so I would always kinda connect that too. But what Focus two does more generally, and I think it's really important to talk about, if you are coming to MSU and it's you know, part of that is because, you know, your original plans didn't pan out. Something changed. You found you're more interested in certain things.
Sean:It could be for positive, negative reasons, whatever. What focus two does really well is ask two questions in five distinct areas, personality, your leisure interests, work interests, skills, and values. And it builds a list of jobs, it thinks you'd be interested in based on those areas. And once you complete those, what it does is it'll merge those together to give you the most complete, kind of picture of those. It includes, you know, the the job title.
Sean:So, you know, my for example, my first one is bailiff when I took it. I know what a bailiff is. I'm not particularly interested, but it's not necessarily about ranking them of, like, bailiff's your top choice. It just gives you alphabetical list. And then what it does is it will kind of list it out from there.
Sean:But, you know, in each of those, it gives you information about the job. Is it growing? Is it shrinking? What's the general starting salary? What are some key features you need to know about it?
Sean:And then what are MSU majors that will help you get into it? So career services can't help with academic advising. We kinda stay out of that realm. We don't know the classes. We're not experts in that.
Sean:We can help you explore some of those, and then we can also help connect you to the people who can have more of those connections. That's gonna be your academic advisers. But we can at least get you started because, you know, you're choosing your major and choosing your career are intermeshed. They don't you know, it's not one or the other. It really is one of those points that kind of come together and connect.
Sean:And so being able to have those considerations is one of my favorite things about Focus two because I think it helps you see. I loved history. I didn't necessarily wanna go in and be an art you know, archivist at a library because that just doesn't don't have people interaction for me, but it gives you that variety of things where you can see both how you could use a degree topic area you're passionate about and then the type of work that would be involved with it as well. So there's a lot of really cool resources that come from there, including that kind of readiness test as you asked about originally.
Zuhair:Absolutely. And that's awesome. And finally, you offer free professional attire rental and headshots. Right? What is the significance of students being able to access these free resources?
Sean:Absolutely. Those are great questions. So those are resources that are partly offered by Myspace over in the Student Services Building. And the reason for these is, getting a professional photo can be really expensive. If you go with a, you know, professional photographer, you can spend a $100, $200 easily kind of depending on how you get that photo.
Sean:So what this does is as you wanna get on and build a LinkedIn account, for example, and you need to have a professional photo, I think a lot of times people, like, way over exaggerate what these professional photos need to be. This is a small, you know, almost a quarter size image that's gonna be on your LinkedIn. The employer will probably open up and look at you at one point. So you need to have it look clean enough and professional enough that it's not gonna be like, oh my gosh, what's going on here? But our staff can help you kind of come up with a nice photo to, you know, display who you are in professional setting.
Sean:You know, you're shifting as a college student, from this, you know, kind of your life focuses around your interests, your, you know, hobbies more so into how do you start putting yourself forward on a professional footing. And this photo is really your first place to start choosing your branding. Are you, you know, wearing clothes that make you look, you know, kind of approachable? Are you looking, you know, wearing stuff that's like, you know, full, you know, professional dress to the neck kind of thing? And a lot of that's gonna depend on your industry and, like, what you're going into, and this is a great space to kinda do that for free, which is nice.
Sean:You don't need an appointment. You can walk in. And for the professional attire, it's kind of along the same items. You know, if you show up to a career fair in shorts and a T shirt, employers will notice. We will hear from employers.
Sean:They do take a very, very careful note of that because for them, that's a screening process. You If don't care enough to show up in professional attire, why should they care enough to kind of go on that next step? And I think oftentimes when students do that, it's not a lack of care. It's a lack of awareness of how that comes across to employers. And so it's one of those areas where we try and provide this for free.
Sean:There's no charge to it. It is a, takeout and return process that we can keep offering it to other students, but you can check up to five item five items for up to seven days. And then we have opportunities to kind of extend that if you need it a little bit too. But what that does is maybe you forgot a tie at home. Maybe you don't have a blouse.
Sean:Maybe you don't have a jacket. Like, I don't want you to have to go out and buy a $102,100 dollar jacket from, you know, any, you know, departmental store to feel confident and ready to go go to career fair. I'd rather be able to grab one from us quick and be able to focus more on making yourself shine based on the positive experiences you have. And so these are really meant to be kind of that weight off your shoulders kind of you can come in, use with no stress, no hassle, and then just, you know, have it there if you need it again for the future as well.
Ashley:Sean, could you just give a really quick overview of the types of items that are available to check out?
Sean:Yeah. So great question. So we do have a very so our our main offerings are more if you think of, like, you know, kind of tops and bottoms. So we have a variety of, you know, blouses, button up shirts, jackets, and kind of suit coats. We have pants, skirts, dresses.
Sean:We have some different tops because the other thing too is, this is not always known. Employers largest expectation at most career fairs is professional or business casual. They aren't always looking for you to be, you know, decked out in a suit and a tie for example. They may be looking for something that's a little bit more what you would wear in the office. Now if you go to an interview after that, that's where their expectations kind of kick up.
Sean:But, you know, we do have offerings on both sides, you know, like dressing all out versus dressing nicely and showing that you care, showing that you're putting that extra effort. So we do have a variety of offerings. We also have belts. We have a very, very small offering of shoes. Shoes are a little bit harder to kinda keep sizing because there's just so many different varieties of what we could need.
Sean:Ties and some other accessories like that, we have those as well.
Zuhair:I'm so, so happy that you guys cover so many bases because a lot of times as a student, it can be so difficult to know, like, what are how can I access these things or, like, where can I get all of this done? And the fact that you guys are providing these services so that students don't have to go out and spend more money out of pocket, it's absolutely wonderful work. And how can students access these wonderful, wonderful services?
Sean:Yeah. So as I mentioned, there's a variety of ways. You know, we are located across campus. Several colleges colleges have centers of their own. And so, you know, I think looking up career services for your college is a really helpful way.
Sean:If you're lost or you're getting started, especially as a transfer student who may be coming in the fall or who's never used us before, just search career services MSU. One of our first tabs is where do I start? And you can go in and click on that. You can also email us. I, as I mentioned earlier, I was a transfer student.
Sean:I'm very familiar with that kind of just coming in and having a lot of information being thrown at you at once. So even just remembering career services as a name, search for us. You'll find our email, email us. I'm one the main people who checks that email, and I'm happy to kind of connect you, figure out what you're looking for and where's the best connection point. All of our drop in resources, like we have drop in advising, the career closet, and the photo booth, you don't need an appointment, you just come in.
Sean:But you can make appointments too if you want to go more in-depth on different topics, you want to meet with specific or specialty advisor. We have lots of information on like those different appointment options and types online as well. So, starting on our web page is probably going be your quickest space to kind of figure out what we offer and where you need to kind of.
Lauren:And that web page will be linked in the description of this episode.
Zuhair:Amazing. Amazing. Thank you for that, Lauren. There's so much going on at the Career Center, and it's definitely a place I will be checking out. I wanted to talk a little bit about why it is so important for students to start thinking about careers after college and the inevitable job search that many of us students might face.
Zuhair:What would you say to someone who isn't sure that they need to be thinking about their career yet?
Sean:Yeah. That's a really, really good question. It's a cascading effect. You know, I mentioned earlier with internships, for example, you know, getting a good internship helps you be more eligible to get stronger salaries, more likely to get jobs. All that starts early.
Sean:And you may not be ready to, you know, jump into the internship search the first week, and that's okay. But get involved. Getting involved helps you have something to put on your resume. Start looking at your professional interests. You know, I heard this rule of thumb, and I thought it was really great.
Sean:If you're looking to join clubs, I would look at joining a social club, something that's fun, interesting, and it fits you and helps you feel a part of campus here. And then join a professional club. That could be something tied to your major. It could be tied to something in your industry. We have tons of clubs.
Sean:I mean, I'm not in that office. I don't know the exact number, but I believe it's hundreds and hundreds of clubs here on campus, if not a thousand or so, that range the professional gambit. And so going online and searching MSU clubs will give you the a wide range of pieces like that. But also consider looking at on campus jobs. If you find a job working in an office you're at regularly or use regularly, not only does that help make you money, it's a great work experience, and it starts building some of those transferable skills you can then use.
Sean:You know, I think many peer people hear that, you know, kind of idea that you need experience to get experience. And so the idea of you can't get a, you know, a job in your field without professional experience already, and that kind of doesn't make sense to them. Internships, on campus jobs, those are those ways you get the experience to show later on down the line. And so if you're waiting and you you spend your time in college just having fun, there's not nothing wrong with having fun, but you need to make sure it's intentional and you need to focus on how those different puzzle pieces kinda fall into place so that you aren't getting to the end and realizing you're missing a key, you know, kinda key corner piece or you're missing something that you absolutely need to, like, show up strong on an interview. And the other piece I would say too that I think is really important with career services is there's pitfalls out there.
Sean:You know, employer expectations, AIs that review resumes, all sorts of pieces like that that you as a student in your day to day life won't come across. And that's okay. You don't need to come across, but our staff do come across those. And we can talk to you what it's like to build a resume that gets through the AI reviewing system. We can talk to you about employers', you know, kind of, opinions if you're using AI to build your own content.
Sean:It's not bad to use AI, but you have to do it carefully because employers will have some strong opinions if they get a sense that yours is basically just plug it in chatty pee and see what it comes out with. And so we can help you with those, and we can help you kind of maximize your experience. And, again, it doesn't need to be an all everything day one, but just having that initial conversation or looking we offer and kinda coming up with a plan in your mind of when you're gonna come in are really, really important pieces to help make sure that you when you get to that job search step at the end of your time here at college, you're not getting there and having a lot of extra work to do on top of finishing up, you know, major level classes, you know, being in leadership in your different organizations and other stuff like that. We wanna help you while it's a kind of a journey instead of just all at the destination point kind of thing.
Zuhair:That's a perfect answer. And that is all of the questions I have for you today, but I wanted to still ask if you had any final thoughts, any final advice that you wanna leave for our students today.
Sean:Yeah. You know, I I hope that this is stuff that's interesting you know I for so so much time prior to coming to college I think many people are told you have to do this. You know it's like you go through k-twelve you you know do the stuff that's in your communities or in your spaces. College is a really amazing place to start breaking out and finding things you're doing because you're excited, classes you're interested in, groups you can join, jobs you can even find. And our hope is that you're doing something you're excited about, and there people choose, you know, careers for a variety of reasons.
Sean:So even if you're like, just makes the money. I want to be able to go live the lifestyle. That's totally okay. But we I really hope that you take advantage of some of those pieces. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't plan to be a career adviser.
Sean:You know, I was an RA in college, and I loved working in a college setting. And that led to, going in and actually doing a student affairs and higher education degree myself and being a grad student working in housing. I worked in housing professionally for eight years. And then I just got a career coaching course while I was doing that. I was like, this is really cool.
Sean:I love working with students with what they wanna do in those exciting points. And so that's just a snapshot of my own experience. You'll find new opportunities. You'll find that things and expectations you had don't match up with the reality. There's a lot of reasons why you you will find new opportunities and opening yourself up to those kind of just unexpected pieces really helps you have the kind of support points around you so that if life does throw you a curveball, you cannot be shaken or, like, you know, fall apart when that hits.
Sean:But instead, you have that ability to kind of flex around it and say, oh, that's actually a really interesting direction. I'm gonna go follow that and kind of see where it takes me because, it is totally okay to have had that plan from, you know, day one of elementary school, but it's also really cool to find some of those different things that you don't know about until you actually experience them.
Lauren:Yeah, I was going to be a doctor. I was a biology major in my undergrad.
Sean:I started as a marine biologist. I was like, I love the idea of working with otters. And then they got in, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not working with otters day when I'm with dissecting a frog or something like that.
Zuhair:So Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Sean, for joining us today. Thank you, Ashley and Lauren, for sitting in. With that, we're going to wrap up this episode of Spartan Transfer Hub.
Zuhair:Make sure to tune in on the Impact eighty nine Impact eighty nine website, Spotify, or Apple Podcast. You can find more links on the description below. Go green.
Lauren:Go white.
Zuhair:Go white. Sorry.
Sean:Was doing Q, Roger.
Zuhair:Thanks for stopping by the Spartan Transfer Hub brought to you by Impact89FM and MSU's Transfer Student Success Centre. See you soon.