Career Services Hosts Internship and Job Readiness Workshop
By Nishat Sanjida
On Wed, November 3, Holly Young, a Career Services counselor at Fordham, held a workshop over zoom on internship and job readiness for undergraduates. Through the evening, Young discussed the resources, such as counselling sessions and Handshake, available to Fordham students through Career Services. She also went over the job application process itself; pointing out the missteps students can make and offering advice on how to avoid them.
Career Services provides help to students at different stages. Students who may have no idea what they want to do in terms of their career are as welcome in Career Services as those who have to prepare for upcoming interviews. Appointments with Career Services counselors can be made via Handshake.
Holly Young, a Fordham Career Services counsellor, leads an online workshop on internship and job readiness
Handshake is a useful tool available to Fordham undergraduates which allows them to search for internships and jobs on the platform in addition to requesting counseling sessions. The value that Handshake offers over LinkedIn is that it contains opportunities only available to Fordham students, which means the applicant pool is much smaller for those jobs. Handshake users can also apply to internships and jobs through the platform instead of using an external process; navigate listings using identifying tags such as paid and unpaid internships; and access a calendar showcasing professional events such as career fairs. There are many Fordham alums and when they want to hire Fordham students, they go to Handshake.
Young also covered some of the common missteps students make during the application process. Most recruiters use an application tracking system to choose applicants whose resume is the closest fit to the job description. Training new hires is expensive and time consuming and recruiters want someone to contribute immediately so professional fit is important. When fixing up your resume, Young advises students to focus on the keywords the job description uses and then articulate their skills on their resumes in terms of those keywords. You can have more than one resume and customize it to fit the job that you are applying to.
After the first whittling down, resumes are checked manually and so have to be appealing to the human eye. If a resume is more than one page, then it will likely be thrown out. That is why resumes have to be concise and every bullet item has to be meaningful. The spacing on a resume is also another factor to be mindful of. There are many resume templates online that can be used to craft an appealing resume. Young recommended Etsy for suitable resume templates. Resumes should be packaged with the relevant information on the top of the page and then be followed with additional information. Recruiters usually scan the top before moving on to the next one so that is why it is important to place the most valuable information up there.
When recruiters like your resume and cover letter, the next step is the interview process. Interviews are necessary to differentiate yourself from every other applicant for the job. Young recommends students talk about the core courses that Fordham provides because it gives them an advantage. For example, business students from other schools might take the same classes for their major but at Fordham, business students have other courses they can talk about such as philosophy and theology. The Fordham core is very marketable and makes students stand out.
Young closed out the session by reminding everyone that the job application process follows a formula that Career Services are well accustomed to and can help students with. She encouraged attendees to utilize the resources on campus available to undergraduates.