Attentive students gathered in the CMI meeting room last Monday to talk about career exploration and internship and co-op opportunities. The Professional Career-Readiness Center created a series of workshops titled “Handshake & Careers on Point” and “Internship & Co-Op Workshop” for this fall semester. These workshops aim to attract more students to the work readiness center and provide resources to any students who are interested in internships and co-op programs and students who need to improve their career-readiness skills. Dean Jolin, director of career readiness, and Michael Clarke, program manager for experiential learning, led the workshop for this week, which served as an introduction to the career readiness center itself, what experiential learning is, and how to join a co-op educational program.
The PCRC hosts these events every other Monday, with the next workshop on October 2. When asked about their aspirations for these workshops, Michael Clarke hopes that “more students will be more aware of the PCRC and a way to connect to the center itself, including our internship and co-op programs.” The center also has one more Career Opportunity Expo on September 28th for Sports, Arts, and Entertainment Management, Broadcasting Reporting/Production, Sports Communication, and Multimedia majors. There will be many more Career-Readiness Employer Tables and many hiring events for specific businesses and organizations, all of which can be found through Handshake.
The next workshop will be led by Kenneth Anderson, coordinator of employer recruitment and student engagement, and will focus on Handshake. A detailed explanation of how to create your profile will be given, and attendees will learn about the app’s many advantages. Handshake aids college students in job and internship searching by finding their interests, the types of roles they are interested in, and the industry that the students want to work in. The app allows students to apply for jobs or internships, search for internships, and look at upcoming events at Point Park University when the individual registers for Handshake via their student email.
Dean Jolin hopes that all of the workshops and events will “engage students in career readiness and connect students to employers on a regular basis.” Networking is crucial for students of all majors and academic classes in order to establish professional relationships with the recruiters and staff members of the organizations and businesses they are interested in working at.
One of the newest projects from The Professional Career-Readiness Center is the Pioneers Careers Podcast, a podcast hosted by Kenneth Anderson and Natalea Hillen, a senior broadcast journalism major. This podcast will explore a bunch of college-related topics like careers and career exploration, interviews with current students, alumni, and staff about their own education and careers, discussions on mindfulness and time-saving strategies, and the careers students go toward after college. Their first episode focused on helpful tips for incoming freshman and transfer students and their second episode talks about how to get involved with campus clubs and organizations.
New opportunities can always pop up on campus or around the city, and the Professional Career Readiness Center has the programs, resources, and a new podcast that will help any student be successful in their educational and professional journeys. Upcoming events can be found on Handshake and Point Sync.
