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Day-to-day operations have seen significant changes due to the ongoing pandemic.
Career Services at PSU are navigating those changes with new, innovative events and ideas.
One of those ideas is a short video series titled ‘Career Tip Tuesday.’ Every Tuesday, Career Services will post a short video on their YouTube channeling answering a question submitted by a Pitt State student.
Director of Career Services Mindy Cloninger is always looking for fun ways to get information to students.
“So, as we were brainstorming through some alternate ways to communicate with students kind of in spite of COVID, we came up with this idea. (It’s) kind of challenging since we can’t have our Career Resource Center available for students to drop in, (but) we want to make sure we’re conveying information that students are curious about and information that’s relevant to their job search needs as well as their needs in terms of choosing a major and… those sorts of topics. So, we decided to create this series of tops that will include everything from… choosing a major to internships to searching for full times jobs.., resume writing, salary negotiation, and much more. So, the idea is that they’ll be brief kind of spotlights of career related information that can really benefit students. So, instead of doing a 30-minute video that covers how to job search or resume writing or something like that, these will just be kind of quick, useful tips… Hopefully, students will begin to watch for those tips every Tuesday and they’ll be able to get a lot of information kind of in shorts bursts throughout the semester.”
Students can submit a question here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScegbmOYraH6beZIgPMI6ytEA2db1X7xLQ8ualm5hYUnVxLHg/viewform?lor=0.
“…Immediately, after posting that first tip video, we did have somebody that responded with a question that we’ll address in one of our next videos that we do… So, we were really excited about that and of course we’re having a little engagement in terms of likes and that sort of thing on that site… We have a lot of other information that we share over social media… So, we certainly want students to take advantage of all of the resources that are available on our social media and also through Career Services. So, even though our Career Resource Center is closed to students due to COVID, all of our staff is here and working. All of our services have been made available to students virtually just immediately since everyone went home in March… We are happy to meet with students and again to provide career counseling, career coaching, resume assistant, cover letter writing… So, really everything that we do we can pretty much do virtual… We’re hoping that the tips kind of… remind them (students) that Career Services is open and available to them through all of our virtual resources…”
The Office of Career Services is closed to students due to COVID-19, but the staff members are still working and providing their services virtually.
“So.., we have a staff retreat every summer where we just spend a day away from the office, brainstorming ideas and trying to dig a little bit deeper into creative ideas, new ideas, and to spend the day collaborating. We’ll spend a day during the winter break… that’s a little bit more focused on, ‘what do we need to revise from the fall semester to the spring semester?’ And at our summer retreat, we review all of our events.., career fairs and stuff like that, and make sure that they’re all still relevant, that they’re meeting students’ needs, and that they’re staying up with technology or new trends and things like that… (When) it was time for our summer retreat… we brainstormed just a lot of ideas of ‘What are some ways that we can interact with students, again in spite of COVID…?’ So, the idea kind of presented itself there but there were a lot of immediate things that we had to put into place for the fall semester and so many things that we had to learn in terms of technology just like everybody else on campus, trying to address the immediate needs and the things that had to happen. So, that was one idea that got put on the back burner a little bit so when we had our winter retreat, the week before last, we brought this one back up to the top and we really got excited about this more creative outlet for communicating to students about all kinds of information when we’re really unable to host workshops or visit as many classrooms as we typically would or just interact with students obviously here in our Career Resource Center. So, we’re really excited about it… I would say this was probably our favorite idea (from the winter retreat)…”