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HEATHER FORTENBERRY: My name is Heather Fortenberry. My preferred pronouns are she, her, hers. And I am the career exploration coach with Cornell Career Services Central.
I want to take a moment and just say congratulations and welcome. We're really excited to have you here on campus. And I very much look forward to seeing you in person very soon.
So thank you so much for joining me today. And feel free to submit questions in the chat as I'm talking. We're going to be covering quite a bit of information, but really excited to be here today.
So just to give you a quick overview of what I am going to cover in the next 30 minutes, really it's focusing on this overview of Cornell Career Services, so what we provide, a little bit of an approach on how we provide our career assessments, and assistance, and workshops, and individual appointments. I'm going to talk a little bit about our many web tools that we have, but really highlighting the key ones that will help connect you to a lot of other resources.
And as I mentioned, hopefully we have time to answer questions. Many of you maybe have questions. Feel free to submit those as I'm talking. But let's go ahead and get started with our first Poll Everywhere question. Oh, some people are already responding.
Since I can't see everybody in person, I'd really love to know, who is here today? I know that we're welcoming our new transfer students, we're welcoming some first-year students, some exchange and visiting students, nice. Maybe we have some parents or family members joining today.
Again, if you don't feel comfortable using Poll Everywhere, feel free to submit in the chat. Tell me who you are. It looks like we have a lot of our new transfer students and some of our visiting and exchange students. So thank you. Feel free to jump in whenever you want to, but that's really helpful for me to see. So welcome again.
And now I'm curious, what college are you attending? Where-- yep, got college. OK, everyone's like ready to go. Love it. It looks like we've got a good representation.
Do we have anyone from the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning? Maybe, maybe not. And I always throw in the graduate school because sometimes we have new students. Great! I think-- lovely. I love seeing where everyone is getting ready to start their classes in just a couple of days. So again, thanks for joining.
So, again, I mentioned I'm from Cornell Career Services from the central office. And to begin our workshop, or a presentation today, I think it's really helpful to just get a better understanding of how Career Services or how Cornell Career Services works because each of you also has an individual career services in your college as well.
So normally as we're talking about Career Services, and how we work, and how we interact with our college colleagues, we think of this as this wheel-and-spoke format where we are working with the colleges, we're working together. We coordinate a lot of these centralized programs and platforms that I'll be showing you today.
But I know that a lot of times students will come to us and say, well, now where do I go? Do I go to Arts and Sciences, or do I come to the central office? The central office, we do see students from every college, every major, every degree. For our graduate students, we're really focusing on those that are looking for more industry-related roles.
So the answer to this question, where do you go, go anywhere. If you're an Arts and Science's student, know that you have Arts and Sciences, and you also have our office as a resource. If you're a CALS student, similarly. So you really have this best of both worlds because you have two resources.
And sometimes it's just convenience where you are at that moment on campus. Sometimes it's scheduling. Sometimes there's going to be more specialized advising, depending on which office you're in.
But know that you have both of us as a resource. And really just come to one of the offices. We are in the business of referring, and we'll make sure that you get to the resources that you need to.
So I know that we're not on campus right at this moment. But where is CCS? That's Cornell Career Services. Look at this beautiful, sunny day. It's kind of sunny today in Ithaca, although we're not seeing the green grass right now.
But this is Barnes Hall. So this is our office. We are very central to campus. So again, depending on where you are during the day, you likely are going to walk by this building at least one time. We are right next to the campus store, and we're across from Willard Straight. So as you get acclimated to campus and where the buildings are, know that Barnes Hall is right there next to the campus store and across from Willard Straight.
I will say that we have a lovely lounge area. So we do often have students who will just come and study. We've got a lot of fun, interactive activities in this lounge area.
And so if you're looking for a place to study, and you're just like, oh, right, Heather mentioned that Barnes Hall is a good place to go, yeah, come on in. You don't have to meet with anybody right then and there. But know that you have this lovely space. And, of course, we would love to see you. So just keep that in mind as well.
I mentioned that I wanted to touch on a couple of different points when we talk about Career Services and what are our expectations. I think sometimes Career Services can feel a little bit maybe anxiety-inducing. I know maybe some of you had just attended the Cornell Health presentation. And so I know that sometimes Career Services are like, oh, I need to find that internship, or I need to find that job after I graduate. Or you're thinking about your classmates who, if you're a new transfer student, maybe you're worried that everyone else has been doing all of these things, and now you're here on campus.
Keep in mind that everyone's going to be in a lot of different roles in their career development process. And they're going to be in a different position. So try not to worry so much about the comparison. But know that we're here as a resource.
So here are some key points we want to start this conversation with. The first is, it is completely OK if you're not sure what you want to do in terms of your career, or your academics, or any of those other components. There's a lot of resources on campus to help you explore, to figure things out.
I love those conversations when students come to my office and say, I know I'm supposed to be here, but I'm not really sure what questions I have. Perfect. Let's start that conversation.
We do want to see you soon. And what does "soon" mean? It means don't wait until you're feeling so stressed that you don't know who else to come to. Come to us now. We'll start that conversation.
Clearly, we know that you're going to come when you feel comfortable, so do you take your time to acclimate to campus. There's no need to schedule a meeting with us for tomorrow. But know that we'd love to see you to start having that conversation so we can think about exploration and make sure that you're connecting to the resources that I'm going to show you as well.
We do really specialize in that individualized assistance. So these one-on-one meetings that we will have available to students, it's a great time to just start having this conversation, learn a little bit about what some of your goals are. Maybe you're not interested in an internship for the summer, but you're really looking for some research opportunities while you're on campus, or you're trying to explore how to get involved and volunteer-- volunteering, lots of different ways that we can connect you to those resources.
I will say that we do focus a lot on this networking, these connecting and building those relationships, as well as experiential learning, which sometimes falls under, honestly, any of your co-curricular activities, clubs and organizations, volunteer experiences, the classes that you're doing, et cetera, as well as what we call shadowing or observing individuals so that you have a better understanding of career paths and understanding what skills are important in those career paths or for those different directions that you're looking into.
One thing that we're going to focus on a little bit today is recognizing that really most employers are really looking for skills, those career skills, rather than specific majors. I know it can be challenging. You're coming to Cornell, you're choosing a college that's a good fit for you, and then you're choosing a major that's a good fit for you.
But please remember and recognize that you're building a lot of great skills. And those skills are going to be transferable to a lot of different career paths. So that's exciting. That's fine that you chose and you found that major and that college that's really the best fit for you.
So we're going to focus a little bit on this Career Development Cycle. This is a cycle. This is a model that we refer to a lot as we think about our individual appointments as well as our programming that we really plan for for each semester.
You can see that this is a cycle, clearly. It's called the Career Development Cycle. But recognizing that you're going to be in any one of these areas at any given time. I'm in those areas. I continue to explore, take action, and understand myself again as I get exposed to different areas and industries, et cetera.
But we're going to focus, to start off with, on that understanding yourself. So oftentimes, again, as a student comes into our office, we might start asking those questions like, what are your interests, what are some of your goals for today, what motivated you to come today, and really helping you to connect to some of these key points, your interest, your values, your strengths, your goals. There's a lot of different activities and strategies that we incorporate.
I mentioned this, but we do have those career counseling appointments, these 30-minute appointments where we really can have these individual conversations and specialized conversations with students to understand where you go. Maybe we refer you to another one of our colleagues in Career Services, or to another office at Cornell, or I just start helping you to strategize and develop some of those plans [AUDIO OUT] you need to explore.
We have so many workshops. You'll see we do workshops really to support each one of these categories in the development cycle. But we have close to 90, I think, over 90 workshops already that are planned for just this semester, so lots of different ways to explore and better understand who you are and what your interests are.
We also offer what we call career assessments. These are like tests, career tests, that help you recognize your skills, recognize your interest, your values. Sometimes it can be helpful, a development tool to really help you pinpoint and be able to articulate what are my interests? What are the skills that I really want to incorporate in my career?
And so many of these career assessments we support in the Central Office. And some of the colleges also support them in the individual College career services offices. If you have any questions, or not sure what to take, or have an interest in taking but not really sure what to do, know that you can schedule an appointment with our career advisors to help you figure out which is the best test for you, depending on what your interests are, and what your goals, and what you're hoping to get out of this assessment as well. Again, this assessment can help you identify some of these key skills.
And this is a slide that you will often see as we are conducting our different workshops. But we're really helping students to identify, through an organization that we are members with called NACE-- this is the National Association of Colleges and Employers. And they do a job outlook survey every year to survey employers to get a better sense of, what are the skills that you're looking for from your new employees?
And they typically are answering some version of these eight, the career and self development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership. You've got the professionalism, teamwork, and technology, which likely you already are building on some of these skills, so just helping you to be able to articulate, what are some of those key skills that employers are really looking for and interested as their students are applying to jobs and internships?
Let's do a quick little-- oh, we've already got people who are jumping in. I love it. So as you think about which of these eight career competencies or these skills, what do you think employers are most interested in seeing from their new employees? And there's really no wrong answer.
But it's fun to think about, right? We've got critical thinking, communication. It looks like teamwork is right up there, as well as the professionalism, work ethic.
And we've got some movement coming along, for sure. Thanks for playing along, everybody. I love seeing this. So we'll give it one more second, a little bit of movement still.
I'm going to show you this slide, which basically-- again, this is from the most recent-- from the job outlook survey from 2022. And you can see employers-- the importance, the weighted average. This is on a scale from 1 to 5.
So you can see the majority of these are right up at the top there. And often every year, there's going to be a little bit of movement. Sometimes there's a little bit of redefining of these competencies, really thinking about those transferable skills that you're helping to build on to fulfill some of these attributes.
Critical thinking is right up at the top. We've got problem solving, communication, teamwork, equity and inclusion. I would say those are right there at the top. But professionalism, technology, career development, and leadership are right there as well. Nice. It's fun to reflect on this. You're like, oh, yeah, I have built some of these skills. I have some of these.
The next step in the Career Development Cycle is this Exploring Options. So as you think about what's out there, it could be career-specific, it could also just be opportunities and different ways that you can build on skills. So as I mentioned, we have lots of different resources. I'm going to show you some of those in a bit. But we do meet with students, obviously, to make sure that they're connected to the right resources.
Networking, I already said, is a huge, huge important role in helping you to explore lots of different activities through workshops, and co-curricular activities, and different experiences that we bring to Cornell or have remotely available in those cases. And, obviously, internships, volunteer, experiences, jobs after you graduate, lots of different ways of getting that.
So how do we support students in this category? I mentioned those 30-minute appointments. So we do do those individual appointments, which is really fun as well. A lot of my role falls in that Understanding Yourself and Exploring Options, even though I also do some of that Take Action. Some of my other colleagues also have a different focus to really help you connect with different industries or different interest areas as well.
Lots of workshops and info sessions. A lot of them are going to be really interactive. So it gives you this opportunity to, in-person, connect with your classmates. We also offer some of the virtual workshops and info sessions, too, just to meet you where you are. Sometimes it's easier to do that.
Lots of resources, as I mentioned, that networking. We will have some virtual and on-campus networking events. Many of the colleges are also supporting that also. And that's really fun, too, to continue to explore.
I see that there are some questions. I'm going to hold off on answering those just for a moment. But if we need to, we can always go back to different slides. I want to cover this last area and how we support students in this Take Action.
So, again, those 30-minute appointments. I want to focus on this a little bit because we do have some specialized advisors who are really going to help with this job process, maybe even graduate school, law school, medical school. We do have advisors that are really specialized in those areas.
As you know, Cornell has that pre-law track, pre-med track, the pre-vet track. So know that there are advisors, both in the Central Office and sometimes also in the colleges, that will have a specialization to help you with that, like the medical school process or even our fellowships and prestigious scholarships that are supported by Cornell as well. So we do have advisors that will help in that direction.
Even for some of the, again, special major two-career paths, those typical paths, there may be some additional advisors that have some of those specializations in the various career and industries. But many of us really cover multiple industries and really have that generalization to help students as they're looking for those different industries.
We support students in that resume and letter reviews, cover letter reviews, or even application reviews. So we have this really exciting resource called the Career Development Toolkit, which we'll look at in just a bit. We also have same-day drop-in appointments, in addition to these 30-minute appointments. So every day, one of our advisors sets aside time for those last-minute same-day type of appointments. And those are definitely in-person.
Some of our 30-minute appointments, I should have mentioned this before, but we can do those either in-person, or remotely, or by phone. It's really up to the student. And as you are signing up to schedule an appointment, you'll get those options so that you can decide what method works best for you.
We also support students in this Take Action for practice interviews, so for the actual practice interviews, but also on-campus recruiting, which is when the employees are actually interviewing our students. So we do host those employers actually within Barnes Hall, as well as your College office. You may see employers who are conducting on-campus interviews for your peers or for yourself. So that's exciting as well as remote options, too.
So I want to show you some of these web tools. Yeah, OK. I'm just looking at the question that has been posted. And we're getting to this.
Someone was asking, where do we schedule the career appointments? And I'm going to show you those resources in just a moment, so hold on. We're almost there. But thank you for asking that question.
So, again, we have so many tools, web tools for just your success. And this is great because you can access these at any time. I'm going to throw all of the website links into the chat after I go through them. So just know that there's also a QR code. If you want to take your phone, you can quickly put that on your phone, as well as the link that you see below.
So to answer your question, how do you make an appointment, well, if you go to career.cornell.edu, our web page has Make An Appointment right in the upper-hand corner. I will mention that this will take you to the centralized services, so myself, my colleagues in our Central Office. If you want to schedule an appointment specifically with your College career services office, we can direct you to that way-- to that place as well. But you would go to your college website basically. And there's usually an indication of how you should schedule an appointment with them.
Again, no right answer. Feel free to schedule an appointment just in general. And we can always refer you to them and vice versa. But our website has a lot of great resources and can connect you to many of these website resources that I'm going to show you.
I will mention that if you scroll down on our web page, you're going to see a whole list of events that will come through as the semester progresses. One that you can put down on your calendar right now is the career fair. We have a spring virtual career fair that will be on February 16, hosted through Handshake, which I'm going to show you in just a moment. But that's our job and internship placement platform. So, Career Services website, first one, great resource.
The second one that I'll just mention, and especially for-- coming in spring semester, maybe you're like, oh, what happened fall semester, or what did I miss, we do record most of our workshops. And we will post them onto our Career Services Media Library after they've been closed caption. So you can see a long list of many, many workshops that we've done this past spring, but also some from last year.
You can see that this is a little screenshot that we're looking at of the web page for the library of workshops and presentations. And there is a Search bar. You can also sort by category.
So if you're like, oh, I really want to look for finance workshops, you can type that in. Or internships or interviews, go ahead and type that in, and it'll pull it up. You can also just explore.
The Career Development Toolkit. This toolkit is amazing. Many of you, you may know that at Cornell we use Canvas as part of your education process. Your faculty, a lot of your assignments, et cetera, are going to be posted on Canvas.
We also built this toolkit. And so all you need to do is enroll. Again, if you take a screenshot, if you use that QR code-- I will send out these links to our colleagues in New Student Programs so that they can send this to you as well. But you can access this amazing toolkit on Canvas.
There's lots of mini career courses. You can see some of them, like Job Search, or Job Offers, or Resumes, or Exploration. You can also, as you scroll down, see more the educational opportunities, like pre-law or grad school if you're searching for some of that, the pre-vet training module as well.
And then if you scroll down further to the bottom of the page, we're continuing to build on these industry-specific modules, which really are going to help you connect and understand some of the big career paths that many of our students explore, like finance, and consulting, and product management. The user experience, I know for students who are thinking about computer science roles maybe, that's an area that they're thinking about as well.
But we keep building on this. We added-- I don't even know how many we added in the past couple of months. But this is a really great resource. You actually have access to this even as you graduate from Cornell. So this is one of those resources that you will always have access to as well.
CUeLINKS, this is one of those platforms that I manage. This is a great networking platform that helps Cornell students connect with Cornell University alumni who have volunteered to be part of this platform to be a resource. We currently have close to 7,000 alumni that have volunteered. There are more joining every day.
What's nice about this platform, in addition to LinkedIn, but we're going to focus on this one for right now, is that students search for alumni. Alumni can't search for students, so it gives students that drive and that ability to be a little bit anonymous until they connect with an alum. Alumni are not notified if a student is looking at their profile. So again, you have this opportunity to review and learn from those profiles.
But you can also explore the system. There's great resources like a Discussion page and a Resource page where people are posting more updated information. You can also send messages to alumni, and you can request meetings to alums that are in the system as well. You can do a remote meeting, in-person, phone, whatever the alum prefers. So it's a really great resource.
Another great resource, and I mentioned this is where our career fair is going to be hosted, is Handshake. So Handshake-- many of you and those of you who are new transfer students, your previous school maybe used to Handshake. If you're a new first-year student, this might be a little bit new to you, or an exchange or visiting student.
There are some-- I'll just mention that some of these platforms may not be available to our visiting and exchange students. Many of them are. So if you have questions or you're having trouble accessing if you're a visiting or exchange student, please feel free to reach out to our office.
But Handshake is where our jobs and internships are going to be posted. It's also where we host events, like the career fair or Career Conversations or alumni panels. This is also where we are posting all of the workshops that Central Career Services is offering, as well as your College career services office.
Sometimes there may be some workshops that are only for students in a certain college because their alumni have come. And many times, it's going to be broadly open to the general population. So this is definitely a place where you want to go and explore, and set up your profile, and make sure that you're looking through this process and looking through this platform.
So I mentioned we have lots of workshops that we offer throughout the year. This semester, we have close to 90 that we've already scheduled and are in Handshake if you're interested in exploring. Also listed in the Campus Activities page, but anything from CUeLINKS overview, to career advising support, case interview, imposter syndrome.
There's so many more. This is just a very small selection, so do go and explore. And come to our workshops. We'd love to see you and have those interactions as well.
The last formal platform that I want to share that is really brand new pretty much is our Post Graduate Survey Dashboard. So if you are trying to figure out where do bio majors go after they graduate, or what do computer science majors do after they graduate, this is a really great way to explore. Again, the link is at the bottom of the page, but you can use your phone and capture that QR code.
This is such a great resource to explore, to get a general sense of, based on students that have graduated and have fulfilled-- or have completed the survey, what are they doing? What are they doing after they graduate? You'll see graduate school, you'll see jobs, and the jobs after they graduate, entrepreneurial ventures, et cetera. So this is a great way to just see what Cornell students have done after they have graduated.
There are so many more online tools. And again, I just really highlighted the ones that we have created and that we're really promoting to our students. But know that there are so many other great resources, too.
So this is why it's helpful to schedule a meeting because it could feel a little overwhelming. And we'll really help you set some of those goals so that it feels manageable, also so that you're connecting to the appropriate resources, anything from O*NET to Glassdoor to GoinGlobal, which helps students connect to international opportunities. Or if you're an international student, how do you navigate that as well? Some experiential platforms that we have recently purchased as well. So there are so many great resources. I really have fun with talking to students and having a better understanding of what their interests are and their goals, and then connecting them to the resources that will be helpful for them.
I also just want to mention that there's lots of other ways for students to gain experience. Definitely the internships, definitely the jobs, but there's a lot of other ways. Experience Cornell is a great web page.
If you go to Cornell's website and just type in "experience," really it's like the bridge that connects you to all these other opportunities that are at Cornell, whether it's research, or volunteer experiences, or study abroad, or some of these other fellowships and opportunities. Do explore. That's a great way. You can filter. It's a good way to see what else is there.
The David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement helps students connect to leadership opportunities, as well as volunteer opportunities in the community and abroad. I mentioned research. There are great on-campus jobs, clubs and organizations, volunteering, and more. So know that you will-- as a student here at Cornell, you will definitely gain experiences and build on those skills. There's so many more than what I have listed, but these are some of the ones that we often are our directing students to.
Some of the upcoming events that we have coming up, again, this is just a small handful in the next couple of weeks, but Hack Your Summer Internship, Preparing For Finance Careers, either for first-years or sophomores, virtual career fair preparation, very good to attend that. Again, we have pre-law, financing, or legal education, job search, et cetera. So go into Handshake, create your account, and start signing up for some of these great opportunities to connect. But if you can't because you have class at that time or some other activity, make sure you schedule an appointment with our office or with your career services office.
So I know we're right at time. Wrapping things up, what do you do? What are some of those next steps? As I mentioned, connect with Career Services. You can schedule an appointment with us, or go to our website, or explore a little bit. Come to our workshops. We'd love to see you.
Reach out to your College career services office. As part of orientation, you likely are going to get some exposure to your College career services office. It's a great way to connect with people who know your major, know your career paths, your typical career paths as well. And they're such a great resource. And again, we coordinate with our colleagues all the time. So reach out to one of us. We don't care who at this point.
Follow us on Instagram. We are often promoting some really great events that we are hosting and sometimes our colleagues and our partners across the University are hosting that may be are career-related. So do join Instagram, follow us. Lots of fun tips, et cetera.
So, what is our takeaway message? Sign up for any of these digital tools. These web tools are going to be a great resource. And we really can't wait to meet with students. It's what we're here for. We love it. So do join us, whether it's an individual appointment or one of our workshops.
And our office, we're open from 8:00 to 4:30 PM Monday through Friday. Again, you can use the online tool to just schedule an appointment. But if you'd rather come into our office or call, you can do that.
And know that we're going to be virtually meeting with students for the next couple of weeks, but then we'll be seeing you. We're really looking forward to meeting you in person and answering your questions.
So thank you, everybody. I know there are some more questions that are coming through maybe. Or if anyone has questions, feel free to submit those, I guess, through the chat or through the Q&A.
But again, my name is Heather Fortenberry. I'm really excited to have you be on campus. Welcome, everybody. And thank you so much for giving me this time to share our amazing resources that we have. Thanks so much.
Heather Fortenberry gives and overview of Career Services at Cornell.
