Helping Your Student Connect with the Career Center this Year

Parents often wonder how they can support their students in their career exploration and planning. In general, the greatest support you can provide to your student as they make their career (and other life) decisions is to be their greatest cheerleader. Encourage them to discover what brings them joy, what they are good at, and how they can use those gifts and talents in the world to lead a career and life of meaning and purpose. 

However, there are also specific activities you can encourage them to engage in throughout their time at Boston College. Ultimately, our mission in the Boston College Career Center is to empower and support students in pursuing careers and lives of meaning and impact. Following are some suggestions you may share with your student on how and why they should connect with the Career Center this year regardless of where they are in defining their goals for a purposeful career. 

Keep in mind, however, that a student’s path is rarely linear; part of the college experience is learning new information and growing in ways that will, inevitably, lead to rethinking longer-term plans. 

We encourage first-year students to get acclimated to their courses and their new living environment, and to get involved on campus. Doing so is a great way to become an active part of the campus community and also provides an opportunity to explore interests and build skills, which will also ultimately help their career development. Their primary connection with the Career Center should be around developing self-awareness of their skills, interests, and values as they relate to exploring careers. 

• Complete the Focus 2 Assessment to learn about their interests, skills, and values and how those might align with majors and careers. Bring the results to a career exploration coach, academic advisor, or other trusted mentor to discuss how to incorporate these results into their education and career exploration
  
  
• Create a professional resume, which may be adapted from their high school resume, to start articulating the skills and experiences they have already gained

We encourage sophomores to start to engage more deeply in exploring how their interests, skills, and values align with possible careers. If they didn’t connect with the Career Center in their first year, they should in their sophomore year with a focus on how to explore career options that align with their interests, skills, and values. They should also begin connecting their academic and co-curricular experience to career readiness skills.

• Attend the Endeavor program to explore career options and meet alums in a range of careers
  
  
• Register for our 1-credit Designing Your Career course to learn how to design career and life that feels meaningful and purposeful

Junior year is when students start focusing more on career decisions and planning. They should learn to articulate how they have gained career readiness skills through coursework, jobs, leadership, involvement, etc. Though some students will have internships in the summers before junior year, many students place a strong emphasis on getting an internship or other experience-based opportunity for the summer after junior year to gain experience in a field that interests them and to build their career readiness skills. 

• Request an alumni mentor by signing up for MentorMatch
  
  
• Explore the summer experience database to see how other BC students have spent their summers and connect with peers for advice about finding and applying for summer positions
  
  
• Attend career fairs and networking nights (and other relevant career events) to make connections and explore internship opportunities

Of course, in their senior year, students focus on determining and pursuing their post-graduation plans. They may pursue jobs, post-grad service, graduate school, or another meaningful opportunity, and it is important for them to keep in mind that the timelines vary widely. While this can be a time of stress and anxiety about the future for many, our hope is that students see the many exciting opportunities ahead of them and that the best of life is yet to come! 

• Reference BC’s post-grad outcomes data to learn more about hiring timelines, opportunities, and more
  
  
• Attend career fairs, networking nights, and information sessions to make connections with employers, alumni, and graduate programs 
  
  
• Get an alumni mentor by signing up for MentorMatch

The programs and services mentioned above are merely a sampling of what our Career Center offers. If at any point in your student’s education they have questions or are in need of career coaching and guidance, please encourage them to schedule an appointment with a career coach via our Handshake platform.