College Job Offices Graduate to Career Centers

The old-fashioned college job office has found itself new work.

No longer is it exclusively an employment agency. Today’s campus job office, now likely to be called a “career center,” is an educational hub committed to arming students with knowledge about themselves, their skills and the workaday world--probably a rapidly changing one--they will face throughout their employed lifetime.

So the job office has gone into the teaching business.

Today it offers workshops, seminars and classes (some for academic credit) on how to choose a career, what to study to prepare for that career, what interim jobs and internships can be of most value, how to make contact with prospective employers and others who can help, and the nitty-gritty of appointments, interviewing, resumes and cover letters.

Computerized Data

True, the job listings on the placement office wall remain--but are augmented now by computerized data on opportunities in this field or that. Specialized libraries offer information about areas of interest, levels of qualification, companies, geographical location of opportunities, base salaries and prospects for moving into management.

But, the experts agree, the matter of finding a job--whether work that will help pay for college or the specific position that will start a graduate down the Yellow Brick Road to success--still depends less on computer technology than on one time-tested resource: the human being.

That human being is most likely to be the job seeker himself, a person who, taking to heart what the career center teaches, has a goal in life, recognizes the strengths that will carry him there and the weaknesses to be overcome.

Almost unanimously, career center directors spoke of the need for networking, for personal contact between those who can hire or who know of jobs and those who want that specific kind of employment.

That has led job placement offices to reshape their focus, said Chuck Sundberg, director of placement and career planning at UCLA, a 24-year veteran of the field who is spoken of with respect by his counterparts on other Southland campuses.

Resource Centers

“The major change I have seen has to do with the fact that we have become college resource centers and also instructors,” Sundberg said.

“That is necessary because a very large, large percentage of positions that people might want are not advertised in any form. A good example is the media, both print and electronic.

“Networking . . . The person who can tell you of a job in a profession that does not advertise, that expects people to come seeking a job. The person who would like that job, say somebody who wants to be a journalist . . . needs to become fully aware of what that work entails, and he needs to become known to those who can either tell him of openings or who can hire.

“Despite the sophistication brought by computer systems, the business of getting a job still operates on a personal level.”

Sometimes that kind of personal contact may come through the faculty of the student’s academic department. USC’s Graduate School of Business Administration is an example; its job office operates separately from the university’s Career Development Center.

“Schools and universities are finding that if graduates can’t find jobs, students won’t come to their institutions,” said Kenneth D. Hill, director of placement and career services at USC’s graduate business school, an engineer who changed his career direction after earning his master’s in business administration.

“It is a competitive environment and we have to provide these services. We have an alumni network, a service that goes beyond what (some schools) can provide.”

Negative Results

That kind of networking may have negative results for some graduates; it has operated against women and minorities in the past, especially in certain closely knit fields. Law is one.

“Discrimination is easy (in a law firm) because of the lack of requirements on disclosure,” said Joan Profant, assistant dean, placement office, at Southwestern University School of Law, speaking specifically of the problems women lawyers face.

“Women can’t go to the ‘right’ private clubs. Young partners are expected to maintain clients and to bring in new clients.” Both are matters often handled on a social basis that can be difficult for women both because of cultural constraints and family obligations, Profant said.

The need for networking between placement office and university departments was stressed by Sue Kiehn, director of the Center for Career Planning and Placement at Cal State L.A., who noted that graduating seniors often find work through their school or department.

“Individual faculty members may work for a student (on a job),” Kiehn said. “A crucial part of this career center is working with faculty and deans. They can help make employers aware of what openings we’re looking for and what they’re working for that might fit.

“In engineering school, for example, many professors with experience in the aerospace industry are invaluable to the student. Professors have the opportunity to interact with certain kinds of industry.”

Services for Alumni

Most colleges and universities are increasingly extending their career services to alumni, offering help in advancing careers or changing to an entirely different field. Sometimes change occurs almost by chance, as with mature students who take a course to broaden their skills--and meet an instructor or fellow student who becomes the person who knows of just the right job or geographical area or company.

Patricia Hunt, a continuing education specialist who heads UCLA Extension’s communication and learning skills program, stresses the usefulness of professional organizations.

“When people come in for counseling they learn how to network,” she said, “and they learn about a good professional organization.

“Most people don’t know how to bridge, how to move from one job to another. You have to know people, and a professional organization can put you in touch with the right ones.”

Career centers, job offices, whatever the title, vary from campus to campus according to the academic institution and the kind of population it has, its place on the educational ladder (graduate school vs. junior college) and the needs of the community in which it primarily functions or to which it sends its graduates.

Most placement operations have several services in common. Most have a job board that lists openings for part-time, summer or vacation work, the kind of job that helps pay college expenses. Most use computerized listings and library information services, and invite prospective employers on campus to recruit potential employees, especially graduating seniors.

The degree of career planning classes varies from campus to campus, some offering relatively simple services such as instruction in how to write resumes and others providing mock interviews that are videotaped so the student can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.

The prime focus on most large campuses seems to be the workshop or course, for credit or not, that prepares the student to solve his own career dilemmas.

UCLA’s Sundberg, whose office deals with 20,000 students a year, uses what he terms a “silly” analogy--but one that is eminently appropriate.

“Our philosophy comes from the story that if you give a man a fish, he eats today,” Sundberg said, “but that if you teach him to fish he always eats. It’s a silly reference but that is what we are really trying to do, to teach students to be self-sufficient.

“We find career switches occurring before a career starts, especially with English, history, anthropology, humanities majors. Employers are not interested in what the student’s major was but in his skills, experience and motivations to success.

Transferable Skills

“When one has gone through a course of instruction prepared to teach, that is not the only thing he or she can do. Skills and interests are transferable. Basic skills in analysis or communication are transferable from occupation to occupation.”

Sharyn Slavin, director of USC’s Career Development Center, and her staff also work with large numbers of students: 15,000 undergraduates and 15,000 graduate students. The graduate students also use the resources of their professional schools.

The thrust now at USC, Slavin said, is in two areas: internships and career counseling for freshmen and sophomores (both also increasingly important at UCLA). Internships may be paid or unpaid; at USC many can earn academic credit.

“We are very careful to communicate our criteria for internships,” Slavin said. “We don’t want interns confined to gofer kinds of things. If there is any question in our minds, we go out and visit the firm offering the internship, and we have not listed some that do not meet our criteria.

“Internships are dependent on the student’s own industry. Students are very willing to work for free if they feel they are learning something, especially in fields such as advertising and public relations. We try to set up an academic internship in which they get credit for their work.

“We really emphasize internship. It is an opportunity to test out a field in which students think they’re interested. They get their expectations more realistic, and many are offered full-time employment by firms with which they interned.”

Escaping Catch-22

Sundberg said his office at UCLA “works hard to have internships in those fields where the person must have exposure, where it’s a Catch-22: If you do not have experience you can’t get a job, yet you can’t get experience if you can’t get a job.”

In addition to dealing “with many seniors who just are not sure what they want to do,” Slavin said that USC’s Career Development Center is working to increase outreach to freshmen and sophomores.

“We can help them choose a major,” she said. “We have an ‘SOS’ program--Save Our Sophomores. Many times students come in as freshmen in a particular major. Say it’s pre-med--but they get a D in physiology. The student has spent most of high school and a freshman year planning to be a doctor, and now that’s out. So in the sophomore year we have a flurry of students changing majors or dropping out.”

With help from the Career Development Center, many students re-plan their academic careers, some into areas they never considered. Slavin said the situation also provides a time for charting a career path that can move students into challenging and rewarding jobs.

Positive Feedback

Both Slavin and Sundberg report a positive feedback from students who use career counseling programs.

“At first we find a mismatch in expectations,” Slavin said. “They (students) think they’ll be handed a job.

“Our later feedback indicates that a majority who know about the Career Development Center and use our services are ecstatic.

“With employers . . . well, they are very, very pleased, especially with the on-campus recruitment and internship programs. Businesses are pleased with our alumni service, which is free to employers--quite a bargain.”

Cal State L.A.’s Kiehn, asked if its Center for Career Planning and Placement concentrated on finding jobs for undergraduates, placing graduating seniors or offering career counseling, said, “It is a point of pride. . . . We have really worked on all these things.”

Kiehn said that employers recognize and appreciate students who have done job research and know about the company and its products or services before appearing for an interview. She and her staff also concentrate on helping students prepare a comprehensive resume, stressing inclusion of extracurricular activities, internships and part-time and temporary jobs.

Most Cal State L.A. students “can’t afford to take a non-paying internship,” Kiehn said, and emphasis is on jobs that can help pay college costs. The center lists 1,500 jobs that come in by phone each month: “We’ve gotten everything from maintenance kinds of things like a pool man at minimum wage to a call for a physician--and we don’t even have a medical school,” Kiehn said.

The center encourages students to tie in to occupational areas in which they are interested with part-time or vacation jobs.

“Clerical support, office support can be a good way to learn about an industry or a company,” Kiehn said. “We urge them to look at the industry they’re thinking of entering. We have a variety here--that’s the beauty of living in the Los Angeles area.”

She said that approximately 85% of Cal State L.A.’s students work while going to school and that that is an advantage in getting a permanent job after graduation.

“Employers know they will frequently find people who (have) basic working experience,” she said. “Employers are very clear. They look at work experience--if the student has had the responsibility, the need to be on time every day, just plain having to be there every day.”

Kiehn said the Cal State Center for Planning and Placement also urges students to look well ahead into the career future.

“Career counseling is getting the student to look at the options,” she said. “Some have one goal and have never looked at any other options; they do not look to 10 years from now. We recognize now that they have to think of a career as a life-planning process.”

Pepperdine University has two advantages when it comes to finding jobs for students: (1) It is small (2,500 students on the Malibu campus) and (2) its graduate programs, ranging from business administration to the humanities, operate separate programs for their advanced-degree graduates.

Pepperdine’s placement office encourages students to work, said Peggy Stahl, manager of its on-campus center for undergraduates, and channels them to internships related to their field of interest. She said there is a “vast increase in cooperative education programs” through which students work full time during summer and breaks and part time during the academic term.

Of students who work, the majority (more than 70%) are on work-study programs, mostly part-time limited-skills jobs that are handled through the university’s financial aid office, Stahl said.

The placement office deals with top corporations that are often quite specific about their needs.

“Because Pepperdine is small, companies can be very specific about what they need,” Stahl said. “We can zero in on a suitable person or persons as applicants.

“We have found that companies look for a solid grade-point average, work experience, campus activities and leadership skills. Interpersonal skills are very important.”

On the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary’s College, Teresa Keeler, assistant dean for experiential learning for the associate of arts program, faces problems unlike those at most other academic institutions.

“We assist young women, many from minority groups, to make a successful transition to what it means to be an educated woman,” she said. “ We address the needs of first-generation college students, many of whom are breaking roles women in the family have had.”

Keeler’s program centers around classes, including an intensive summer skills workshop that drew 100 of 185 entering freshmen this year and a required freshman class called “Introduction to Leadership” that focuses on time management, goal setting, interpersonal relationships and such how to ‘ s as finding one’s way around Los Angeles on the bus and telling a teacher about an incorrect grade.

Work-Study Program

The two-year campus’ career center deals with part-time and full-time jobs off campus, and a work-study program places students in campus jobs. An internship program includes paid and unpaid internships, with credit given through faculty sponsors according to standards set by the college.

Keeler explained that at Doheny, freshmen are two-thirds of students, the rest being sophomores. The statistics indicate success, not drop-outs, she said.

“The reason for the lower number of sophomores is that after the freshman year many transfer to Mount St. Mary’s Chalon campus or other four-year schools with baccalaureate programs,” she said. “One of our missions is almost planned obsolescence.”

The proof that the program works, however, lies in statistics, said Sister Magdalen Coughlin, Mount St. Mary’s College president.

“More than 60% who begin at the Doheny campus complete the associate of arts degree,” she said, “and of those more than 70% go on to earn a baccalaureate degree.”

A successful career, the experts agreed, begins with a strategy, a plan of action, for the student’s future.

“It comes after one decides what sorts of career and types of job one seeks, a strategy that is well thought-out,” said UCLA’s Sundberg. “You have to decide who you are and where you want to go. Without that, I don’t think anyone can go very far (in any field).

“For the most part our assistance is appreciated (by students). There is a recognition that we are not in the position to obtain a job for them. Our job is to empower them to obtain their own jobs.”