As the search for jobs in the United States becomes more and more competitive for college graduates, St. John’s as well as other universities across the country should accept a greater responsibility of helping students in meeting their career goals and finding jobs in their particular field of interest. As a result of a constant rise in tuition rates, colleges should definitely provide more career services for their students.
The Career Center at St. John’s provides excellent services for students who take advantage of them. These services have even been honored by Kaplan, who ranked the center in the top 35 in the nation, as reported in the Summer 2006 issue of The Torch. These services include various workshops on networking, resumes, interview strategies, and other workshops that cover important aspects of a typical college graduate’s career search. The Career Center also sends weekly newsletters via e-mail, which contains a variety of information, including dates for workshops and listings of full and part-time jobs. Even though most of the jobs listed in this newsletter require a completed bachelor’s degree, this may still help students by giving them a sense of what companies offer jobs in specific fields.
The Career Center Web site, which can be accessed at stjohns.edu/services/career, also provides many services, including a list of future workshops and events, access to MonsterTRAK, and links to other career and job search Web sites, as well as information regarding what careers one can pursue with a specific major, how to go about choosing or changing one’s major, and other information regarding career planning.
The Career Center also started a certificate program called “J.O.B.S.” in which students are required to attend specific workshops in resume writing, interviewing, dining and business etiquette, and the job search in general. In addition, students in the program are required to go through a mock interview as well as present a resume for review.
There is no doubt that the Career Center at St. John’s is doing a good job at helping students through its career services.
However, it seems as if the University is not doing enough in drawing students into the career center who are not taking advantage of these wonderful services.
Therefore, St. John’s should take extra steps to increase the number of students who use their services and moving the Career Center to the University Center and closer to where many student organizations meet is definitely a step in the right direction. Another major change that the University should make in regards to helping students with their future career is to change the way they provide information regarding internships. In many companies, especially those in the media industry, a part-time job at a local newspaper or an internship could be a big help in getting a good job in the field. The Career Center does give information regarding internships on the internship page of their Web site. However, many other colleges offer lists of internships or even links on their Web sites to companies that offer internships for their students. For example, the Rochester Institute of Technology offers their pre-med students a Web page with links and posts of possible internships. The University of Delaware does the same for many of their majors as well. Even some of the City University of New York (CUNY) schools post links to many internship opportunities that their students can sign up for.
Even though the Career Center at St. John’s University is one of the best in the nation, according to Kaplan, counselors at the Career Center should consider reforming some of their student services in order to attract more students and to become a much better source of information regarding jobs and internships in this competitive and fast-changing career world.
