Joya Pavia, Staff Writer

Career Services, located in room 206 in the Strebel Student Center offers, a variety of services to assist students in exploring their interests and skills and direct them to potential career paths. Career Services encourages students to meet with them as early as freshman year and throughout their duration at Utica College. Freshman year is the time for students to gain knowledge about the services provided. The office provides students with a four-year plan to keep students on track during their time at UC.

The office offers professional guides on writing resumes, cover letters, interviewing, social media and graduate school. Jobs and internships are posted on their online databases, which are called UC career connect, internships.com and Internships USA. Career Services also offers a resume building software and virtual mock interviews are feasible for students free of charge. The career services website provides a calendar of events put on by the office. On Nov. 17, there was a “coffee, cupcakes and career series” event for one hour where students were educated on how to create and/or strengthen their LinkedIn profiles.

Career Services puts on job and internship fairs, volunteer fairs, major-specific networking nights, lunch and learn seminars, programming and in class presentations for students throughout the school year. They also offer alumni/student mentoring, career counseling, career assessments, career resource library, job and internship postings, interview preparation, a chance to meet with employers and programming. The services offered are free of charge, but students may request up to 20 complimentary business cards, 10 sheets of resume paper and access to the student work station in the office lobby for professional purposes.

Kaprice Martinelli, a junior, had a guest speaker in her management class. Sarah Garramone, from Career Services, did an interactive presentation on all of the services and recourses the Career Services office provides.

“There were many more services offered than I thought and I’m definitely going to take advantage of them when it comes to looking for an internship this summer,” said Martinelli.

Senior Deena Martynovich was referred by a friend to stop into the career services office. “I was welcomed in and all my questions were attended to,” said Martynovich.

When asked if she thought others should take advantage of the career services office, Martynovich said, “Yes, Career Services is a beneficial resource that our college provides for students to take advantage of up to five years after they graduate. During my meeting with Sarah, she showed me different services I could use to look for jobs, how to establish connections and start networking with Alumni. Career Services is a great advantage to students. They offer the resources to assist students in the transitional period into the working environment.”

“I am graduating at the end of the semester and moving to Portland, Oregon and I had not yet perfected my resume. I don’t know many people in Portland and I was worried that finding a job may be difficult. I was introduced to LinkedIn by Career Services. There are a number of Utica Alumni that are in the heath services field that work in Portland and are successful in their field of practice. I would have never known that if I had not reached out to Career Services,” Martynovich said.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. UC offers free professional headshots at one of their LinkedIn photo booths. Career services encourages students to use LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Follow the office at @UCcareerservice and check out #HireaPioneer and #UCmysuccess.