Regent’s Career Services office helps students
Career services helps students and alumni with resumes, career choices, internships, and other real world situations.
Taking a left at the top of the stairs in the Student Center and walking down the hall, students find themselves by room 235: the Career Services office. Career Services is an organization that helps students prepare for real life career situations.
The office has been around since 2012 but has not gained publicity among students.
“Our goal here at Student Services is to make students feel like they’re known; that’s the big, overarching objective,” said Brennan Smith, Assistant Director of Career Services and internship coordinator. “What this office does specifically is to make sure students know themselves, and so we really help with student discovery.”
The Career Services office offers coaching, resume review and workshops for all students and alumni who need help in the job or internship search.
Where the rubber meets the road
“We don’t place them in jobs, but we prepare them to be the best candidates they can be going into those opportunities, and we try to tell them about those opportunities,” said Smith. “One of the ways we would connect them to that would be through CareerLink; it’s our online system that everyone should have an account for.”
Career Coaches are available to meet with students and help them with any career-related questions or tasks such as how to build a resume or effectively use LinkedIn.
“Most of our coaches are GA’s in the School of Psychology and Counseling, so they have a sort of training to be that kind of nurturing, counseling, guiding role,” said Smith. “We’ve got everything in here. It’s like a snapshot of the real world – especially professionally.”
Career coaches help students one-on-one
Professional development coaches meet with on campus clients in their cubicles and help them step by step.
“We work on a really wide variety of things,” said Kelsey Klein, a Professional Development Coach. “We meet one-on-one with clients, so any students or alumni who want to come in for help, and then we also host workshops around a lot of different areas to help out multiple people at the same time.”
Students bring their professional struggles to the office, and coaches aid the young adults. “That’s what drives me as a coach,” said Klien. “Helping people identify what their problems are, figuring out tools to fix that problem, and then helping them have a better life.”
The coaches benefit from encounters with students as well. Klein’s cubicle has a section on the wall where she has printed out and pinned up compliments from clients.
“That whole process is what encourages me,” said Klein. “I feel encouraged by helping people go from one state of not-so-great to another one that’s really good. It might be messy in the in-between, but that messiness works itself out.”
The head of Career Servies
Saranette Williams, Director of Career Services, specializes in helping alumni find work.
“Our job at the Career Services office is to work with employers, to get them to know the best students and alumni to hire,” said Williams. “And to work with students and alumni to get them to know who they are, their skills, their abilities, and what organizations may be a good fit or them at the different places they are in their life.”
For the 20,000+ alumni of Regent University, the number one hiring organization is Regent University itself.
“We love helping students and alumni to know how God has designed them, especially as they are Christian leaders to change the world,” said Williams. “Sometimes as you’re changing the world, it’s good to know how you’re equipped to make that change, and that’s what we like to help people do.”
Career Services advertises itself by hosting Online Information Sessions, which will be getting a new name under Career Services soon.
“Often times you get [the online information sessions] off of our CareerLink page,” said Williams. “That’s this free website that you can go to where every student has their own account that they can utilize via the website or, if they’re really savvy, an online mobile app.”
“As we work with students, for them to know who they are and how they’re made by God [is important], more than just the scripture that says they’re fearfully and wonderfully made,” said Williams. “But to actually know so that they can work in an organization and leverage who they’re working with to get the best, then that helps the student and it helps organizations.”
Shelly Slocum is a Staff Writer for The Daily Runner.
