CTM helps students get jobs, succeed

The new Office of Career and Talent Management (CTM) is located in COM 250. If you take the left side of the grand staircase in the Communications building, go through the double doors on your right, and walk down the hall, you will find this office tucked away on your right.

The Talent Acquisition Office and the Career Services Office have merged into CTM, which now handles both individual student career goals as well as filling jobs at Regent University.

“We look after the talent acquisition side, which means we go out and look at faculty and staff positions here at the university and fill them,” said Aran Nugent, Director of CTM. “Then we look at our student pool, which is like our talent pool, and we see where these students want to work and see if we can help them be more career-ready [to] place them in a position after [graduation].”

The office offers two main services to students: Career Coaching and Career Specialists.

“The first thing is if you’re looking to get help with your resume, get career assessments, or ‘I don’t even know what I want to do yet, but I need to talk to somebody,’” said Nugent. “You come speak to a Career Coach that we have in the office [to then] figure out ‘Okay this is what I want to do.’”

Talking to a Career Coach, as described in a previous article by the Daily Runner, helps students to identify their goals and make basic improvements to their resume.

“Once you really want to know more about what it’s like to work in cyber-security [or] the health field, the coach hands you over to a Career Specialist,” said Nugent. “They delve much deeper into that, help you find internships, and get you ready for an interview.”

While resume writing, career assessments, and personal branding are very important, the office puts an emphasis on the importance of interview skills.

“An interview for a [Regent job] is going to be very different than a position at a cyber-security company,” said Nugent. “So, we need to interview you just like an HR professional would interview you.”

These changes are just a few ways CTM has become more accessible to students in need of career help and aids them in developing their career goals – whether it is a job hunt, searching for an internship, or anything in between.

“We look outside for skills that might help us with faculty and staff here, and then we also look at students [to] see how we can get them ready [for] jobs outside [the University],” said Nugent. “That’s the jewel purpose of the office.”

The office is open 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. on Fridays.

Shelly Slocum is a department head for the Daily Runner.