As a second-year student, I feel as though most of my peers access the Holy Cross homepage solely to navigate to Moodle or STAR, and thus don’t see all of the helpful resources affiliated with different office & group pages. The Career Planning Site, located at http://offices.holycross.edu/careerplanning, offers students multiple tips & tricks, resources and guidelines to successfully find an internship or a job post-graduation.
I was charged with exploring these Career resources (found on the “Online Resources” tab http://offices.holycross.edu/careerplanning/resources) to see what sites (slash databases) were the easiest to use and the most helpful for students.
Here’s my top 3:
1. What Can I Do With This Major ( http://whatcanidowiththismajor.com/major/ )
Personally, I thought that this site was pretty cool. This site is a great starting point for students who aren’t sure as to what career fields come out of their major and, on the other side, what kinds of majors work in the career fields students are interested in. It’s definitely useful and interesting because it gives several “typical” career plans for graduates with the degree you’re seeking. It doesn’t go too in-depth with describing specifically what jobs are available, but it helps students to see the amount of positions available for their desired majors. To see the full potential of this site, I would suggest that users click through the majors listed and do some research onwhich major leads to their preferred career. The information gathered from this site is informative and gives students a good foundation to continue their search for an ideal major / career path. (I would recommend thatstudents who are at this stage of their search also check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/ to see the actual metrics behind different occupations).
2. CareerBeam (http://cb.careersearch.net/login/?school_id=2475)
CareerBeam is probably the most comprehensive tool listed on this page of resources. It requires registration, which may deter some students, but it takes around 3 minutes to sign up and start navigating the site. The ‘careersearch’ feature on CareerBeam is both simple and user-friendly, allowing students to search for positions/internships in certain areas. I feel as though this feature extends some of the capabilities of Crusader Connections (the main internship/job posting database for the Career Planning Center) because a good portion of Crusader Connections postings are based in the New England / Tri-state area, while CareerBeam is nation-wide. In addition, CareerBeam has supplementary pages on different techniques for finding jobs and impressing employers. Overall, I believe that CareerBeam can be an invaluable resource for students who actually devote the time to using it.
3. lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com/)
Lynda.com is a new resource that Holy Cross has acquired for all students to use. After navigating Lynda.com and seeing its numerous features, it was necessary to add it to my top 3. This service provides multiple online video tutorials from topics in software development to photography and audio mixing. What’s best about Lynda.com is that it offers a diverse range of videos in very desireable skill sets. For students who are looking to dabble in say a programming language or digital publishing (these are just random examples), Lynda’s informative and interactive video / practice series allows you to see if something sparks an interest in you thatyou may not necessarily have a chance to see in the classroom. Finally, Lynda is very easy to navigate and the extensive support of the site means that new content will always be added.
So there’s my three top resources on the Career Planning page! I hope you readers find some time in your busy schedules to check them out.
Also, don’t forget to apply to the Summer Internship Program (SIP) by 11:59 on Thursday, October 2nd!
