The Center for Professional Development, formerly known as Career Services, is creating a variety of new programs and initiatives in order to increase network outreach and the breadth of its offerings.
New programs include the professional development accelerator, new resume guide, immersion trips and a virtual career fair. The campaign is headed by director Roger Woosley, who joined the center in May.
The center performed research and collected survey data that supported the need to think differently and deviate from old-fashioned and outdated methods.
The College hired a consultant to assess the center’s strengths and weaknesses and compare it with career development programs at other institutions, and that the College lacks resources to help students network within alumni subgroups, such as Greek houses and student organizations.
Parents also played a role in the research by sharing their feedback on the center’s effectiveness.
In addition to an external analysis, the center hosted seven focus groups to gauge how to communicate most effectively with students and student groups.
Woosley hopes that the center will help students achieve this success through collaborative programming, information sessions and workshops focusing on life skills.
The overall enterprise of these changes falls under the motto: “Dare to be different.”“Dare to be different is twofold — we wanted to create programs and initiatives that other career development offices weren’t doing,” Woosley said. “We wanted to be the risk takers. At the same time I wanted the credo to support student’s differences on campus.”
To address the issue of post-graduate preparedness, the center held a “Design Thinking Jam” on Oct. 5, during which students brainstormed ways to prepare peers for their careers.
The session ended with a proposal for an intense, comprehensive marketing and management curriculum for freshmen and sophomores. Students’ final two years will focus on polishing these skills.
“It was an excellent brainstorming session,” said program participant Alex Yerukhimov ’14.The Center for Professional Development hosted a salary negotiation workshop facilitated by a representative from the nonprofit Wage Project on Oct. 13. The workshop aimed to educate women about the wage gap so that they can better negotiate salaries.
Ten students attended the three-hour workshop. Woosley cited the date of the workshop, which took place over Homecoming weekend, as a cause for lower attendance.
“While we had fewer students than anticipated in this first workshop, I foresee there being an increase in participation in this and other events in the future,” assistant director for internships and employer relations Leslie Kingsley said in an email. “Dartmouth students surely understand the importance of their professional development and being well prepared for post-graduate success and as an office we want to further advocate for the importance of student professional development.”
The center aims to fix its image as a resource for only students pursuing finance and consulting.
During the winter interim, the center will launch two immersion trips — a legal services trip to Boston and an entertainment industry trip to New York City. The program will be free and available to all students, excluding transportation costs for students off-campus.“The trips will increase experiential learning through alumni and parent connections,” Woosley said. “Even though it’s a pilot program, I’d like to see more of these done throughout the country.”
Also during the interim, the center will hold a virtual career fair for companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, where students will connect with employers through virtual booths.Other changes include a newly enhanced and recently LinkedIn page with industry and student organization subgroups.
“Professional Dartmouth Alliance is our portal to link students with alumni for internships and employment opportunities,” Woosley said. “It provides more direct networking with alumni, specifically because alumni can provide students with not only job opportunities but also a practical perspective on the process.”
The center is adopting cloud technology, developing a cell phone application and expanding its presence on social media. It plans to introduce a new resume guide this January, which will act as a rubric for advisors when evaluating students resumes.This initiative is especially important because students most prominently use drop-in hours for resume reviews.
“Usually the biggest drawback to progress and change and innovation is a feeling of infallibility — that this is the way we’ve always done it, thus this is the way we should do it,” Yerukimov said. “I think the great thing with the CPD now is coming in with the base assumption that this system needs fundamentally to be changed.”
