When Jennifer Floren '93 was first searching for a job after college, the Internet was not the best source for career opportunities.
Now, thanks to Floren, career information is just a mouse click or a page turn away. Prompted by a request for advice from her younger sister, a senior at Princeton at the time, Floren founded Ivy Productions and Experience Online in 1996.
Experience Online, a website that is a compilation of information about available careers, covers topics such as getting established, finding a job and other relevant information for students just graduating or a few years out of college, Floren told The Dartmouth.
Now Floren has taken her career advice and information one step further, with Experience Magazine, a more in-depth print version of the online service.
The magazine began as an idea last summer, and was launched just six months later, with the premiere issue coming out last month.
"Basically our focus is talking to people who are launching their careers," Floren said.
Floren said Experience's main goal is to help twentysomethings make the transition from being full-time students to full-time professionals.
"People even five or six years out of school spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's out there," Floren said. "We want to make something that makes that whole experience very manageable and exciting."
Floren, who majored in psychology at the College, worked for a strategic consulting firm immediately after graduation. Although she enjoyed her work for the two-and-a-half years she was employed at Bain & Co., she said she wished someone had shown her that there were other things out there.
"I didn't really know what my choices were," Floren said.
Her own experience and that of her friends was part of what led her to found Ivy Productions.
"I knew it could help me and all of my friends and my siblings," Floren said.
Experience, both the online and print versions, is the result of extensive research done by Floren and her colleagues in their first year and a half in business. They conducted thousands of interviews with people in a variety of fields to get information on what each career area was really like.
The magazine has the additional advantage of being able to go into more detail on a particular subject and allow for a more story-like reporting style, which Floren hopes will help inspire and excite students and young professionals about all of the possibilities that are available to them.
Experience will be published quarterly, with the next issue coming out in September.
The magazine was distributed to residence halls at Dartmouth last month, with several students at the College working to get feedback for Floren.
Floren said she thought Career Services at Dartmouth was focused on only two things: "consulting and banking." Her service is available to students who want to think about opportunities beyond those two careers.
Many college and university career offices purchase the Experience Online service, although Dartmouth is not one of them. However, individual memberships, which include a subscription to the magazine, are available to students for $20 per year.
