How You Can Help Your Student
Some of the most valuable things parents can do to help a student with career planning are to be open to ideas, try to help your student find information and reserve judgement. Here are some ways you can help:
- Encourage your child to visit Career Services Reassure your student that Career Services is not just for seniors, and meeting with a career counselor can take place at any point (and should take place frequently) in their college career.
- Advise your student to write a resume. Suggest your student get sample resumes from the career center. You can review resume drafts, but recommend that the final product be critiqued by a career center professional.
- Challenge your student to become occupationally literate. Encourage him or her to research a variety of interesting career fields and employers.
- Allow your student to make the decision. It’s okay to make suggestions about majors and career fields, but let your student be the ultimate judge of what’s best.
- Emphasize the importance of internships. Having relevant experience in the job market is critical. A strong recommendation from an internship supervisor can often tip the scale of an important interview in their favor.
- Encourage extracurricular involvement. Part of experiencing college life is to be involved and active outside the classroom. Interpersonal and leadership skills-qualities valued by employers-are often developed in extracurricular activities.
- Teach the value of networking. Introduce your student to people who have the careers/jobs that are of interest. Encourage your student to “shadow” someone in the workplace to increase awareness of interesting career fields.
- Help Career Services. If your company hires interns, have the internships listed in the career center.
