30-Minute Flash Topics: Career Exploration and Development

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alright. Hello everybody, we're going to give it a moment just to let everybody kind of get into the chat room tonight. Uh, we're very excited you're here, so just give it another second. I see there's quite a few students already in parents, so it's going to be a good evening. A lot of good talk tonight, so alright, without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm Kelly Rafferty, and one of the senior admissions counselors here, Kent State University. And I'm here tonight to introduce my colleague and friend, Jody Patterson, from the.

From a career exploration and development, it's a mouthful, but this is a nice person who's going to tell you all about things like on campus jobs and how you can attain one of those discussions about things like internships and helping you find a job after college 'cause we know that's one of the main reasons you're coming here. So at Joy's gonna do. She's going to give you a brief overview through one of our PowerPoint presentations. Please feel free to ask questions and what we'll do at the end is we can go ahead and ask those questions of Jodi. So without further ado.

Jody Patterson from a career and career exploration and development take it away. Jody, it's all yours.

Thank you and welcome so good to be here to share some information about career exploration and development and my name, as Kelly mentioned, is Jody Patterson. I'm associate director and I work very specifically incorrect exploration with our career advising and student facing initiatives.

So today I'd like to highlight our services and also share with in that we're going to focus on a couple topical areas. Kelly mentioned student employment. We're going to talk about career, major exploration. Our office is kind of broken down into four major areas, so you can see those listed on the slide. Here we have our major and career exploration, our career and employment search preparation events. Things such as our large career fairs. We host two very large fairs.

Each year and many, many small career community specific fairs, I'm gonna talk in just a moment. What I mean by career community to help you understand that as well as on campus student employment, which is really, I think, a highlight in terms of what we'll talk about today and what information I can share with you.

So to give a little bit of context information, I wanted to share this statement up at the top with you. This is our mission statement for career exploration and development, so we are really all about transforming lives one experience at a time and with that, and to kind of relate it and tie it into the content information I'm sharing with you today, we're going to talk a lot about social capital and networking. What that means.

And how we in career exploration and development can assist your student and yourself with that? We're going to talk about career exploration, mentoring and advice and how we help connect our incoming new students. Even you know alumni graduates with mentoring and advice initiatives. And then we're going to talk about experiences. So we're going to talk about things like student employment. We're going to talk about job shadowing and internships and how all of those.

Opportunities are pieces of information that we can share with you.

And as everybody having able to see the slides, is anybody having difficulty?

Just noticing Kelly in the chat there. OK, great thank you Colin. We appreciate that.

Alrighty, so I did mention just a few moments ago. The terminology of career communities. This is really helpful. I think to share as you are becoming familiar with Kent State. These are lists of the career communities. And really how our career advisors interface with our students and our alumni. And so you can see here that we have many many different career communities. So everything from the art design, performance and I'm not going to read them all off. You can see them here on the slide.

But I will share, you know, we at this point have a still exploring community as well. So those that may be coming in that are exploratory, identifying as exploratory and being emitted into our University College. We have a career community for you and an advisor that you would meet with specifically to talk through. What does that mean? To be still exploring and you know, to have some questions about that. So I'll kind of talk through this a little bit, but I wanted to give you that context. That's how we're aligned within the office, so.

Career advisors work specifically with our faculty and staff on campus, based on career community.

Oh Kelly, I think you're muted.

Sorry about that everybody so I just saw that you couldn't see the slide. So what slide are you on? And I will advance you to that slide.

So right now I'm on career communities.

OK, there we go.

Alright.

OK, and one person said they could see it and then somebody said they can't. So I'm not sure.

OK, well we'll cross our fingers that is going to continue to work alright, so I'm going to advance to the next slide. If you cannot see that, please put that in the chat and I'll have Kelly pop in and and do that for me. So we are moving to a slide that says what is a flash turn ship. And I mentioned on one of the earlier slides the concept of connections experiences so flash turn ships is what it sounds like. So the concept of an.

Internship but of course we incorporate. You know Kent State and our flashes into that title. A flash turn ship is an early experience that students and we encourage students as early as their first semester to engage in. These can engage and interact with employers in those career communities that we talked about in multiple career communities. They can have a one day or two day or three days, sometimes a four day experience.

With an employer where they have the opportunity to learn all about that employer, and perhaps the multiple career communities that are represented within that one organization, it's a really great hands on opportunity, and I recommend it wholly for any student. Whether you have determined your your major and your career path, or you are exploring that, it's a fantastic way for you to also network rate and get some hands on experiences.

And so we offer flash turn ships across campus. We sometimes will have those listed in handshake. We're going to talk about a handshake in a few minutes as a place where you can see all the opportunities that we have provided for you. But a flash turn ship is also something that many students will create on their own using their network. So looking at your parents, your supportive networks, your neighbors, friends, family members and then connecting with.

Individuals in the field to do a flash turn ship, and it's really kind of like a blend of a mini internship as well as a job shadow. So thank you Kelly for advancing so flash turn ship is a job shadow program and it really allows you to.

Kind of take a peek at those career interests that you have. It allows you to really learn more about individuals, career path, their journeys. I mentioned that laws you to network so you can then connect with folks via LinkedIn after completing a flash tern ship, it's really a fantastic activity and it allows you to discover quite a lot about yourself as well as the particular field or career you're exploring and then to then connect that back.

And really help reaffirm those career goals.

You could go to the next one.

OK so I am on the on campus student employment slide and what I want to talk about here and share just quick personal feedback. But then also I want to talk through some of the reasons why students have found that on campus. Employment has really been connected to success so I always like to share a little bit about myself here.

Ask there, Kelly. Thank you. There are a lot of on campus opportunities and I'm going to share some numbers in just a few minutes. But I actually started at Kent State in the late 90s. I'm an alumni. Undergraduate degree is from Kent State and I started as an on campus student employee. And honestly, I do not know if I would be sitting here in front of you working in higher Ed if I had not had that experience. So there are so many different opportunities. Our office.

In career exploration and development, we hire paraprofessional students that are called career peers and they are really our brand across campus so there are voice there are name there are face. They will engage with students. They sometimes will help us support admissions events where they can kind of interact with perspective and incoming students. We have them outreach across campus in presentations. So we and we really develop our career peers we provide.

Professional development training exactly the same as we would for a full time staff members, so you know it's one of those positions on campus where student really will leave or career peer experience with a lot of leadership opportunities. And I fully believe that you know these are. These are the folks that can connect best with our students, right? I I could quite frankly be anybody attending currently. I could be your mom. I have an in 18 and a almost 21 year old that are both.

College students at this point, so we find a lot of success with our peers being able to connect, and so some of the benefits of working on campus that our peers will share with you and folks across the campus. Those that work in dining. That's one of our largest employers folks that work in REC services. That is, you know, another area that students often have an interest. There is a daycare center on campus. There are tech.

Positions there are positions in literally every area on the campus. Those that have an interest in public health or nursing could potentially work over in one of our health centers.

They are set to be competitive and wages, so something to explore anything from very entry level 2 positions that offer a higher wage based on some specific skill sets. So those that maybe have some technical skills as well as those who have had prior experience. A lot of flexible scheduling. So one of the perks of working on campus that I have always believed and experienced as a student myself is that school is the priority.

Your classes are priority, and on campus employers are never allowed to schedule you for a shift that would overlap with your classes, so that's kind of a built in safety and protection there which.

I have also worked in the fast food industry as a student in the 90s and that was not always the case. Sometimes I would be scheduled when I was supposed to be in the classroom, right? So then you have to have that conversation and it also allows students to again really lean into school being your priority. So on campus employers understand, you know if you need to take some time off to prepare for your midterm or your final. We work with our students continuously.

Because again, we realize that that is the priority. You know your academics come first, but we find so much support in folks being able to work on campus and connect with campus. So when we think about the value, like what that does for student, we have found some fabulous statistics that I'm going to share with you in just a few minutes if you can.

I'm going to go ahead and advance the next slide. If not, Kelly will ask you to get it. If it doesn't show up, but I just wanted to share here. Overall when we talk about recruiting flashes, we have anything from on campus employment to internships, to co-ops to full time part time positions. So we have some statistics. Some information on here, you know utilizing and we will talk about handshake. Handshake is our platform that is a recruiting tool.

That's what we use. Anybody that has Kent email access to flash line can get into handshake and interface with it as well. And that is where we're going to point for all of those opportunities, including student employment positions. And so you can see here in the 1920 academic year we had 99,000 plus opportunities that were posted to Kent State University through our handshake platform, so that's not solely just student employment.

Although that number is quite large, I think I have a slide here, but that varies anywhere from like 6 to 8000 positions on campus. Some of those you know students may have multiple roles. Meeting a student might work five hours in one position and 10 hours and another and so that one student is, you know, two positions on campus, but it is a large number and it's a fabulous opportunity. On here. You can also see a list of some of the employers that.

Through handshake that our students and alumni have engaged with, and so these might be employers that have attended one of our career fairs. Our larger career fairs are currently happening and those are in both the fall in the spring we just had our spring fair. Just wrap that up a couple weeks ago and those are employers from all industry areas so all career communities, all industry areas, and then we do a lot of smaller events as well so.

An advisor that is connected with a particular career community will work with faculty and staff across campus in the various colleges and come up with some specific career fairs, and I'll share. Just for example, I work specifically with our hospitality and event management students. I am part of the hospitality and tourism career community, and so one of the events that I will be partnering with is with our hospitality and event management faculty, and we have a career fair.

That will happen be happening next week for students in person, so we have a nice mix of both virtual and in person opportunities that students can engage in.

We can't go to the next slide. OK, so here is where we see some statistics that I wanted to share. So if we take a look here.

And I want to talk about this this concept of social capital and networking. And so you know, I'll share a little bit. I always feel like it's it's helpful for you all to have an idea of who you're listening to and who I am. So I was a first generation college student and came to Kent State as a transfer student. I started at a Community College and so Kent was very eye opening for me as a, you know, young woman in her early 20s and an individual that really.

Did not have, I think a good support system or a large understanding of what the college experience was like. I also felt for many years that I had a very limited network. Now, knowing what I know now and being in career, I will look back and say I actually had a larger network and support than I realized, right? So when I work with students you know I will ask them the question. Like who do you know when they're trying to do an informational interview or flash tern ship with somebody and often the.

The answer I get is, well, I don't know anybody. My parents, you know my support network. My neighbors. We don't know anybody either. Sometimes that's true, but often it's not. And so you know we have this conversation about really digging in for with your networking, thinking about the tools that you use, platforms you know. If you're using anything like Twitter or LinkedIn and seeing you know who your parents, who your friends, who your family are connected to.

You to start making some of those bigger networking connections and we can help you. We can come up with creative ways to really help increase that social capital and so it's really important for us when we meet with students in a career advising appointment or at a tabling across campus, whatever it might be is to get a sense of you, know how well supported they feel and who they might refer to as their supports within their network. And again, I help them unpack.

Where are those opportunities that you know we can really dig in, and so if you look here, we saw students that completed a flash turn ship on average, make about 10 new connections and I know that sounds like 10 like if you think about individuals that are connected in, you know social media like LinkedIn where they might have hundreds or thousands of connections. But for a new student that's pretty large. To say that one experience led to an average of 10 new career connections.

And that's versus those students that did not complete a flash turn ship. And again, those are early experiences, so we really encourage those in that freshman beginning of sophomore year. So that was a 300% increase in connections for social capital and networking. When we look at that second piece, I did mention this a little bit, so student, we found a 9% increase in retention for students who work on campus. We retain them at a higher rate.

You know, have a connection to campus. You know? I'll share. When I was a student on campus and began my student employment experience, it was the best way for me to connect because not only did I come in as a transfer student, but I came in as an almost 21 year old that was living off campus. So my on campus experience really helped me find my people. And again, I mentioned it helped me find my calling it. It helped show me who and what I wanted to be and open my eyes to a whole career.

Area that I didn't even realize was a possibility, and so I can't say enough about. You know the value. Often I'll get questions about student employment, such as you know.

Do students struggle with keeping up? You know, should we wait until our second semester to really get a feel for what that balance is like? And I I do have to say that my answer is, you know, you always have to trust your instinct and I I will always look to students to know best what they can balance. But I will share, you know, many opportunities are you know two hours, 5 hours, 10 hours, you know 15 is kind of that sweet spot. Our career pairs that we hire. I think the average between.

8 and 10 hours, some in senior career period positions will will engage in some some higher level hours like 15 to 20, and that's simply because they can and they want to. So I encourage you, you know, check out, even if you're uncertain, see what opportunities are in there. Because we're really flexible. And again, it's a super. The commute is easy and it's a super impactful experience. If you can have some on campus employment to include in your resume.

And then if we look at that last 265% increase so students that.

Engage with our office through you know appointments through drop Inns.

Engage in handshake. We've availed and we have an estimate here about $99 million in potential earnings through off campus employment. So, you know, that's the internships co-ops full-time part. Time that we might share with folks. And then this other number that's listed here. You know, $37 million by a student employment that is a large number when you think about one operation, so you know, students have the opportunity.

Now I do often get questions about work study and some of you may be familiar with that terminology. Student employment experiences can be work study funded, or they can be university funded. And again, I use our office because we hire peers. I'm very proud to say that was a program that I had created through my time. Here I've been with our office going on my 11th year now and our career program is so vital to what we do.

We couldn't be here and we couldn't do the things we do without their support and we.

Really love to engage with students in that way and so I fully encourage that I see some questions coming in here so you do not have to wait until you're on campus to find a job. You are more than welcome to. Once you have, you just need to have that Kent credential that Kent email to get in to handshake. But once you are with a Kent State email you can get into handshake. You can log in, you can take a look. I tell students you know. Check it out.

Often they are looking at that before they're even scheduling their classes, and that's absolutely OK. Obviously you need to have a schedule in place to know you know what your flexibility and what your hours will look like for the fall semester, but you definitely want to take a look at that as soon as you have access. And yes, so opportunities flash turn ships are opportunities that are not always offered through handshake. We often will help students create those by looking at our contacts in handshake.

But every once in awhile we'll get a department or program that might want to do a flash turn, ship incentive, and so if those are available, they will be listed in handshake. It'll be listed as a flash turn ship in the title of the opportunity.

Alright, so just to give you some information about internships award awards, so we also provide more than $250,000 in support to 242 students over the last few years and so just to break that down and give you some demographics on that. 42% of them were first generation students, 26% of them were under representative, and 47% of them were Pell eligible, so those numbers.

Depending on you know how much you know about financial aid and whether you have dipped your toe in that pool or not. They may make sense to you, but and our average award is $940 per student and they're eligible to get an unpaid internship award one time per semester, and so we we do. We will reach out to individuals that are registered for an internship course through the university too.

And also to faculty and staff to make sure that they are aware of this opportunity. And because many students are in internships where I would certainly encourage an employer to pay their intern for their work and we are trying to move towards that. That is the feedback and advice that we share with employers. But certainly if they cannot do that. This is a great opportunity for students to kind of offset that cost.

So just kind of highlight here I talked about handshake, handshake is great for looking for opportunities but also if you're interested in talking with your peers and so if you're in handshake and you create a profile and you connect to the community settings, if there's a privacy setting so it'll default to keep your profile private. But if you connect to the community settings you can actually send some messaging with peers at Kent State University to learn more about maybe an internship that they had.

Their major. It's a really great way to get some additional support, and then we also offer what we call future focus Fridays and so in the fall in the spring we offer these every Friday aside from breaks or days when the university might be closed, and then we offer them about once or twice a month in the summer. And so there are a variety of topics. Anything from you know how to use handshake to how to build a resume to networking, LinkedIn interviewing.

We had a first Gen initiative at one point, so lots of great conversations that you know we can share, so I'm going to highlight just a couple of visuals here as we're getting right to the end. We have a tool called focus 2 which is available on our website. You do not have to have a Kent State email to utilize this tool, so if you I think at one point Kelly put our email and our web page on in the chat. If not, I'll include those at the end, but you can take a look you can get to focus to a couple different ways.

One way is to click under career major exploration and you can see focus 2 listed as a tool. It's a great way to do a little bit of self assessment and connect to the majors here on campus. This is another tool also available for free on our website called what can I do with this major?

So let me go ahead and ask what questions do you all have for us and on this slide here there is some information on how to connect with us.

Can you hear me?

Sure can.

OK.

Sorry, I apologize. It's been awhile since I've used this, but there were a couple questions and we have about 3 minutes and a couple of them. I was able to answer Jody, but like one question was UM. What's an example of a flash internship for an architecture student and are there? Would there be campus jobs that they can get experience in or is there networking they can do for that major?

People.

Can do.

Sure, so I don't have an exact name of because I don't work specifically with architecture students. But if you, the individual that had that question, if you want to put some contact information, or Kelly if there's a way for us to get a name and an email for who asked that question. What I'd like to do is connect them directly to the career advisor.

Wonderful.

That works with our architecture, building construction management students and alumni, and we can get some more information so the flash turn ship. Really it would be called a flash tern ship. The name would be the company or organization that they do. The flash turn ship with and we have a list of folks that will pull from either the faculty over in that college or through handshake as well.

Sure.

Thank you.

Awesome, there is another question that I could not answer. I was able to answer the fashion one because I've worked with fashion students in the past, but we had one about. If you're interested in working with animals on campus, do we have anything in animal care at our campus?

Animal care, so this is going to be probably going to fall under my folks in medical health and Wellness. We also have a wildlife energy and natural resources career advisor and we have appear in that area.

From my understanding, I think at one point we would have like research type of opportunities and that would mean like.

The quality care of of animals and I know this can be controversial, but you know, that might be one of the labs on campus. That might be one of the opportunities, but I don't know for sure right in this moment. Again, if I can get a name for that person and an email, I can connect them specifically with our peer and our advisor, so that way they can share a little bit more context.

Wonderful and I do look like I have. It looks like one final question and that's from Will who says are there many jobs available that allow students to film and edit stuff on campus or other media related jobs?

Absolutely yeah, so. I mean we have TV. Two, we have lots of resources through our College of Communications and information. So you know sometimes faculty and what's nice is we get a lot of alumni, well that will connect and this I know a little bit about because I'm stepping in for our our advisor in that area currently. But we get employers that will alumni that will come in and have opportunities like they're filming XYZ.

They need a student intern and then we post that through handshake so those are all still go through handshake but lots and lots of opportunities.

Awesome, well that is it everybody. Thank you so much for participating and we will see you soon. Have a great night Jody. Thank you so much. Take care everybody.

Bye.

Yeah, thank you. Have a great evening. Take care bye.