Fanshawe College (Kate Otterbein / XFM News)
When it comes to graduating, it can be one of the best moments of your life. Walking across the stage, diploma in hand, and celebrating with the people you spent years with alongside working together. But sometimes, some students still don’t know what the plan is for themselves and have to try and figure out what to do after graduating post-secondary.
Darlene O’Neill is the Director of Employment and Student Entrepreneurial Services at Fanshawe College in the Career Services department. Darlene knows that it can be hard to maneuver school and everything students need to know when it comes to looking for a job.
“We’re here to support students to build the strongest toolkit they can absolutely build to be successful in their job search. We offer workshops, we offer software programs where they can practice interviews. We can do mock interviews with students, we can help them through a Zoom interview to figure out how to maneuver that. We prepare them for searching on our job site, we prepare them for resumes, cover letters, everything they absolutely need to be successful in that job search.”
Darlene knows that the services that she provides with her department can and have helped students prepare for looking for a job.
When looking for a job, it can be tough in today’s job market to land an opportunity with so many different schools having their students fighting for the same jobs.
“Yeah, so we have a job site at career services. And we post 1000s of jobs every year and those are jobs posted specifically on Fanshawe as job site by employers that want to hire Fanshawe graduates. So, yes, the documentation of your diploma your degree your certificate is really important”
Darlene says that through the job site on Fanshawe’s website, students can find job opportunities that directly link them to employers who are looking for Fanshawe graduates.
With time comes experience, but some students don’t have the experience needed that a college environment. With a mentor and tips for navigating the start of student’s future, Darlene gives a few pieces of advice for all kinds of students.
“I’ll give three. The first one is, this is for future students. My advice is visit Career Services on your first day of college, because if you build a relationship with us, you’re going to be really prepared when you graduate. For graduating students, we’re available for you even after graduation. So I think that’s something that students don’t realize, and we want you to know that, once a Fanshawe graduate, you’re always a Fanshawe graduate. The second piece of advice is, don’t give up, build your network. You know, get that LinkedIn profile going, and find a mentor. Search through information interviews, I think that those are the best way to search for a job. Most of the jobs in the job market are hidden. And so find out people who work in the industry that you’re interested in and interview them and ask them about the industry and how they got started. People love to talk about what they do. So don’t be shy. Ask for help, and do those information interviews.”
With these pieces of advice, Darlene hopes to set future and current graduates of Fanshawe on the path to success.
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