Utilizing Campus Resources

Every year the Ohio State University College of Engineering hosts a Career Expo/Fair for the students to connect to employers and create networks. I knew that I wanted to attend and start growing my network, but I was incredibly unprepared. While I’ve held multiple jobs and have gone through application processes, I have never attended a career fair and had no idea what to expect. I didn’t even have a current resume and had little experience with creating a quality resume. This is where I remembered a lecture from my survey class into the many career services that are offered by the university. The Arts and Sciences Center for Career Success offers many different ways to help with writing a resume including an extensive general guide, template, as well as a guide specifically for freshmen. These were very valuable in creating my first draft of my resume. But the Center for Career Success did not only offer guides, they will also review your resume for free by simply walking into their office during the appropriate hours. I was able to walk into Denny Hall and see a Peer Carrer Coach to get my resume reviewed. She first read my resume and quickly made some formatting corrections and told me to change some grammar. This was very helpful by itself, but then she talked to me about my past and goals for the future. I read over my resume to her and told her some of the details of each section. I later told her about what I was using the resume for and what type of internships I was looking for. This is when she told me where I should add more detail and information about certain topics, and where to remove some. She was able to tailor my resume to the Career Fair and the employers there. Those corrections were incredibly valuable in creating a resume that is relevant to the employers. In addition, going over my resume piece by piece with her gave me some experience with quickly explaining the content on my resume and allowed her to give me more pointers on how to highlight content better. I became much more confident with the looming career fair both in having a quality resume to show employers and in my ability to communicate what I can offer. When walking into the Carrer Expo at the Union, I was still incredibly nervous talking to employers, but I could not imagine how bad my nerves would be without the help from the Center for Career Services. I am pretty happy with how the expo turned out, especially as a freshman. I landed an interview with a company and gained even more experience with my first technical interview. I have now realized what I need to work on and what skills to develop in the future. This would not be possible without the Engineering Career Expo and everything that they offered to connect me with employers and have actual experience with the process of interviewing and getting jobs in the real world.

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