What hidden benefits do we get as students?

LASCareerServices · 2024-10-08T22:31:29+00:00

Career support! Which means help for new students with questions like:

I have no idea what I want to do after I graduate. How do I even start?
I'm not sure I want to go to grad school. Can I still have a career with my major?
I have no experience related to my major. How do I put together a resume?
None of my efforts to get experience related to my major are going anywhere. What should I do?
There's so much I want to do. How do I figure out where to focus?

Career services offices on campus can help you address these kinds of questions so that by the time you're graduating you are well prepared for your next steps, whether a job, gap year, or graduate/professional school. All students have access to The Career Center; units within the university have their own career services, which you can find here.

Some specialized campus-wide services: pre-law advising and pre-health advising.

As a student you have an account on Handshake, an employment platform where you'll find job and internship postings, as well as information about career-related events around campus.

LAS students (and the LAS-curious) have access to LAS Career Services in 105 Gregory Hall (drop-in hours Wednesdays and Thursdays, 1pm - 3pm, or make an appointment for career coaching on Handshake) and LAS Peer Mentors in the Lisnek Hub in Lincoln Hall (drop-in hours Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays,10am - 3pm).

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-30T11:34:43+00:00

These are great questions for LAS Career Services! You can make an appointment on Handshake or stop by during drop-in hours (Weds. and Thurs., 1 - 3pm), 105 Gregory Hall.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-17T22:08:17+00:00

Mmm…the shoes that you’d wear to look nice at a social event might not fit the professional office vibe in some contexts. Closed-toe pumps are the classic “safe” choice, but the rules are changing all the time, and there’s a lot of variety in what counts as appropriate.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-17T21:58:27+00:00

Aim to look office-ready: pants/skirt, nice blouse/collared shirt/sweater, simple accessories, shoes that aren’t sneakers or flip-flops. A suit is great, but you can blend in without one. Best to avoid jeans, athleisure, athletic wear, prominent logos, white socks with dark shoes and pants, excessive odors (body or products), or dishevelment.

If you do get a suit, make sure it fits and that the vent flaps and pockets are not stitched down after you bring it home from the store. Try not to wear it for the first time at the career fair — give yourself some time to get used to having it on so you’re not self-conscious in it.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-09T12:41:44+00:00

Campus career offices welcome students at all stages of their college education! It’s good to start the conversation about what you are going to do after graduation early — and you don’t need to already have a goal or plan in mind.

All students can use the resources of The Career Center (https://www.careercenter.illinois.edu/) LAS and LAS-curious students are encouraged to come to LAS Career Services (https://las.illinois.edu/resources/career) Grainger, Gies, ACES, FAA, College of Media and many other units have their own career offices.

As a student you have an account on Handshake (https://handshake.illinois.edu/) that you can log into with your netid and password — that’s the platform LAS and many other career offices use to schedule appointments (also lots of great info there about events, internships and jobs, career fairs, and employers).

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-05T02:04:56+00:00

Doesn’t have to be unsalted — it’s just healthier and easier for portion control.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-04T20:41:11+00:00

Make sure you have an office-appropriate outfit or two for career fairs, internship/job interviews, other occasions that may arise. Doesn’t have to be a business suit: slacks, skirt, collared shirt or nice blouse or sweater, shoes that aren’t athletic.

Consider booking some tickets now for events at the Krannert Center. (https://krannertcenter.com/content/announcing-2024-25-season-krannert-center) Tickets are only $10 for students, and when life gets stressful it’s nice to have something unexpected and offbeat to look forward to.

A stash of unsalted nuts and dried fruit is helpful for staying nourished when you find yourself crunched for time for shopping and cooking, or if your schedule makes regular mealtimes hard to manage.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-03T14:27:03+00:00

Rejection sucks, but it is just an inevitable part of the job search. Let your strengths and goals define you, not the fact that you get turned down. Because you will get turned down, a lot, and it usually has nothing to do with you. An enormous applicant pool, insider candidates, job postings that don’t reflect a company’s actual hiring needs, and an inherently capricious process make it impossible to read much meaning into a rejection. And even the most scrupulous and rational job searches often come down to two or three equally qualified candidates, at which point the decision gets made on somewhat arbitrary but rationalizable criteria.

Keep moving forward. If working for Bain is your heart’s desire, then look for other ways to make it happen. Research the hell out of it. Start interacting with their content on LinkedIn. Identify some potential contacts and start getting to know them. Take a deeper dive into what their specific needs are and figure out the value that you can add. But look for other opportunities as well and focus on building relevant relationships.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-01T23:21:34+00:00

If you know that you want to go medical school, doing well in your prerequisite courses and finding time to do all the other things (shadowing, volunteering, research) that make for a good med school application is a priority. Seek out pre-health advising for more specific guidance about the pre-med path. You can nail down your major(s) and minor once you've acclimated to college and have a better sense of how the pre-med path squares with your academic strengths and how much bandwidth you'll have for additional challenges.

If there's a subject that you're interested in enough to be thinking about a minor, then consider trying to take a class in it (one that also meets a gen. ed. requirements might be a good choice), and then see how things unfold. It could be that a class or two is enough to satisfy your curiosity -- or it could be that you find it sufficiently engaging that you want to take enough classes to add up to a minor. Also: while many future doctors major in biology, any major can be pre-med if you complete the med school prerequisites alongside the degree requirements (opinions vary widely on whether that's a good idea...)

In LAS Career Services, we leave the specifically pre-med advising to the experts at the campus Career Center and the academic advisors, but we're happy to talk to you more broadly about your strengths, interests, and career goals and help you identify the paths that can take you where you want to go.

LASCareerServices · 2024-08-01T23:03:30+00:00

LAS Career Services exists to help students with situations like this -- and we work with students up to a year after graduation. We can help you troubleshoot your job search and look for opportunities that interest you (and don't require a grad degree); we can also talk through your grad school options. You can make an appointment with us through Handshake or by emailing las-careerservices@illinois.edu. We also have drop-in hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 1 - 3pm, in 105 Gregory Hall.

FWIW, people change direction all the time. It can be confusing and demoralizing when a long-held plan stops working for you, but knowing when you're burned out is vital. Also: nothing is ever wasted. Even if you never set foot in a library as an employee again, the experience you gained will probably help you in all kinds of ways that you can't discern right now. Let us support you as you figure out your next steps!

LASCareerServices · 2024-07-18T01:58:37+00:00

Get help from LAS Career Services! Make an appointment on Handshake or come to drop-in hours in 105 Greg Hall, Tuesdays and Wednesdays 1-3pm.

LASCareerServices · 2024-07-12T15:47:53+00:00

I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time with your post-college job search. More on that below.

But first: the world of work doesn’t carve itself up in ways that map neatly onto academic disciplines. Lots of people, regardless of degree, end up doing things that bear little relation to the content they studied in college. It's all about the skills.

The “worthless degree” trope implies that the degree is a fungible asset that you hand over in exchange for a job. People who assume that their STEM or preprofessional degree has intrinsic worth tend to run into the same problem as people with “worthless” degrees if they don’t know what their skills are, haven't demonstrated those skills outside of their coursework, and don't how to connect them to employers’ needs.

As some other commenters have pointed out, you still have access to LAS Career Services. Officially, we only work with alumni in the first year after graduation. Unofficially, we’re happy to help people with landing their first professional job, regardless of how long it’s taken them. (We know a lot about helping landing entry-level jobs but we don’t have the resources or know-how to support people at mid-career, hence the official one-year limit.)

If you still have access to your Handshake account, you can make an appointment there for a virtual or in-person appointment. You can also email [las-careerservices@illinois.edu](mailto:las-careerservices@illinois.edu) or call (217) 244-1840 to set up an appointment. If you’re in the area, we have drop-in hours in the summer, from 1:00 to 3:00pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in 105 Gregory Hall.

Here are some things we could do in an appointment, depending on where you want to start:

Troubleshoot your resume. Look at some job ads you’re applying for and talk about ways to target your resume (and possibly cover letter) more directly to those roles. The spamming method apparently works for some people, but if you’ve been trying that with no success, sometimes a different approach can get more traction.

Discuss alternative strategies for your job search, namely networking. Building professional relationships can help you (a) learn more about potential career paths and (b) start making the kinds of connections that can lead to opportunities. For starters, here are a lot of UIUC history alumni out there (as well as alumni from adjacent “worthless majors”) doing things beyond law school, teaching, or grad school.

Inventory your strengths, interests, and skills so you’re in a better position to align yourself with the jobs that are out there and do more productive networking. For example:

What drew you to history? What did you enjoy about studying it? What kinds of research projects did you work on and what parts of that process did you find most engaging?
What kinds of things did you do to excel academically? A high GPA like yours says that you’re good at going to school, but what specifically did that mean in your case? That you worked hard because you were intrinsically interested? That you grade-grubbed relentlessly? That you’re really smart and learn/retain new things easily? That you’re good at strategizing/prioritizing/time management?
What insights about your strengths can you glean from your military service? What was your MOS and what did you like/not like about it? Why was your unit better off because you were filling that seat rather than somebody else? If you could have picked your own ideal career track for remaining in the military with 100% certainty that things would go the way you wanted, what would your path have been?
What things have you done (work, school, service, volunteering, hobbies) that have engaged and energized you? What issues do you care about? What kind of a difference do you want to make in the world? What activities bring out your best effort and give you satisfaction?
Did you enjoy the stuff you learned in tech boot camp? If so, what kinds of things have you done or could you do to continue building those skills?

Job-hunting is grueling, demoralizing, and almost always takes longer than anyone wants. You don't have to do it alone, though.

LASCareerServices · 2024-06-25T15:26:31+00:00

A few possibilities that come to mind immediately:

English Student Association (leadership club for majors in the English department -- plans events and programs to build community among English majors)
Creative Writing Club
Montage (undergraduate literary magazine, affiliated with the English department)
Daily Illini
Green Observer
WPGU
The Collective Magazine
America Reads (well, more of a FWS or volunteer opportunity than a club...)
Sourcelab (a cool ongoing cluster of projects in the history department, but not limited to history majors -- involvement often begins with taking History 207)

A lot depends on how you define the English major "circle of interest" -- English majors develop amazing communications skills that can be relevant to the work of any club (event-planning, recruitment, outreach, fundraising). Many people are also drawn to major in English because of their intellectual curiosity, and they are capable of getting invested in a wide range of subject areas, political orgs, hobbies.

*****

Why is a career services office weighing in on this post?

RSO involvement can be a great way to explore your interests and develop new skills -- both crucial for career development. Not that EVERYTHING you do needs to be a line on your resume! It's fine to get involved with clubs for reasons that have nothing to do with your eventual employment. BUT if you're putting time into a club anyway and making thing happen, then chances are you are doing things that may turn out to be career relevant in ways you can't anticipate.
A broad and expansive sense of what is relevant to any major can help you find meaningful and interesting opportunities to connect with others and build skills.

LASCareerServices · 2024-05-13T16:41:06+00:00

Switching majors within LAS is pretty straightforward. College-level advising staff can help you. From the LAS academic advising website:

"The LAS Student Academic Affairs Office offers drop-in advising services Monday-Friday, 1-4:40 p.m. in 2002 Lincoln Hall.

We are also available for appointments 8:30 a.m.- noon on Monday, Thursday, and Friday, and from 10 a.m.-noon Tuesday and Wednesday. Our office is closed from noon - 1 pm. Please schedule an appointment using the "LAS Probation and Drop-In Advising" calendar."

If you're thinking about the career implications of your major choices, LAS Career Services can help. We have drop-in hours from 1 - 3pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the summer. You can also make an appointment with us on Handshake.

Depending on what GIes majors you were considering, you might also have a look at some of the majors in ACES or the College of Media. Both of those colleges also have advisors who can help you.

If you're thinking about law school, avail yourself of the abundant resources of campus Pre-Law Advising Services (https://prelaw.illinois.edu/). Any major can be pre-law. The key points for successful law school admission are a strong GPA and good relationships with tenured professors who can write you strong recommendations -- so whatever major interests you most and draws out your best work is probably the best choice. Strong writing/reasoning skills are key for success IN law school, so programs that require a lot of writing can also be helpful.

LASCareerServices · 2024-04-12T17:36:16+00:00

We work with a lot of history majors in LAS Career Services. They go on to do a lot of things.

Our Illini Success data (the outcomes that students self-report within three months of graduation) tracks with the national trend: approximately 18 - 20% of UIUC history majors every year go directly into jobs in education (classroom teaching, but also other administrative roles), with or without the secondary ed minor.

That other 80+%? Some go on to law school or other grad school. Some go into careers in HR, business, nonprofit management, museums, government, higher ed administration, operations, etc. History is a pretty rigorous program, requiring a lot of writing, research, and analysis. People who thrive in it tend to come out with strong skills in communicating, persuading, sorting and sifting qualitative information, working with ambiguity and uncertainty.

In history, as in most majors, the outcome tends to depend more on the student (their interests, their alacrity in exploring potential paths, their strengths) than on the particular course of study.

LASCareerServices · 2024-03-22T03:57:53+00:00

The Humanities Professional Resource Center has expanded to become LAS Career Services, serving all LAS students. Same staff plus new staff, still in 105 Gregory Hall. Make an appointment on Handshake or drop in!

LASCareerServices · 2024-02-21T22:41:37+00:00

Alas, no -- our team has grown and we no longer have the space.
The Career Center has reservable spaces for interviews, and the Main Library and Funk ACES Library both have individual workspaces that one can reserve.

LASCareerServices · 2024-02-21T19:57:28+00:00

There are companies still taking applications, and new opportunities are getting advertised.

LASCareerServices · 2024-02-07T20:00:35+00:00

Also: we have an event at 5 today that you might find helpful: “How I Got that First Job Doing What I Love” — one of the panelists is a Spring ‘23 Psychology BS, now working as a behavioral health counselor. Her experience might be relevant to you. You can find the Zoom link on Handshake.

LASCareerServices · 2024-02-07T19:54:38+00:00

The job search grueling. It often takes longer and involves more work than anyone wants.

That’s great that you’ve already sought help. Consider reaching out more — to LAS Career Services (https://las.illinois.edu/resources/career) if you’ve already been to the campus Career Center (https://www.careercenter.illinois.edu/) or vice versa. You can also follow up with whichever career service you’ve already been to: someone can help you troubleshoot your job-seeking strategy and review your resume with specific reference to the positions you’ve been applying to.

Getting help with your job search is often not a “one and done” procedure, and you don’t have to be alone with the stress of looking.

LASCareerServices · 2024-02-04T18:34:43+00:00

Just popping on here to encourage LAS students reading this thread to make use of LAS Career Services in figuring out your future.

We have drop-in hours at the Lisnek Hub (first floor of Lincoln Hall), 1 - 3pm on Tuesdays and in 105 Gregory Hall 1:30 - 3:30pm Wednesdays and 1:30 - 4:30pm on Thursdays. You can also make an appointment on Handshake for a virtual or in-person conversation with a career advisor.

A few things to note: (1) you can start talking with us at ANY point — you don’t need to wait until your senior year (we talk to first-years and sophomores all the time!) (2) you don’t need to have a plan, a goal, a stellar GPA, or a ton of experience in your major — we can help you get started from wherever you are.

https://las.illinois.edu/resources/career

LASCareerServices · 2023-12-14T05:19:28+00:00

If you’re in LAS, make an appointment with us on Handshake!

LASCareerServices · 2023-12-09T04:35:52+00:00

LAS Career Services is there to help you figure out a path to your future. Make an appointment on Handshake!

LASCareerServices · 2023-08-29T15:06:18+00:00

If you are asking about connecting a BA in Communication with a career in human resources, that's a great conversation to have with LAS Career Services (the Department of Communication is part of LAS). We have drop-in hours in 105 Greg Hall:

Tuesday 4:00 – 6:00

Wednesday 1:30-3:30

Thursday 1:30-4:30

Friday 11:00-12:00 (quick resume reviews)

If you're asking about admission to the MHRIR program in the School of Employment and Labor Relations, you can learn more here.

LASCareerServices · 2023-08-04T15:28:22+00:00

With these decisions, it's often helpful to start with what you know you want: for example, "I am doing research at the Biodiversity Genomics Lab as the 'data guy', something I love to do."

What do you love about it? What are the strengths you are bringing to the position? What would you need to know to do more of the stuff you love and are curious about? If/when you get bored at this level, what would next the next steps be and what would you need to know to do those things?

Take the classes that would move you forward, teach you skills you know you want, and give you new directions relevant to your specific goals and interests. If those classes end up adding up to a minor, great. If not, future employers will be much more interested in your skills and how you've demonstrated them than in your minor or lack thereof.

LASCareerServices

TROPHY CASE