Faculty

While creating your syllabi, you don’t need to cancel classes to work around your conference schedule. The Career Connections Center staff is excited to work with faculty and cover your class time with a career-related workshop. Possible topics include:

• “What can I do with a major in…”
• Applying to graduate school
• Internships
• Resumes
• Networking
• Job Search
• Cover Letters
• Interview Skills
• LinkedIn and Social Media

Customize a Class

The Career Connections Center can collaborate with you to co-teach or customize a class session. Examples of programs include:

• Online Tools and Career Resources for Specific Majors
• Museum Studies: How to Use Networking in Your Job Search
• Community Health: Making the Most of Your Internship in Community Health
• Political Science: Resumes and the Internship Search Process for Sophomores
• Career Center Synopsis: Ten-Minute Introduction of Services and Programs

When to Request a Career Program

We will do our best to meet all requests we receive within the following timelines:

• Customized Program: one month advance notice
• Pre-packaged workshop: two weeks notice
• Ten minute introduction: one week notice

Faculty Request for Career Program

To request a Career Program, please email cservices@clarku.edu with your contact information and some details about your class.

Encourage your students to reflect on their skills, interests, competencies, personality and values. We offer self-assessment tools, as well as information about competencies and career readiness (see below for more detail), including practical ways that students can strengthen workplace skills.

Suggest Career Connections Center resources. Tools like What Can I Do with This Major? and other sites listed on our Explore page can be used to research career options for a variety of majors. Students can also schedule 1-on-1 appointments with career advisors and visit our daily drop-in hours.

Debunk major and career myths. We believe that major does not determine or limit students’ career options. Unless a student is planning to enter a technical field, such as engineering or accounting, he/she can obtain the skills necessary to succeed through any of the 30+ majors offered at Clark. We encourage students to study what they enjoy, assess their values, interests, and personality, and explore careers related to what they have learned about themselves. We invite you to partner with us in encouraging this flexible career mindset.

Career readiness is more than a college degree or doing well in one’s major. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) defines career readiness as “the attainment and demonstration of requisite competencies that broadly prepare college graduates for a successful transition into the workplace.” In other words, soft skills matter.

Much has been written over the last few years about the fact that employers think students lack some of these important skills when they get to the workplace. NACE has identified eight competencies that students should be developing. The Career Connections Career Center works with students to help identify and build these competencies, so they are more fully prepared when they leave Clark.

As faculty, you introduce and foster these competencies with Clark students throughout their years. Consider helping students more intentionally focus on competencies by explicitly linking them to class sessions/assignment/projects.

Career-readiness competencies:

• Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
• Oral and Written Communication
• Civic Engagement (added by the Tufts Career Center based on additional research)
• Teamwork/Collaboration
• Digital Technology
• Global/Intercultural Fluency
• Leadership
• Professionalism/Work Ethic
• Career Management

Encourage students to join ClarkCONNECT. By joining this virtual Clark community, students can find alumni mentors and request informational interviews from individuals whose career paths interest them.

Remind students to attend networking events scheduled throughout the academic year. Students will find many networking opportunities, including Career Conversations, Industry Career Treks,, career fairs, Life After Clark Seminar and more on the Career Connections Center calendar.

Share personal networking stories with your students. Networking is a skill developed with practice over time. Even so, we all know that connecting with an alumna/us can be an intimidating process, especially for novices, and your success stories will help demystify the process for students.

The Career Connections Center offers numerous resources for finding jobs and internships, including tools just for Clark students, field-specific career sites, and much more. In addition, we meet with students in 1-on-1 appointments and drop-in hours to discuss resumes and cover letters, internship and job search strategies, and more.

Handshake is our online, mobile-friendly, recruiting platform that connects students and alumni to employers for jobs, internships and career events. Students can find postings for thousands of external jobs and internships, Clark on-campus student jobs, career resources, career events, fairs and announcements.

ClarkCONNECT is our virtual Clark community where student can not only make alumni connections, they can find internships and jobs posted by or on behalf of alumni.

Additional Job & Internship Resources

• Clark Destination Outcomes: See where students from your department go after graduation (including both employment and grad school data from recent grads)
• Suggest Career Connections Center resources on job & internship strategies that include how to guides and list of industry specific job boards. Students can also schedule 1-on-1 appointments with career advisors and visit our daily drop-in hours.
• Project, Internship and Research Funding: The Career Connections Center administers funds for 50-60 summer stipends for undergraduates who secured unpaid or low paying high impact opportunities.

A letter of recommendation is “expert testimony” to a student’s ability to perform a task: contributing to a team project, succeeding in graduate school, or learning from a particular experience (such as foreign study/travel). You need to be confident of the applicant’s ability to be able to write convincingly. You could put your professional credibility at risk if you consistently write letters for applicants who are not qualified. For detailed information about the letter writing process, including sample recommendations, view this document (PDF).

Recommendation Letters for Graduate School Applicants

For graduate school, letter writers use these phrases at the beginning or end of the letter to express their professional evaluation. Generally speaking, there are four levels of confidence as suggested by graduate school forms themselves:

• Strongly recommend – You are very confident in the applicant’s ability
• Recommend – You are confident in applicant’s ability
• Recommend with reservations – You are somewhat confident, but have specific areas of doubt (include an explanation)
• Do not recommend – You do not believe in applicant’s ability to succeed (include an explanation)

Tips for Successful Recommendation Letters

A letter of recommendation succeeds on the same merits as any form of persuasive writing: good vocabulary, solid essay structure, appropriate content, and relevant details.

• Vocabulary – use strong, vivid language in both nouns and verbs.
• Essay Structure – Structure the letter as a four-to-five-paragraph essay with a thesis.
• The first paragraph should state how long writer has known applicant, in what context, and general “thesis” statement regarding applicant’s abilities/suitability for position.
• The main body should provide two or three examples or qualities that inspire confidence (or lack of confidence) in the applicant’s skills or character.
• Conclude with an explicit level of recommendation (strongly/highly, recommend, recommend with reservations [must provide explanation], do not recommend [must provide explanation]).
• Appropriate Content – Avoid exaggeration or speculation outside of your knowledge base.
• Details – Include a few well-chosen examples of why you recommend this individual. The examples should be obviously within your sphere of knowledge.

Interfolio is an online credentials management service available to Clark students and alumni. It allows individuals to create and self-manage a portfolio of their credentials, including confidential and non-confidential letters of recommendation, writing samples and evaluations.

For more information go here.

If you are interested in holding an event for your students, the Career Connections Center can guide you toward a variety of options:

Guest speaker – invite a guest speaker to your classroom to speak on a specific topic, the Career Center

Alumni panel discussion – host a panel and the Career Connections Center can help you think through your plan, coordinate and advertise the event. Typical steps to planning a panel discussion:

• Determine the panel topic, related ClarkCONNECT community and format.
• Determine faculty and classes that will likely attend to ensure a bona fide audience and discussion.
• Set budget.
• Secure date, time, room, etc.
• Determine the appropriate number of panelists (we suggest securing 4-5 people to ensure 3-4).
• Determine the various perspectives on the topic you want represented on the panel.
• Solicit possible panelist names from other faculty members, students, advancement and the Career Connections Center.
• Send invitations to potential panelists well in advance of the event
• As alumni respond yes/no, determine who you’ll ask next to maintain a variety of perspectives on your panel
• Once panel is finalized, stay in touch with panelists. Write communication plan, including dates to send reminder emails
• Complete facilities requests and finalize logistical details.
• Write blurb for advertising. The Career Connections Center can publicize events in Handshake and through our social media channels.

Career Treks – the Career Connections Center is looking for faculty partners for Career Discovery Treks. These off-campus employer visits allow students to gain insight into a variety of career fields in one trip. Treks are interactive field trips where students meet with alumni, learn what skills are needed in various industries, expand their professional networks, and increase their awareness of career possibilities. Contact Angela Harris, Associate Director of Employer Engagement, to learn more.

Each year, the Career Connections Center is involved with a significant number of career related events including everything from career fairs to LinkedIn workshops. Visit our calendar for upcoming events, including opportunities you may want to suggest to your students. Some of our signature events are:

• Fall Career Fair, Spring Career Fair
• Life After Clark Conference
• Career Discovery Treks

How you can help your students?

• Announce Career Connections Center events in your classes and encourage all majors, all class years to attend relevant events.
• Help publicize events that are not an obvious match for your students, e.g., someone majoring in English can find a job in the life sciences industry.
• Offer extra credit for attending relevant events or make an assignment out of attending a Career Connections Center event once per semester.

How you can partner with the Career Connections Center for events and employer engagement?

• Suggest alumni for the events.
• Recommend companies to invite to career fairs and/or to post jobs and internships in Handshake and ClarkCONNECT.
• Bring a Career Connections Center staff member with you if you’re planning an employer site visit.
• Attend employer events to hear more about what is going on in industry or to find partners for your research.

The Career Connections Center works diligently for comprehensive outcomes data each year.

Help us track students

• We welcome your assistance in tracking first destinations for graduating seniors and internship data for current students. This information allows us to form strategic partnerships with sought-after employers as well as identify any employer engagement gaps.
• Better destination data also means that we’re able to engage in more productive career advising sessions with students who are eager to know where their peers have landed.

Interested to know where the students from your department are working or attending graduate school?

• Contact the Career Connections Center to learn more: cservices@clarku.edu.