by JESS QUINN, Staff Writer
The Center for Career Development is a resource available for all students. Students can go to the center for advice on internships, job interviews or how to dress professionally. The center provides workshops for students, constructs panels for possible employers, and manages the career fairs.
“It’s easy to say, you’re interested in petroleum. Well Exxon-Mobil comes to campus these times every year” Meghan Makarczuk, the Assistant Director of Career Development and the Career Counselor for the School of Engineering and School of Science, said. “Or you want to do manufacturing, we have a recent alum here. So, yes we do have a lot of those connections,” she said.
“With engineering and science I have more specializations, with students telling me what they want to focus on,” Makarczuk said. It is up to students to seek out advisors from the center and explain to them what types of internships and opportunities that they are looking for. This way the center can help the students by placing them into fields that entice them. Makarczuk explains, “The more opportunities that become available the easier it is for a student to create a tunnel vision aspect.”
When it comes to trying to obtain an internships, many students often find themselves anxious with interviewing for these positions and what to wear when going into these interviews. The Career Development staff is there to help students with preparing for these interviews and provide assistance with calming these pre-interview nerves.
“We incorporate how to dress in the job search and we incorporate how to dress in our career fair prep workshop” Associate Director for Center for Career Development and Internship Coordinator, Sharon D’Amelia, said. “When I work individually with students I talk to students about how to dress. We also have a suit up closet where students are actually coming in here to borrow a suit, so we do help students with preparing them for interviews.”
The Center for Career Development helps all majors in finding internships. “We encourage liberal arts students to come use all of our resources, come to the workshops. A lot of the employers in the fields of communications, journalism, broadcasting don’t necessarily go to career fairs so often times we hear students in liberal arts saying that there’s no companies at these career fairs for me.” D’Amelia said. “The reason is that they don’t go to career fairs, they recruit differently so an engineering firm may go to a career fair and interview a bunch of students for summer internships. A PR or communications firm may post jobs with the career development office.”
“L’Oréal was at our STEM fair this fall and the woman in charge was human resources, not an engineer” Makarczuk said. The STEM career fairs help all kinds of students in networking and job searching, even if the fair may be centered on one specific school.
The Center for Career Development is provided by Manhattan College as a resource for students to learn, network, and communicate. The Center helps encourage students to seek out internships that appeal to their specific interests, making it useful to all.