Tag Archives: resume

The Secret to Standing Out

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When thinking back to your pre-college days, you probably remember college counselors explaining that the most successful college applications project a cohesive image of who you are as a person, not just as a student. In essence, the most successful college applications reveal your passion.

Applying to college and applying for jobs or internships isn’t as different as it may seem.

Both admissions officers and employers hope to accept or hire students with an enthusiasm for a subject that they hope to continue exploring. It is the most passionate people who have what it takes to change the world, or at least one small corner of it.

The message that you projected about yourself on your college application was successful enough to get you here. Now, you can use Scripps’ resources to continue developing your passion through clubs or even the classes you choose to take. When applying to jobs or internships remember the experiences you’ve had that excited you most and added to your growing passion(s).

When I applied for my summer job, I noticed that my soon-to-be manager had titled her notes for our interview not with my name, but with “The Feminist.” This was the identity that my resume had projected. And this was the identity that she was curious to learn about in the interview.

In our interview, my manager asked me about feminism right away. She was intrigued by my passion and my projects. She was excited to explain that the CEO of the company I was interviewing for was a woman. She elaborated and described how the company takes a lot of pride in being a company run by women and selling largely to female consumers.

Here at Scripps, my identity as a feminist is not as uniquely appreciated as it was in my high school or it was in my summer workplace. We are a community of intersectional feminists here at Scripps so it is my other passions, like writing, that are indicative of my identity in my communities here. Even within informal groups, like friendships, our passions can create our identities. When studying at the library, my friends will ask me questions relating to writing because they know I love to analyze literature. My identity has been formed by my passion for prose.

Applying to and becoming a CP&R blogger here at Scripps is a unique bullet point for my resume, as well as a small weekly commitment I enjoy. Together with my other commitments and scholarship related to English, being a CP&R blogger exemplifies my passion for writing. Perhaps at my next job interview, my employer will title their notes for me as “The Writer.”

So, whether you have one passion or five, nurture your interests inside and outside the classroom. You will be able to create a lasting impact on your interviewer and have an array of experiences to choose from when asked about your passion. After all, if a subject is truly your passion, cultivating it and investing in it should be an enjoyable way to develop your career. 🙂

Finding A Way That Works For You

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Today I wanted to talk to you about how my activities on campus coincide with my major: legal studies. Arriving at the conclusion that I want to be a Legal Studies major has been a violently turbulent road. No, it do not just come to me. I’ve changed my mind probably around five times in the past two year. My point in telling you about my process is to assure you that whatever process you’re going through right now in deciding your major is ok. You’re going to find that something you’re passionate about no matter how many non-starters you encounter. All the different jobs you take on, no matter how strayed from your chosen major, will only lead you closer to what to you really want to do. I think something crucial to keep in mind is that how hard you work at Scripps (or any of the 5Cs) is probably a pretty good indicator as to the kind of work ethic you will carry with you through the rest of your career life.  So with this said, stay eager and curious my friends because you can go anywhere you want if you are hungry enough for the work.

When I was accepted Early Decision to NYU, I was thrilled to be part of the Global Liberal Studies or ‘GLS’ program.  I chose NYU because of the chance to expand my knowledge both inside the classroom, and through the resources of a great city.  While simultaneously having the chance to explore the city, and my place within it, I wanted to experience more diversity, which I did not have at my small, private high school; I was eager for something different and more outside my comfort zone. However, when I got to NYU, I quickly recognized that the GLS program was just too narrow for me.  There were only four majors options, and the closest fit to my interests in human rights and education was a concentration in global literature. Although I had brilliant professors and nothing but incredible academic experiences, I was seeking a more interdisciplinary course of study so I applied and was accepted to the Gallatin School where I had the freedom to “design my own major.”

 At Gallatin, I chose to concentrate my energies on the political sciences, journalism, and education. After taking one education course my first semester at Gallatin, I quickly realized education was not going to be for me. Truthfully, it was my experience working at the Santa Cecilia Orchestra day camp that had made me want to try out education. I loved my experience working with kids, and really imaged at one point, that I could do that for the rest of my life.

A little tangent about the Santa Cecilia Orchestra because I am very enthusiastic about their work: The summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I had the privilege of receiving the MUI (multicultural undergraduate internships) grant through the Getty Foundation to work as a visual arts teacher to kids ranging from 5-12 for 10 weeks at the Santa Cecilia camp. My job as an intern was to run a summer camp for the arts with only two other “interns” of my age. I assisted with violin, singing, journaling and a general arts & crafts classes. Between 9-5:30, everyday, the kids were under my co-worker(s) and my supervision. The woman who awarded me the Getty grant, Sonia León de Vega, was an incredible boss. Not only was Sonia one of the first Latin American women conductors in Los Angeles, but she also had the honor of performing at the Hollywood Bowl, and in front of the pope. In addition to all of this, she also runs this wonderful summer arts camp now in Eagle Rock right by her orchestra.

My second term at Gallatin was definitely a learning curve. In addition to taking a course in human rights, I also took: a course called “Crime in the USA” based on Michelle Alexander’s novel The New Jim Crow, a creative writing class that reviewed Baldwin and Virginia Woolf, and journalism with acclaimed NY Times best seller James McBride. I realized that semester that as eloquently as McBride’s spoke about journalism, the rigid stylistic writing form was just not for me. In contrast, in my creative writing class,  I could write all I wanted about my political views and thoughts on the times without having to think about word count restrictions. My creativity was at an all time high the second semester of my sophomore year, and I was eager to ride it.  This lead me to applying again for the MUI Getty Internship this past summer. After sending resumes and a cover letter to almost 16 different arts organizations around LA, I heard back from about half that amount. The organization I ended up working at, P.S. Arts, was my first choice.  Within a week, I heard back from them with the news that I would be there “Education and Media” Getty intern.

During those ten weeks, I was required to think more creatively than I have for any other job.  Inspired and privileged to be around such a hard working group of coworkers, I was humbled to be interning at P.S ARTS. From being able to collaborate on upcoming projects, to site visits to see the kids perform, (after having worked with the P.S ARTS teaching artists all year) I felt as though I could not have had a more well rounded internship experience. My internship was spent mainly working on projects for the programs department, who are in charge of overseeing P.S ARTS special events. One of my favorite projects that I had the chance to work on was the ‘Student Parent to-go.’ A ‘to-go’ is an easy to follow art project designed for kids who want to make arts and crafts at home.  I created five arts projects, but not before testing them out first. All of the supplies had to be able to be found at home. So as you can imagine, creating these “to-go’s” was no easy feat. Although, I had an enormous amount of support from the staff to guide me. The process requires researching artists, coming up with a skills based 6 step art project that is inspired by an artist, whose artwork must be appropriate enough for all age ranges . I would then present the project to the P.S. ARTS staff to see if it could work it for a potential Family Art Night. On this night, kids and their parents would come to the after school event to work on an art project together while simultaneously learning about a new artist from one of out teaching artists. We typically tried to pick artists who were underrepresented in the art world.  If you are interested in getting involved in this amazing arts organization that runs after school art programs at underprivileged public schools all throughout California PLEASE don’t hesitate to contact me: taronson4560@scrippscollege I would be more than happy to talk to you more about experience with the Getty Foundation, P.S Arts, or whatever it is– you name it!

 

 

 

 

 

That pretty much sums up everything  I’ve done these past two years. So as you can see, my passion for human rights has not limited me from pursuing my curiosity and love of the arts. My time at the Getty foundation taught me skills I will take with me through the rest of my life. How to be a good employee, as well as an active member of the community.. I also thought I would mention that the media portion of my summer internship introduced me to programs like Adobe InDesign, Premiere– skills employers are always on the lookout for, especially if your interested in any multimedia field!

If you understood nothing else from this, I hope you take away the following: wherever your “process” takes you, ride it, and try not to think so hard about what’s coming next. Anyway, that’s all for now folks. Until next week!

Xx,

Theri

 

Networking Hacks: CP&R Resume Book

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This week, I thought I would take a little time to highlight one of CP&R’s resources that I have found helpful in the never-ending search for internships.  As I have said before, I think networking is valuable no matter what field you are going into.  Not only do personal connections give you a leg up in the application process, but you have the chance to make real, meaningful connections with professionals in your field.  It’s hard to put yourself out there to “network”, in whatever form that may take, but I have found that people are inherently kind and genuinely want to help.  Without further ado, here is one of my favorite weapons in my (not so secret) networking arsenal!

The CP&R Resume Book

Every year, Scripps Career Planning & Resources invites members of the current graduating class (and alumnae 1 year out) to submit their resume for an online resource called the Resume Book. It serves multiple purposes:

First, it is a publicly available document that allows recruiters to see the accomplishments of the graduating class and contact them about job opportunities.

Second, for first years, sophomores and juniors who may be stressed out looking for jobs/internships, it provides some wonderful ideas of internships that our amazing seniors have landed, formatting examples and a way to build a list of companies you might be interested in.

The Resume Book is organized by career interests, so all you need to do is look up professions you’re interested in and BOOM! you can see where past Scrippsies interned, what their activities they were involved in on campus, and get good examples of what a resume in your field might look like.  While I’m not saying that you need to follow someone’s exact career trajectory, it gives you a good idea of how their budding careers have evolved from student activities to professional experience.

When we think of networking, we usually think of contacting real, professional adults.  But your peers are also a invaluable resource.  For example, last year I was panicking about internships and began digging through the resume book.  I found, and reached out to, a then current senior who had interned at companies I was interested in.  When I emailed her, she warmly agreed to meet me at the Motley, we had a delightful conversation, and she then connected me to a company she had interned with.  Through a personal introduction, and subsequent calls with employees at the company, I landed an internship!  Because I have had such success with and find the resume book a valuable resource, I thought I would share this insider tip.

Resume Anxiety

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“How have you never made a resume before?”

I have been asked this somewhat brazen question numerous times by fellow peers.

I’ve been an after-school teaching assistant, a camp counselor, and a barista, but none of those applications required a formal resume. I went back to my dorm room later that night, consumed with a new sense of panic and humiliation. All my peers seemed to be talking about their fancy LinkedIn head-shot photos, and how they just nailed an interview with a prestigious tech firm, and here I was, without even a resume to my name.

I called my mom (which is what I tend to do in times of personal crisis) and explainedlaundry-1that I needed to make a resume—a seemingly simple task—in order to begin my summer internship search, yet I was overwhelmed and wasn’t sure where to begin. Do I use an online template? Do I format it based off my friend’s resume? Do I include experience from high school? I can sometimes be a perfectionist, so I didn’t want to start the resume until I knew I was doing it the right way. After professing my anxieties to my mom, she reassured me that she would be happy to help me over break. Coincidently, she had just been looking for a new job about a year ago, so resumes and interviews were fresh in her mind. In addition to offering her expertise, my mom also suggested I visit Scripps’ Career Planning and Resource Center

Heeding my mom’s advice, I made an appointment with CP&R. I marked the appointment on my calendar, eager to finally have an initial resume so I could begin applying for jobs and internships over winter break. Unfortunately, my appointment slipped my mind, and I missed it entirely. It was a really busy time in the semester, and I guess I had just spaced out (it happens to the best of us, right? I was utterly convinced that if I scheduled another appointment, everyone at CP&R would somehow remember me as “the girl who was disorganized and forgot about her appointment,”  and proceed to typecast me as unprofessional and flaky. Even though this type of thinking is super illogical, it’s what I thought.) 

raw

Thanks brain for coming to illogical conclusions yet again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nevertheless, I made another appointment, determined to use it as motivation and encouragement to finally start internship searching.

The next week, I made my way to Seal Court, and met with Niah, CP&R’s career counselor and student-employment  coordinator. She was very friendly and helpful, and suggested that I look at the online Scripps College Resume Book to get some ideas of how I wanted to format my resume. It had never occurred to me that Scripps might keep copies of senior and alumni resumes. I was overjoyed that all I had to do was view the resume book, and pick a format or two I liked that could serve as my foundation.

Over break, I poured through the resume book, intrigued at the array of diverse majors, experiences, and activities that Scripps students had engaged in. It was really useful to see what majors corresponded to which careers. There were students who had gone into careers in various sectors, including education, law, finance, tech, medicine, environmental sustainability, marketing, and everything in between.

I picked a format that I found visually appealing, and then started writing. After completing a draft, I began the editing process, making sure to find any inconsistencies in grammar, punctuation, or format. This process took longer than one would expect for a page of writing. When most of us read things, we don’t read every single word, but rather skim, and let our brains fill in the rest of the information; thus, it was really easy to leave out a word or period. Once I finally had a pretty solid draft, I felt relieved to have completed a tiny step in my job and internship search process.

Dividing academic and personal goals into small, manageable chunks is always less overwhelming for me than trying to sit down and finish a resume, cover-letter, and three applications all in one day. In terms of work-habits, I’m more of a “marathoner,” rather than a “sprinter;” I like to work on things steadily over a long period of time rather than in intermittent bursts.UnknownSo even though all I had done was type some words in a document and call it a “resume,” I was proud of myself for finishing an important step that would make subsequent tasks much easier. Now that I had a resume, I was ready to begin the next step…the internship search.

In my next blog entry I will delve into my process of searching for summer internships, and what I learned along the way.

LinkingIn

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This weekend, I planned on going to the CMC career fair as my big “career move” of the week. Though the fair stated that there would be employers in government and public policy attending- something that would be helpful for me as a politics major- as I went through the list of companies nearly all the companies were based in finance, something that I’m not interested in the least. I did stop by CP&R to get some pointers about going to the fair, which I plan to test out another time. But this isn’t as a depressing a narrative as it could be – while planning to go the career fair, I decided it was high time to update my LinkedIn.

To be clear, I didn’t create a LinkedIn; I already had one, and it had been sitting around like your weird great aunt’s Facebook. Or Denice posting in the Dollar Tree group.

denice

I had no connections, and just one meager piece of volunteering information. I didn’t know how to add people. However, I feel like we all have that one friend who isn’t terrified at the thought of networking, and she insisted that I update it. I had also planned to go to the career fair with her, and I thought that if I can’t do it for me, I could at least do it for her.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, setting up a LinkedIn really isn’t that hard, if you have a decent resumé. I don’t have a decent resumé, so before I could do anything, I shaped it up, spending a lot of time finding synonyms for words like “Participated” and “Collaborated.” “Collaborated” is kind of my go to. It just sounds so nice and professional. Say this aloud: The founding father’s collaborated to form the Constitution of the United States. Like, as soon as you throw the word collaborated on your resumé, you’re immediately doing something the founding fathers did! Wild.

Anyway, the actual process of adding things to your LinkedIn isn’t that much different from making an elaborate Facebook account, like you would when you were thirteen and were hell-bent on telling the world your top ten favorite movies. Except instead of your favorite movies, these are actual cool, professional things that you’ve done. And instead of a cute profile picture, you need to have a head shot. Right now, my picture is an awkwardly cropped photo of me from over a year ago, taken on a subpar iPhone camera. I’m hoping that soon, (Maybe even at CP&R’s LinkedIn Photo shoot during Life After Scripps Saturday October 1, 11:00-11:30am- be sure to RSVP on ClaremontConnect as space is limited.) I can convince one of my friends to take a casual photo shoot of me in the rose garden, giving me some better pictures to work with. But until then, this awkward cropping will have to do, though it doesn’t exactly scream “hire me!”
Though I may have my profile down, I’m still trying to figure out the nuances of LinkedIn- like who exactly it’s socially acceptable for me to add. If you need help getting started, CP&R is hosting a LinkedIn workshop Saturday October 1st 10:00am – 11:00 am and you can RSVP on ClaremontConnect LinkedIn may be a stressful part of the career search, but it’s one that does provide me with a weird sense of hope. As I’ve gone over the profiles of recent Scripps graduates, I can see all the amazing things they’ve done, giving me hope that one day, I may be able to do the same.