Many colleges across the United States, including Tarleton State University, have a program specifically designed to help students find a jobs. This program is known as Career Services.

The department of Career Services has been in place at Tarleton since 1994, and offers many invaluable opportunities for students attempting to enter the workforce.

Alana Hefner, the director of Career Services, asserted that “we are here to empower students to be marketable, professionally and personally.”

The department helps students ensure their future success in the job market by allowing them to rehearse many aspects of the hiring process through mock interviews, job fairs, etiquette dinners and career counseling.

Career Services hosts Resume Clinics at multiple times throughout each semester. These clinics are fast-paced and specialized, providing 10-15 minutes of one-on-one resume criticism for each student. If a student is in need of additional individualized assistance with their resume, appointments are also available through the Career Services office.

Resume Clinics are meant to help students learn how to highlight their skills on paper in the most effective ways so they can secure interviews and jobs.

“A lot of students,” Hefner noted, “make the rookie error of thinking that they are going to draft the end-all, be-all resume that best articulates what they do, and then they’re going to take it and submit that one resume to fifty different employers.”

Instead, she argued, students should craft different resumes tailored to fit each application. This allows students and employers to consider how the applicants’ job experiences truly relate to the particular position that they are applying for. According to Hefner, this will help students increase their “interview obtainability.”

Another key to student success post-graduation is making valuable faculty connections.

“Faculty members often have a lot of stories and connections that they are probably not going to take class time to talk about. If a student will take initiative to get awkward,” Hefner stated, “and reach out and meet their faculty, they will be amazed at the return on investment.”

Faculty members are able to offer valuable advice because, many times, they have professional experience in the fields that students are hoping to enter. Taking initiative, according to Hefner, is an effective way for students to make themselves “noticeable” and “separate themselves from the average student.” It will also most likely make the professor more willing to provide the student with valuable recommendations or direct them to useful internship opportunities in the future.

All of these things are a part of the career search process, which—according to Hefner, should begin during students’ first year at Tarleton. Career Services is an important tool to help students with the nuances of this process so that they can maximize their success in the job market.