The Fight for Your Greatest Life

What are the new, up and coming fields? Just like you, I was asking myself the same question. This is a great question to be asking yourself and making sure that you have, of course, chosen a major where your field will make you happy but will also help you make some money. After doing some much needed research on the topic for myself and the lovely students of Hofstra University, there are a few jobs that are in high demand right now.

All these jobs are subject to change within the next few years because what America needs right now may not be anywhere near what we need three years from now. From what I gathered, the top three jobs according to the data collected from several sites are (not in order): Registered Nurses (with a median salary of $68,000), General Manager or Operations Manager of  Business (with a median salary of $98,000), and Data Scientist (with a median salary of $111,000). I would recommend doing a bit of research on your own on Onetonline.org as it is a great way to see if your career has a bright outlook.

While this is good to know, don’t feel like that is all that is out there! These may be popular or most needed, but may not be the best fit for you. What is great about these options is that all these different jobs can fall under numerous majors. You don’t have to be a business major to manage a business. It all boils down to how you apply your knowledge and resources. Managerial skills and the ability to process data are advantageous expertise in a multitude of fields highlighting exactly why your transferable skills are just as important as the actual degree that you hold. 

Just because the need for certain career is high and it isn’t your career doesn’t mean you can’t make money and have an abundance of happiness in your life. I like to think that life happens in such a way that allows everybody to have the power to change their own destiny. Life is all about your perspective; any and all majors at Hofstra provide an opportunity for personal and professional success.

Everyone’s future is bright and life is too short to think that you aren’t going to make it wherever you want to be in life. Don’t forget that no matter the major you choose, it’s up to you to utilize the resources to contribute to your success. If you are feeling doubtful (which I really hope you are not), you have time to change your major if you ever want or need to. Need help with that? That is where the Career Center comes into play. 

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote:
“It is never too late to be what you might have been”
- George Eliot

While this is open to interpretation, I take it to mean that it is never too late to change who you are, or what you want to be.

Hadiya Robinson
Undergraduate Assistant for External Relations

https://www.cbsnews.com/media/the-best-11-jobs-in-america-for-2017/12/

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/the-9-most-in-demand-jobs-of-2017.html

https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/life/best-college-majors/

https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/best-paid-jobs-by-major

How your Involvement(ality) can help you with your Career Path

As I transition into my role at the Hofstra Career Center, I cannot help but reminisce on my journey of how I got here. Like most students, I went to college to learn and get a degree which would help me with my future. The college experience is different from being in high school because you are able to learn and grow in ways that you did not imagine, both in and outside of the classroom. The expectation is that you will make friends, study all night, and graduate from the best years of your life. However, what I learned was that the most influential part of my college experience, one that no one clued me in on, was getting involved on campus.

The best aspect of getting involved is that it plays an important role in your career development.  Here are a few ways getting involved on campus can do that:

·       Discovering a career path: Whether you already know what you want to do or if you are still searching, being involved can play a role. Join clubs, organizations, honor societies, or get involved in an office on campus, you never know where it can lead you.

·       Networking: Being in college is a time to open your horizons, meet others that share your interests and background, as well as those who don’t. Involvement in different offices on campus, clubs, and organization helps you build a diverse network of people that are either professionals or will be in a few short years. Plus, you never know who they may know or bring in as guest speakers.

·       Learning how to work with others: Being involved means you will most likely work with others. Working in groups outside of the classroom can teach skills that group projects in the classroom cannot: how to reach a common goal that is not for a grade. Collaboration, compromise, and flexibility are just a few of the skills that will be important for your future job.

·       Leadership Development: Being able to hold leadership positions teaches you effective ways to manage and work with others. It can also help with your self-esteem and public speaking skills. Employers want to hire students that take initiative, are well rounded and show they can bring the company forward. These are skills you can develop or enhance in a leadership role.

·       Diversifying Experience: Having a wide range of interests and experiences shows that you are adaptable and can work well in different environments. Companies want more well-rounded candidates because it brings innovative ideas to the table.

·       Feeling Connected: Getting involved on campus brings a sense of connectedness and loyalty to the college you attend. Studies show that students who feel more connected to their college are more successful both academically and on their jobs after graduation.

·       Being in the know with opportunities: Knowing people on campus means that you are in the know of important opportunities on campus. Whether it is a job fair, or a one on one with a CEO that wants to give back to their alma mater, being involved means you will hear about these opportunities first hand. 

AND BEST OF ALL…

It is a sure-fire resume builder: As a college student who may or may not have a lot of professional experience, being involved in campus adds depth and skills to your resume. Employers want to see leadership, initiative, and teamwork. Who better than a students made the most out of their college experience.

SO… Join a club, or organization, get involved in the student leadership office by being an orientation leader, join student government, a Greek letter organization, or find a on campus position in any of the offices. Whatever it is that interests you on campus GO FORTH IN YOUR CAREER PATH.

Sabeen Sheikh, MHC

Career Advisor | Career Center

How Non-Verbal Clues could be Career Miscues

Hello From The Career Center!

As I sit here, in the lobby of The Career Center, I am in the midst of our accounting on-campus recruitment interviews.  Students are meeting with employers, chatting about their experiences, school activities and academics.  Many of these students are well-prepared, having practiced their answers to common interview questions such as "What are your biggest strengths?"  However, it's more than what you say during an interview that gets you hired; it's also those important non-verbal communications skills.

For example, how is your handshake?  Don't know?  Go shake someone's hand and ask for their opinion (go ahead, I'll wait...)  Done?  What was the critique?  Did you crush the other person's hand? Did you give them the "fish" handshake, where your hand is limp?  When an employer comes out to get you for an interview, he or she will undoubtedly shake your hand. You want that first impression to be a good one.  Come on in to The Career Center to shake my hand and I would be happy to give you my opinion.

How you dress is another important factor in an interview. While many students are aware of this, they miss some important points. For example, you may be wearing a black business suit, but if the skirt to that suit is way too short, you are not making the impression that you were intending to.  Same with a wrinkled shirt.
Finally, don't forget to smile! A smile goes a long way in your everyday conversation, and this is the same for an interview.

Need more interview tips?  Make an appointment for a practice interview with The Career Center.

Best Regards,
Darlene Johnson

If the shoe fits...wear it!

This morning, as I got ready for work, I grabbed a pair of shoes off my shelf and put them on. As I stood up, I looked down and thought to myself, “Why don’t I wear these shoes more often?” You might be asking yourself a question now, too; “Why am I reading about shoes on a Career Center blog post?” Stick with me, reader! 

I remembered that these were shoes that I had purchased right before an interview. An interview for a position that I really wanted – a position that I did not get. Today was one of the few times that I’d worn the shoes since that day, and each time I wore them, I would think about how these were those shoes. They represented a negative, a failure, something I’d rather forget. But, I was running late, so I didn’t take them off.

Walking into the office from my car, I thought to myself, “these are actually pretty comfortable.” Once I got into the office, a coworker pointed them out, complimented them, and asked where I’d gotten them. “Why don’t you wear these more often?” They asked me.

Well, why don’t I?! Was I mad at the shoes for the fact that I didn’t get that job? Of course not! Had I gotten that position, I would have missed out on a lot of great things both personally and professionally that would not have happened otherwise. Actually, as I thought more, there were a lot more positive things that came out of that situation than negative. Maybe I should have been thinking of these shoes as a manifestation of those positive things this whole time!  

Still with me through this long-winded analogy? Congrats! I encourage you to think about your “shoes;” what are the positive things that have come out of a not-so-great situation that have benefited you? Maybe you didn’t get your dream internship or job, but it freed you up to take advantage of a different opportunity that ended up being great. Perhaps you didn’t get a good grade on a paper and needed to rewrite it, which led to you learning something completely new once you revisited the same information. We never know what’s going to happen, or what it means for us; the only thing we can do is regroup, put our best foot forward (get it?), and start the next chapter of our story.

Step on,
Amy

Student Spotlight: Benji Weiss and How He Locked Up a Lockheed Martin Co-Op Internship

Meet Benji Weiss

Benji Weiss is the 2016-2017 Hofstra University Co-op Student of the Year from the DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. To compete, both Benji and his supervisor at Lockheed Martin wrote about the significant contributions that Benji made during his co-op experience at Lockheed. Benji will be nominated by Hofstra University for the national co-op award competition hosted by the Cooperative Education and Internships Association.

Cooperative Education is currently offered in the DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Hofstra. It is one of the most impactful ways to learn about yourself and get your foot in the door for the career you want. To find out more about co-op, contact Phil Coniglio at Philip.M.Coniglio@hofstra.edu.

Co-op Experience

Coming into college, I knew I would need internship experience to stand out and have a chance at a job when I graduate. Little did I know, the co-op experience was exactly what I needed. I have aligned myself with exceptional interview experience, resume content, and a life changing job, all because I applied for a co-op internship. Here’s how I did it.

I went to Philip Coniglio to figure out what this co-op internship was all about. After he told me all the relevant information, I needed to update my resume and hand it in to him. Philip also made it very clear and straightforward to my parents about how the co-op internship worked because they were very uneasy about me graduating a semester later. Philip handed out my resume to a plethora of companies, in which four of them wanted to interview me. The first three were all in person, and the last one was over the phone. I was rejected by the first three; which was still okay because I got the interview experience that I needed and the necessary feedback to grow from this. The last of the four was Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world! All they wanted was an over the phone interview, in which I immediately accepted and thankfully, they gave me an offer.

At this point, Lockheed Martin has already offered me a position to intern for their software team and I had accepted! Beginning the co-op in June 2016, I was super excited. I began working on various automation projects that positively impacted their software team, and would make their lives easier. I also worked on simulators that would inevitably help the development of submarines for the U.S. Navy. This work was extremely fulfilling and a phenomenal learning experience. By partaking in this internship, I developed better communication skills, presentation skills, a sense of business attire, and the ability to collaborate with other software engineers.  Not to mention all the new programming languages and skills I learned as well! I returned from the co-op as a more developed and prepared engineer, and thankfully, they wanted me to come back for another internship which I completed this summer of 2017. 

With all of this said, you can imagine how life changing this could be for someone who was just going to graduate undergrad with no internship experience. Now I have 10 months’ worth of internship experience, amazing resume content, a professional sense of the working world, and ultimately, a position at Lockheed Martin waiting for me for when I graduate. I could not thank Philip Coniglio enough for providing me with this opportunity. If you are reading this, it is not too late. Apply for the co-op internship and start interviewing!