U Career and Professional Development Center Provides Help for Students’ Career Journey
The Student Services Building on the University of Utah Campus, where many advising appointments are held. Chronicle archives.
October 9, 2021
Inside the Student Services Building, along with other resources, the University of Utah operates a Career and Professional Development Center for career counseling and questions for students.
“[The] Career and Professional Development Center basically supports students in their career journeys,” said Megan Randall, an undergraduate career coach at Career and Professional Development Center. “We help students figure out what it is that they want to do as their next step, whether that’s [creating] a resume, finding an internship or looking into graduate school or [a] job.”
The U Career and Professional Development Center helps both undergraduate students and graduate students in master and doctoral programs.
Additionally, the center supports alumni who have graduated in the last two years and helps students in developing an online presence on LinkedIn and other platforms.
“The Career and Professional Development Center has special coaches for each college,” Randall said. “But undergraduate students can meet all coaches regardless of their colleges.”
According to Randall, graduate career coaches have specific colleges that they support. Graduate students should meet with their graduate career coach, assigned based on their college.
Also, the U has a separate career center only for business school students.
“Students in the School of Business can visit a separate office called Business Career Services,” Randall said. “[The] Career Professional Development Center serves all students on campus except business students.”
The Center provides free resources on their website, such as Handshake.
“Handshake provides resources like traditional or typical career paths based on their major,” Randall said. “There are also some powerful job search engines in Handshake”
The U Career Professional Development Center provides help from professional students and student interns. James Christensen, a student director at the Career Professional Development Center of the U, said student interns can help with resumes and cover letters.
“With the help from the career center, I learned a lot about how to write my own resume and cover letter and I could be a more confident speaker in front of employers,” Christensen said. “Through this position, I also gained a lot of great networking abilities.”
Christensen said the career studio is only a small part of the office that provides students with faster help than waiting a week to get their appointment.
“Ask us questions about anything about the career that you’re dealing with, and we guarantee that we’ll be able to teach you something, and we’ll have a resource for you to get to that next level of your career,” Christensen said.
Randall said there are no expectations for students when they come into the office.
“We don’t have any expectations that students have a resume already,” Randall said. “We just want them to know that we’re here to support them no matter where they are at right now in their career journey.”
Additionally, she said appointments and help can be specific.
“We can make some recommendations based on like their own interests and strengths and knowledge on what they can do, to progress towards their goals,” Randall said.
For more information about the Career and Professional Development Center, visit their website.
