Shameful: College kids get little career help from colleges

Posted by: Taylor Black on Jul 31, 2012 | | No Comments

Why did I start Degrees2Dreams? Because I got mad. Because college kids are getting a raw deal.

They spend four years and tens of thousands of dollars, and on graduation day they are dumped like unwanted orphans on the “real world’s” door with nary a clue about how to survive, never mind thrive. Even for liberal arts colleges, that’s just wrong. Over the last four years, I have worked with more than 300 interns from dozens of colleges and universities, and NONE have been prepared in even basic, never mind cutting-edge methods of job searching.

I have had many a tear-filled session with seniors facing graduation with absolutely no idea what was to become of them in just a matter of months. The optimism and brilliant horizons of freshmen year have been crushed, often by their very own teachers and career counseling offices telling them their dreams are just not realistic any more (but you KNOW they’ll get a call from the college development office looking for a donation!).

This is damn near criminal negligence.

Career counseling offices are considered a joke, when they should be a student’s best friend starting not in the second semester of senior year (the Panic Semester), but in sophomore year.

But in interviews with hundreds of college students over four years, the majority of those students who had used their career offices once never went back complaining about outdated methods and resume templates and a total lack of understanding about how to use social media to find a job. One student at UMass/Amherst was given seven minutes (420 seconds!) to discuss her resume and career plans. When she tried to ask a question, she was told her time was up.

Our unique resume templates utilizing cool social media tools like QR codes linking to videos of the student and the student’s best reference are routinely torn up by college career counseling officers as being totally unacceptable. Our track record of getting kids great jobs counts for nothing when we tread on sacred turf of decades of doing things the same way.

 

Taylor Black

Administrator at Fizzy Media
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