What makes a prospective student choose Plymouth State University from over 4,000 other academic institutions in the United States? Perhaps it’s the fresh mountain air or the small class size. Maybe it’s the food in Prospect. When you ask students why they came here, there is one answer that is not usually heard- “I came to PSU because I’m guaranteed job placement.”
While no university can promise every single student that they will be working the minute they step off campus, there are other schools who have a solid reputation of finding their graduate’s jobs almost immediately after they graduate. Like Johnson and Wales, who reported that 98 percent of their graduates have jobs within 60 days of graduation. Statistics like this can only make a PSU kid wonder- how will Plymouth help me get a job someday?
For starters, it would be ignorant for a student to assume that they can sit back the second semester of their senior year and wait for the University to beat down their doors with potential job offers, “The resources are there,” said Joe Long, Director of Alumni Relations, “It’s getting students to understand that they’re out there and to start using them.”
One of the resources that students may be unaware is available to them is Alumni Relations. Within the past few years, they have developed programs aimed at connecting current PSU students with alums, with the hopes of students learning more about their desired field, while also making contacts for the future that could be helpful to them.
The first is the Singer Series, which is a program where alums are brought back to campus to do presentations, lead group discussions and have Q and A with a panel made up of students from that discipline. Long said that currently, the Singer Series has been working very well with specific majors, and that two or three more are being planned for this spring.
The other program they developed is Dinner with Twelve Strangers, which is also based on academic programs. The dinner consists of six students and six alums, along with a faculty member meeting for a meal at an alum’s house, “These students have a direct connection to these alums as a resource,” said Long. The programs have been testing now for three years and have already conducted dinners for the English department, the Business department and the Early Childhood Studies program. It is now being offered to other academic departments like Criminal Justice, Communications and Health and Human Performance.
Some alum resist this resources because they fear that Alumni Relations is exclusive to those who donate money to the University, which according to Long, is far from the truth, “We are a non-membership association, so as soon as you graduate you get all the services and benefits available. It’s not contingent on make a gift to the institution.” Their main goal at this time is to provide alumni with networking opportunities that will be beneficial them in the future.
This year alone they have sponsored four networking nights in two different cities, “Every program we do, while we may not promote it as a networking night, it is an opportunity for you to network. Students have to take advantage of those networking opportunities and meeting those alums.”
Last year, Alumni Relations conducted a survey of a thousand PSU alumni from a broad spectrum of classes, “One of the things we found from our more recent alums is that they thought we didn’t do a good job of providing career services to them as students,” he said. After bringing students in and questioning them further, Long found that, “they didn’t know what resources were available to them. That allowed us to go to the Bagley Center and say look – while you’re doing a great job with what you’re doing, students don’t know what you’re doing.” As a result, Long felt that it was important for Alumni Relations and the Bagley Center to partner together and work on, “Lifelong career services for students and alums.”
Although many students have heard of the Bagley Center, very few of them actually use it, or even know where it is. Ruth DeCotis, the Associate Director for the Bagley Center, is proud of the fact that they offer a “walk-in service” that is open to all students, regardless of how much work they have or haven’t already put into their quest for career services and internships, “There is always someone here,” she said. “But if students come when they’re not ready, they won’t get anything out of it.”
Long feels that the reason students aren’t using the available resources to their fullest advantage is because they don’t know when they should start, “People don’t start thinking of jobs until their senior year and I think that’s a huge mistake,” he said, “If you’re not thinking about what your career path is by the time you’re in your junior year, you’re way behind schedule.”
Heidi Pettigrew, the Marketing Manager for the College of Graduate Studies agrees, “It’s never too early to start planning your future,” she said. She even recommends starting to look at graduate schools as a freshman undergraduate, because the process can become that much more difficult by the time a student is a junior or senior, “It can be very overwhelming after being sheltered on campus for 4 years,” she said of the process of researching graduate programs. Whether or not it’s grad school or a full time job that a student is looking for post-PSU, Pettigrew urges students to get that information as early as possible. “Becoming familiar with the fact that you’re going to be an adult in the workforce is key,” she said.
“Students need to let go of student life and begin the job search,” said DeCotis. “They get scared because it is serious. You get your tools ready, then look.”
Long also said students are slow to start in their job searching process, which will inevitably hurt them, “When you start thinking about your senior year, there’s so much other stuff competing with you that you think, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll have more time to find a job when I graduate,’ Well you graduate in May, you go back home to Mom and Dad, next thing you know, it’s August and you’re wondering why you don’t have a job already. All those students that were doing it during their junior and senior year have already got those jobs companies were looking to fill, and you’re looking for what’s left,” he said.
Although students want to get a full four-year college experience, their degree may end up not serving them much of a purpose if they aren’t thinking ahead about their future. If the tools are there but students do not learn to use them, who is to blame when they don’t land their dream job immediately after graduation?
“You’ll never find a job sitting in your room, and for the most part, you’re not going to find a job hanging out with the people you already know, because they are in the same situation that you are. Take advantage of every opportunity you have to meet someone, because you don’t know what that opportunity could get you in the future,” said Long.