This story appeared in the Fall 2020 Letters & Science magazine.
For Badger students and recent graduates, the summer of 2020 not only brought physical distancing, social unrest and fears of catching a highly contagious virus, but also the need to pivot their approach to finding a job or internship. In the wake of the economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of graduating students and recent Badger alumni found their seemingly solid job and internship opportunities delayed and/or canceled altogether, necessitating a quick pivot to a viable Plan B.
The only problem was, many didn’t have one.
Enter the team at SuccessWorks, the College of Letters & Science’s professional development center. Shortly after campus closed in the spring, that team quickly saw they’d need to pivot as well, ramping up their online resources to serve a suddenly significant number of students in need of serious and immediate job- and internship-seeking assistance. Under the banner “Badgers on Track,” SuccessWorks staged a series of well-attended virtual workshops and panels, helping hundreds of students hone their resumes, cover letters and interviewing skills to succeed in an online environment. Through industry partnerships, they also helped connect students with micro-internships, short-term project-based work that offered experience and hourly pay.
“In a strong economy, career services are something nice to have, a sort of icing on the cake,” says Rebekah Paré, SuccessWorks’ executive director. “In a disrupted economy like the one we’ve been in since March, career services are absolutely critical. Fortunately, we’re poised to be able to help students navigate an online world. Amidst this great uncertainty, we’re certain we have their backs and can make a positive difference in their situation.”
In a strong economy, career services are something nice to have, a sort of icing on the cake. In a disrupted economy like the one we’ve been in since March, career services are absolutely critical.
Many students found their summer internships cancelled in March, on the heels of returning from spring break. Mahima Bhattar, a senior majoring in sociology and economics, lost her Chicago-based research internship in late April, well after applications for other possible options had closed.
Time for a pivot: Bhattar connected quickly with Maureen Muldoon, one of SuccessWorks’ career and internship specialists, to find other potential options. Muldoon and her fellow specialists send out weekly emails with the latest information about professional opportunities.
“I knew that talking to a career advisor would help me strengthen my application for an internship that I really wanted,” says Bhattar. “Maureen gave really good advice and also went above and beyond to point me to other opportunities or resources I would find helpful.”
Bhattar ended up landing a great gig that fit her career goals: a remote position as a monitoring and evaluations intern at Health Access Connect, a Ugandan NGO that works to bring healthcare access to isolated communities in that country. She says the networking and the resource connections SuccessWorks provided were critical.
David Burnett, who graduated last spring with a major in Communication Arts and certificates in Chinese, Japanese and Entrepreneurship, was glad he’d interfaced early with SuccessWorks. Initially, he used their advising services to hone his resume, in hopes of landing a bilingual administrative position with FoxConn. When that didn’t pan out, he had to recalibrate quickly, returning to work with an adviser on how best to utilize popular job-search tools.
“After SuccessWorks appointments went exclusively online because of the pandemic, everyone was still as helpful as ever and continued to give me feedback on my resume and cover letters,” says Burnett. “They also conducted mock interviews with me and directed me to useful resources like Big Interview.”
In mid-June, the weeks of post-graduation job hunting paid off: Burnett landed a job at Kosmek, a Japanese company specializing in industrial clamps, in Illinois.
“My advice to other students is to be flexible and realize that an opportunity you would not have otherwise considered can still be an incredible experience,” he says.
SuccessWorks remains ready to assist current and recently graduated students. This fall, they have shifted focus to prioritize hiring and preparation for job searches in a remote recruitment situation. And just in time: Typically, peak hiring season for undergraduates looking for jobs and internships is from September through November.
Resilience remains the order of the day, says Paré.
“We’ve been working hard to remind students that even though internships and jobs are more difficult to locate, they’re still out there, and the skills they’ve learned in L&S are still very much in demand.”