New career workshop offered to students

by Beth Walker WAL03024@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

Finding a top job is not an easy process; it takes time, preparation and work. BYU-Idaho faculty and staff have realized this over the years and have created tools that allow students to enter the job field with confidence.

The Career Workshop and mock interviews are labs taught by students that prepare others to make a striking first impression on future employers. However, the Career Management Seminar is a new program designed to help students past getting the job.

This new program focuses on teaching juniors and seniors skills to coping with future employers. “The objective of the Career Management Seminar is to primarily help seniors prepare for the workplace,” Corbett Jackson, a senior from Salem, Ore., said. “[It is] devoted to topics that are very important to beginning a successful career such as negotiating starting salaries, evaluating benefit and salary offers, preparing for graduate school and adjusting to corporate culture and politics.”

These topics were selected by passing out a survey to BYU-I alumni. “They were asked about what they had leaned while they were here, what they wished they had learned, and what they learned that had helped them,” Robyn Bergstrom, the associate dean of the College of Business and Communication said. “Students who attend will be taught by other students.” In this way the seminar is more interactive for all involved.

Students interested in attending this seminar can sign up in the Joseph Fielding Smith Building room 225; however, in the future students should be able to sign up online.

“Many of the students attending are on the Student Advisory Council and they will give us feedback on how it went. Then we will change it as needed and hold seminars bi-weekly or weekly depending on student demand,” Jackson said.

This new seminar is meant to build upon the career workshop for freshmen and sophomores. Because the career workshops only began two years ago and some juniors and seniors were unable to take advantage of the series, some of the material will be reviewed.

“For the first year or two the seminar will last four hours. The first hour and a half will be for seniors and juniors who didn’t get to go to the career workshop,” Jason Teeples, a senior from Rexburg, said. “The next hour and a half block is for learning how to deal with the real world…after the first couple years the seminar should only last an hour and a half, depending on the demands of the students.”

Jackson and Teeples are both involved in teaching for the seminar. “Corbett will be teaching students what they’ll need to know if they plan on going to grad school and negotiating a salary, and I will teach how to evaluate your worth, learning the corporate culture and what it will be like when you leave happy valley,” Teeples said.

BYU-I faculty likes to see students succeed, often going beyond what is required of them as professors to be friends and mentors. Dean Broadhead, the Dean of the College of Busniess and Communication, is constantly seeking ways to improve the College, Jackson said. He is truly visionary. Broadhead has created the Career Management Seminar and it’s another way of fulfilling the College’s mission to create an employable, quality product.

The future of the Seminar is to be the final touches for a senior preparing to enter the business world. For those wanting to prepare for the workplace beyond resume and interviewing skills will find the seminar to be very helpful.