Last week Career Services set up shop in the Grewcock Student Union during lunch hours to give resume advice to Hillsdale College students.
The Career Services team hosted Resume Week, a first-time workshop program, in the union this week. Student mentors looked to shape up resumes for fellow students interested in attending the Hillsdale Job and Internship Fair on Oct. 11. The student mentors brought their skills to the busiest part of campus and worked mostly with juniors and seniors.
Sophomore Student Affairs Mentor Dennis Fassett said he enjoyed the opportunity to work on resumes outside of the Career Services office.
“It’s really great to take what we do in the office to everyone in the union. I think it makes us more accessible,” Fassett said.
Sor far, 38 employers have registered to be on campus for the October fair, according to Director of Employer Relations John Quint. Some of these employers include companies like New York Life Insurance Company, OpenTheBooks.com, and Skylight Financial Group. Quint plans to send a packet to the employers ahead of the event, each including the 60 polished resumes collected during the week.
Quint said the event’s turnout pushed him to organize more for the spring semester Classical School Job Fair and a private school job fair that takes place February in Lansing.
“It went really well. Once a couple students got a little bit of help, word spread and there was more comfort with bringing resumes to the table,” Quint said. “I’m really eager to do something like that again, in light of the response we had.”
In the two days leading up to the Job and Internship Fair, Career Services plans to set up another booth to help students stand out in loud settings like job fairs, according to Quint.
Resume Week concluded with a presentation by General Motors in the Career Services office and their own set of resume reviews in the union. David Ritchie ’17 and Ian Genzler ’17, now second-year financial analysts at GM, sat at the table in the union, going over resumes and saying hello to old friends.
Joined by fourth-year financial analyst Michael Koziara ’15 and first-year analyst Paul Galloway ’18, the four gave two presentations in the Career Services office Friday. The earlier one was attended by many students, while the latter was much more intimate. The analysts explained how they got to where they are and pitched the GM finance and accounting internships to the students.
The Hillsdale-GM relationship has roots that were set on campus not long ago, according to Quint.
“After getting the job on his own volition, Koziara found out that we had a Sigma Chi alumni who was the [CFO of GM North America]. He made it a point of reaching out to John Stapleton ’90,” he said. “He engaged with tapleton, and that led to a conversation where John empowered Michael to build that bridge with GM.”
Koziara and Quint worked together to get as many Hillsdale students as they could into GM internships. This strong alumni connection benefitted many in a little under four years.
“We have had a lot of people who are now employees of GM as a result of Koziara bridging the gap,” Quint said.
This sort of relationship lies at the heart of Career Services’ mission with its smaller programs like Resume Week. They seek to get as many people in the door and qualified for positions they know are available at companies across the country.
“It’s a great example of the relationship we want with Fortune-500 companies,” said junior Student Affairs Mentor Jackson Frerichs. “We rely on a few dedicated alumni to do what our GM alumni are doing.”
