 Tonight we're going to talk about a topic called Beyond the Classroom and something that I like to talk about with new students, whether they be high school seniors or freshmen coming into the university is not really focusing on a particular topic or a particular subject or a particular field that you want to go into, but kind of really focusing on why you're why as to what it is that you think you might want to get into because of what you're more interested in versus what you've heard or what you think is going to make you successful in a particular industry. So, I'm getting I'm going to give you a little bit of a different spin on thinking about what university you want to go to what major that you want to major in. Hopefully this will be good food for thought for you as we go through this presentation. So tonight we're going to focus on the word relax. That's the word that I'm going to use for this evening as students you have many pressures that are placed on you every day. What are you going to eat, what are you going to wear, but one of the pressures you don't have to worry about at least not right now is what are you going to do with the rest of your life. I'm going to join the School of Information Studies better known as the high school is a huge decision, and you want to make sure that it's the right decision. So, for tonight at least I'm going to tell you to relax. And you're not expected to know what you're going to do with the rest of your life, at least not yet. So what I encourage you to do, no matter which university or school you decide to attend is to not think about your what, but rather your why, because in my view, why is going to drive your what, and this is what we're going to focus on tonight. Oh, geez, I don't know how that picture got in there I apologize. Anybody else create this presentation. So, hello everyone good evening my name is Jeffrey file tonight I am the associate director of career services and data analytics here at the high school. I work with undergraduate graduate and alumni students on a daily basis, guiding them on finding internships and jobs through the use of resumes cover letters, LinkedIn and networking to name a few. When was Syracuse from was 14 years now with 10 of those years being at the high school. I have a bachelor of science degree in secondary education and a master of science degree in information management from the high school. I also have over 15 years of experience in the information management industry, and I try to utilize this experience to help students make their own experiences. So, what I like to tell students is I use my experience, I use the fact that I have my master's degree in information management, and the fact that I talk to recruiters on a regular basis as to why I'm in the job that I'm in. So, I'm often able to help students manage the, what oftentimes can be a very frustrating and daunting experience of looking for an internship or a job and help make their life a lot easier. So, and, and Lily can attest that when you come in and talk to one of us in career services, where we are going to give you solid concrete information that you need to know for things that you're going to be able to apply that are going to help you. So that's our focus in being in career services. Okay, so here are the seven. I school concentrations that we currently offer in the undergraduate program. We have three graduate degrees and with those graduate degrees, we also have concentrations as well. And so we're going to, I'm going to briefly describe each one of these concentrations so that we all are having a basic understanding of what these concentrations are. I promise not to bore you with this. But a lot of students have told me, Jeff, a lot of people mentioned project management, but I have no idea what that means. So, that's why I think it's important that we understand what it is. The first concentration that you're going to see there is data analytics and data analytics also is a degree that we offer at the high school as well. Data analytics. When you come out of this out of our program and when you focus on the concentration. What you're focusing on really is three things. And you're, you're typically not expected to be the person that extracts the data from the database, what you're doing is you're analyzing the data. You're taking the information that the organ that the organization has accumulated, and you're telling the organization, what does this data mean. What is it telling us what who are our prime customers what products aren't selling what are our main focus areas of territories. So analyzing data. The next thing you're doing is visualizing data. Nobody likes to see numbers graphs are much more impactful and much easier to read. So you're visualizing data. And the third thing is you're presenting data. So you have to have skills and being able to present especially to upper level executives. So those are three skills and I encourage students to focus on with each one of those there are a subset of skills that you want to learn as well like our sequel Python, Tableau to name a few. And those are skills that you want to come out with when you're done with that program. So data analytics, analyzing data visualizing data, presenting data. So if that sounds interesting to you. That's a great program to go into. It's very hot right now in the industry. A lot of companies are realizing the value of their data, which is why that that's an important field to think about digital retail strategies deals more with those students who want to go into retail they want to work for companies like Macy's or TJX. And those are two companies that our students typically go to with this concentration. It deals with point of sale systems when you use your credit cards. If you want to use Apple pay the different forms of payment that companies offer their own credit cards that they offer. You are you would be the person responsible for making sure that those systems work. Information security management is smoking hot right now in the industry as you can imagine everyone wants to make sure that their information is secure in their organization. It is a very, very important field if you have niche skills that you learn that often do not go into other fields. These are the skills that you learn and information security you typically use in information security. It's a, it's an interesting field to go into because in a lot of organizations the security team has their own area within the organization the windows are dark. Nobody knows what goes on inside the information security office. But it your job would be to make sure that the, you know, you don't get penetrated by spammers and hackers. So it's a very, it's a stressful job, but it's a very rewarding job as well. Networking cloud management cloud computing used to be that networking was laying cables, going into the ceiling and pulling. You have five cables through the ceiling. It's not so much that way anymore. It's more wireless now that you're dealing with a lot of data that's in the cloud. You're not dealing with servers on premise, what you're dealing with is one giant data warehouse located in various areas across the world. That's where all the data is stored. And then you're using different tools to be able to connect with that data. So cloud computing is very, very hot right now in the industry, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are two very popular tools that companies use and both of these cloud computing tools. We have relationships with both of those companies. We actually have an Azure computing center here in the high school where students can practice using Microsoft Azure as if it were the real thing. So when you do get a job, it's not going to be anything different. You're already going to be used to using the tool. Project management is near and dear to my heart. I was actually a project manager before I came to the high school for six years. Project management is a great field to get into. It's highly needed. It's highly rewarding. If I always use the example, if an organization wants to upgrade their software, let's say to a new version, oftentimes they will bring on a project manager to help them with this. The project manager determines what tasks need to get done on that project, how long it's going to take the company to complete that project and how much is it going to cost to get that project done. It's then the project manager's responsibility to make sure that it happens within timeframe and within cost. So it once again, it's a very stressful job, but it's also very rewarding. If you end on time and within budget, you're a hero. If you go late or it costs more than you said it was going to, then you're going to have a conversation with your stakeholders as to what happened on the project. So it's a great field to get into. Highly needed in organization. Web design and management, as you can imagine, it's actually more, you may have seen UI and UX. That's what they tend to call it now. It's content based is the UI the coding side is UX. So there's HTML and CSS on the back end and on the front end, you're making sure that things are visually appealing that you're going to keep people on the site for a certain period of time that they're not going to go somewhere else once they land on your site. Web design has been around forever. It's actually one of our first concentrations that we've had at the high school. It's not going away anytime soon. It's a great field to get into because every single organization has a website. So they always need people to help them make sure that the website is up to date and it's working properly. Finally, we have our brand new innovation design and startups. This just started within the last couple of years, and this deals more with entrepreneurship. So if you are the type where you're interested in starting your own company, or you're interested in working for an entrepreneur or a startup company, this is a great concentration to get into, because it will help prepare you to do those things. So there's our seven concentrations. So now you know what they are. And now you're kind of thinking of, well, where do I think I might fit in on those different concentrations? And I'm here to tell you, it really doesn't matter at this point. I don't want you to figure out which concentration to get into. As a matter of fact, you don't have to claim a concentration until after your sophomore year. So what I encourage you to do is when you come into a program like this is to play around in all of these concentrations, take at least one class in each of these to see if there's something that resonates with you. You might say to yourself right now, there's no way I'm going to do digital retail strategies, and you take a class and you're like, oh my God, that was amazing. Like that's exactly what I want to do. So I encourage you to dabble while you're a freshman and a sophomore and take different things, which is going to help you determine the type of field that you want to get into. But remember the focus of our presentation is on the why, right? So another thing that I have students do when you come in and talk to me about your resume and cover letter, I'm going to focus on the cover letter for a second. The cover letter in my view is three paragraphs, and it's only three paragraphs, less is more. In the first paragraph, what I'm asking you to do is to explain to the company that you're applying to why you are applying for that internship or that job. So finding something that resonates with you in the requirements of that internship, or finding something that the company is doing that excites you enough to apply. It's always about the why. It's never the what. It's not how much money you're making. It's why would you want to work for that company. That's what's going to make you successful. And that's what I want you to start thinking about. So there's more than there's more to a perfect job than just choosing a concentration. I mean, like we said, you've got choices to make. You've got to choose what college you want to go to when you get to college. You've got to choose the concentration you want to get into. And then based on that concentration, oftentimes you're going to have different careers that you're going to be able to go into as well. So the decisions that you make at this point are very important. But like we said at the beginning of the presentation, let's just relax. Let's relax for a second and just have a conversation. So the first thing I want to talk to you about is your degree is a prerequisite for the competitive workforce. And what that means is, no matter what job you get into nowadays, you need a bachelor's degree. Okay, it used to be you had to graduate from high school. Now it's at least a bachelor's degree. That's what a lot of companies are going to be looking for. But what I'm telling you in this slide is 62% of recent college graduates are working in jobs that require a degree. 27% of college graduates are working in a job that even relates to their major. So think about that. You go through four years of college focusing on one particular thing, and then only to find out you're not even doing that once you graduate college you actually get into something else. So, it's not so much as to what type of degree that you get as long as you get the degree. So that's why you can focus on the why as to what it is that you want to do and not necessarily the what it's the degree that's important. The second thing I want you to think about is certain fields year yield higher incomes, most definitely, but your concentration doesn't need to align with the industry and I want you to read these three bullets. Employers tell me all the time. And this is something that I want you to think about. Because your students go to the high school, we know that they understand technology, and that they have an aptitude for technology. And if there's a technology that we need them to learn, we can teach them. So, it's not the technology. That's the problem. What we can't teach them is if I'm locked in a conference room with one of your students for six hours working on a project. And all I'm thinking about is getting out of there because I can't stand working with that student that we cannot teach. So, a lot of times what you're going to find is organizations are not testing you on your technology skills. They're testing you on whether you're going to fit into the culture of that organization. You're not the smartest person in the room. But if you can, if people can't stand being around you, you might as well not even be there. So, certain fields year yield higher incomes, but it's how you communicate and how you get along with other people that is going to get you the job. It's not how many technical skills you have. So, you can even be in, in my case, secondary education and still be successful in the information management world. It just, it takes some practice and it takes being a sponge and sucking in all of the information that you're given in the organization. But if you're able to do that, you will be successful. And this is very true. I know you might not think about that now, but it's the truth. Okay, third thing, your experience be it on the job or off the job is what people notice. So experience is very important. And what I tell students is experience on your resume trumps everything. So meaning experience is the most important thing. So how do you get experience and that's a common question that students ask. Absolutely pursuing internships is going to get your experience you're going to get hands on experience doing what it is that you think you want to do. And then I'm here to tell you guys that more and more companies are looking for freshmen and sophomores for internships. So don't think just because you're a freshman you're not going to get an internship. They want to get you in early, so that two things you can see if this is a good field for you to get into. The company can see if you're a good fit for their organization, because if you're a good fit, they're going to keep asking you back your sophomore year and your junior year, and then when you're a senior they're going to make you an offer. So that's the idea that's the trajectory that you can plan on when you get types of internships. That doesn't happen all the time. But it is a typical path that a lot of students take. But look, I want to tell you also that an internship does not guarantee a job. So just because you get an internship doesn't mean you're going to get a job. And it's not required. So you don't have to have an internship to get a job. And other ways that you get experience is by joining organization. Or better yet, volunteering. That's such a great way to get experience, especially if you're a freshman and you're going home for the summer. You should go to any company and volunteer to work in their information management department. And just say, what can I do, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to do and learn as much as you can about what they do. These lines on your resume are much more powerful than your major because they tell employers that you're motivated, passionate and involved. So when you talk to an employer after the summer, which we bring a lot of employers into the iSchool to talk with our students. One of the common questions they ask is, what did you do this summer. And you want to be able to have a narrative of what it is that you did that's showing that you're constantly learning, you're constantly growing and you're constantly improving your skills. Because those are things that you're going to have to be doing when you start working. So if you can get into the habit of doing those things now, it's going to be much easier when you actually get into the workforce. So experience is very important. The other thing I want you to think about is soft skills and I gave you an example of what employers told me earlier about communication and fitting in with the culture. So I'm going to look at the first number, the 93% down at the bottom 93% of employers believe that critical thinking, communication and problem solving skills are more important than a job candidates undergraduate field of study. So I want you to think about that. Now remember, these are what employers say, this is not what Jeff is saying. This is what employers are saying. 95% of employers are looking for candidates whose skills translate into out of the box thinking and innovation. As many of the jobs being filled today, come with challenges that are more complex than in the past. So what you're going to find and what that means is, we have at the high school what are called case study interviews. And what that means is you're going to be going into an interview with another person in the organization, and they're going to give you a scenario, something that typically has actually happened in the organization. And then they're going to ask you to come up with a solution. So they're looking for how well you think, and they're looking for some creative out of the box thinking that will help them solve problems like that in the future. Being able to think out of the box and be innovative is very important. I'm going to give you an example. I was talking to we recently had a career fair in September. And I was talking to one of the students who attended the career fair. He told me that one of the things he did was he made his own business cards. And instead of passing out resumes to employers, he would give his business card to employers that had a QR code on it. And if you scan the QR code, it takes them to an online portfolio that showcases their resume and their projects and anything that they've done on their own. And he said employers love that. So it made it much easier for them to find information. All they had to do was keep the card. Once they scan the code, all of his information was in one spot. So that's an example of out of the box thinking, you know, nobody else did that at the career fair. Everyone had copies of their resume. So I give him kudos for thinking about that, that type of situation to stand out from others. So this is what we're talking about when employers are looking for things like this, anything you can do to separate yourself from the pack. I encourage you to do that. But not only out of the box thinking, but also critical thinking communication and problem solving, because remember, you're no good to the organization. If you're not able to communicate to others, the knowledge that you have. So if you, one of the common fallacies that people have in organizations is if I have all the knowledge, I'm going to keep it to myself and that's what makes me valuable. And that couldn't be further from the truth. If you don't share the information, nobody's going to come to you and ask for information. The more you share, the more people come to you for answers, which makes you more valuable in the organization. That's the idea. So you want to be able to share your knowledge as much as possible, which means you want to be able to communicate your knowledge to as many people that will listen to you. One of the ways of getting comfortable with doing those things is like going back here, getting involved in organizations and volunteering. We have over 20 organizations in the high school, way too many for the amount of students that we have in my opinion. We, if someone wants to start an organization or like, yeah, sure, go ahead. There's like, there's too many choices. But the idea is find something and I tell students, don't go into something that matches what you think you're interested in. Go into something that you are passionate about because you're going to like it so much more. And you're going to get more involved in that organization and employers don't care. They just want to know that you're getting involved in things besides just learning about technology. So we have a lot of opportunities for you to do that. And then that's a way for you to be able to practice communication. So then when it counts where you're actually in an interview, it's going to be comfortable for you because you're used to it. So here's a slide I'd like to share with students because so this was a actually a survey that was completed by an organization called NACE. And NACE is an organization that college career centers actually supply data to. And NACE stands for National Association of Colleges and Employers. NACE asked a thousand employers what are what are competencies that are most important to you. And it's on a five point scale. So I want you to look at these and I want you to see based on year, what are things that are important to organizations that they're looking for from college graduates. And the thing that should stick out to you the most is the number one thing that they're looking for is critical thinking and problem solving. And if they're looking for critical thinking or problem solving and you know that. Then that should be something that you should be working on in the next four years of your college career to be very good at being able to think critically and problem solve problems. Like you, you want to be able to go into an organization, find where the holes are, and you want to be able to plug those holes, you want to be able to find where the needs are, and get to get the knowledge necessary to fulfill that need. So critical thinking and problem solving. It's not until the one, two, three, four, fifth competency, where we actually start getting into technology. So my point is, it's not all about technology. The high school is about we love to teach technology, but we also give you opportunities to be able to to utilize these other competencies as well. So too many students only focus on technology and not on teamwork and collaboration. And it's just the opposite. You should be working on those things just as hard as you're working on learning about the technology. So hopefully this slide was an eye opener for you to see how powerful these types of skills are to organizations. All right, now we're getting to the you're a better performer when you're aligned with your purpose. So now we are thinking about knowing your why so knowing your why means when you know your why when you know what it is or why it is you want to do something that help drives your what in terms of what it is you want to do. Why is more important than what so instead of asking yourself, Jeff, what do you want to do. Ask yourself, Jeff, why do you want to do this. Purpose gives you unprecedented energy. When you feel like what you're doing has purpose in the organization that's going to motivate you to want to work harder. If you major in a field that you're truly interested in, you will give it the effort, attention and enthusiasm that often translates into success. So, we're not choosing majors or concentrations just for the sake of, we know it's going to get us a job or we know it's going to get us a high salary, because I'm telling you that wears off over time. It's true purpose and why that's going to cause you to have a successful career in the long run. Stellar performance in any field is what translates into career success and knowing your why is going to help you perform better. And finally studies show that a happy brain is engaged, motivated and productive. So that's the power of the why, if you will. All right, so I have a little video that I'm going to show you. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm still got some some statistics to share. So, check this out. So, we're talking about finding meaning. This is the first slide finding meaning 87% of the world, 87% of the world, and 66% of the US workforce are struggling to find meaning in what they do. So I want you to think about that 87% of the world was 66% of the US. Now, if you are a student on this call. I want you to after this presentation. I want you to go and have a brief conversation with your parents, and I want you to ask them if they feel like what they do truly has meaning. If they feel like what they do has meaning to themselves and or to the organization, and I'll be very curious to know what the answer is. The other thing I want to share with you is check this out. This is very interesting. Career change jobs will change on average 11.9 times during one's career. So out of your, the span of your whole career, you're going to change jobs, almost 12 times. And 2.85 times in the first five years after college, almost three jobs in the first five years. And I'm going to share a story with you. I just got back from taking 20 students in New York City. This week we went Sunday to Tuesday, I just got back last night. And we what we did is we visited five companies. And in every one of those companies, we had alumni that work there. So one of the things we asked our alumni to do is to tell their story. What did you study in the high school, and what have you done since the high school. And I'm telling you guys that out of the five companies in three of those companies, the alumni, this is already their second job, and they've only been graduated twice, or I'm sorry, they've only been two years out from graduation. Two years out from graduation, they're already on their second job three in three companies. So this is statistic is crazy. So it, the, but the, the objective is we don't want to jump jobs. What they realized was the first job that they took was not their dream job it wasn't, they took it because it's what they thought they should do, and not what they wanted to do. So after they worked there for a year they're like, I can't do this anymore. And they, they look for something where they actually thought that it was going to have a bigger impact on their life, and I'm what it is that they were doing. So, a lot of the students went from very large organizations to startups, and they're much happier doing that. And vice versa, some started in startups and hated it, and went to a much larger organization when they felt like they had more safety, and they had more opportunities. And you tend to get paid more as well. So, when you, when you know your why. When you get into a spot where you're actually doing something that you enjoy doing these numbers change for you. These are not your numbers, your numbers are going to be much smaller, because of the fact that you concentrated on those things early. Okay, now I'm going to get into my video. I'm going to show you a video of the person's name he's a comedian his name is Michael junior. And he talks about knowing the wise for your what's with a beautifully illustrated example. So he's going to talk about what are the things you do the actions you take. Why are the reasons you do those things. When you know your why your what have more impact, because you are moving with purpose. So let's take a look. Let's take a listen. How do I know a lot of people when they think of the phrase how do I know, they always want to put the what behind how do I know what I'm supposed to do. The question that you really checks is how do I know why I'm here because when you know your why your what becomes more clear and more impactful. If you know, like for instance, people know that I do comedy but that's what I do. My why is to inspire people walking purpose. So I can do comedy. I can write books. I can be in a movie, because all of it is motivated by my why. In fact, I have a new, a new web series out, Michael junior breakdown. We probably just did the sixth episode it's on YouTube. So every single Wednesday at three o'clock, we drop a new episode on YouTube, Michael junior break time. What it is is it's me I travel around the country and I do stand up comedy in case you know. And in the middle of my comedy set sometime I'll stop and just talk to my audience. They're filming this, and it's, you know, it's it's pretty cool. So we're in Winston, Salem, I'm going to show you a clip from Winston, Salem. And I'm just talking to this guy in the audience and he tells me that he's a musical instructor out of school. I was like, All right, musical instructor. No, can you say me here. Same the song. So this is what happened at the last episode of Michael junior break time. He's a musical director. Yes. All right, so let me get a couple, let me get a couple bars of like, amazing grace can do the first part of that and go ahead. Amazing grace. Oh, sweet. That rock is saying, you know what I'm saying. All right. Now, once you give me the version is it. Your uncle just kind of jail. You got shot in the back when you as a kid. I'm just saying let me see the little version real quick, you know, just see if that exists. Oh, Here's our ones to catch the first time I asked him to say he knew what he was doing. He knew why he was doing. You know your why your what becomes more impactful because you're walking towards or in your purpose. All right. So I love that video is one of my favorite videos and every time I watch it it gives me chills when I hear that gentleman saying, it's just amazing and it could not be a better example of the impact of knowing your why can do for you. And you're not not only in education, but in your life and in your personal experiences with your family and your friends just figuring out your why I just kind of opens up everything for you. And you start to understand what is going on with your life and the choices that you make. So I just want to encourage you to continue to to focus on the why you're doing things and not always the what it is that you want to do. Okay. The last thing I'm going to talk to you about is the fact that your network matters way more than your college major matters and you can choose a major that correlates with a high paying job as we talked about you can hunker down the score a's in your classes, but if you don't have contacts, you're missing a huge piece of the puzzle. The main idea here is and this is a true statistic, you are not going to find an internship or a job, unless you network. It's just very few people do. And it's, it's a very frustrating process when you try to get the opportunity that you want just by simply sending in your resume and cover letter. One of the things that we focus on in our appointments with students is not only saying this to them, right, but showing them how. And we talk about things that you can do to build your network. And as freshmen and sophomores, because we know that a lot of companies, there's some but a lot of companies aren't really looking for freshmen at this point. There's a community for you to start networking and building your network so when you are ready to find an internship, you already have a network ready to go ready to work for you. And that's the whole point why do this alone. When you don't have to, you have people out there who want to help. But the thing is, nobody knows to help you unless you ask for help. And that's the idea. The thing that I want to point out is I'm going to use the New York City trip as another example. This was a direct quote that I got from a student just this morning, as a result of going on that trip. So the underlying is a company name. So, we were in a company, and there were six alumni, and the student asked me, how do I get. How do I go talk to just one person and let them know what it is that I can do for them. And I go, oh, just go up to him introduce yourself and say, can I speak to you for five just for five minutes about the company that you're with. And he did that. And the next thing that happened was the, the, the person in the company immediately asked him to send her his resume. And now he has an interview at the company that we were just saying, I mean, it just, it just couldn't have been any better. Like, that's just amazing. So, things happen like that all the time. You never know when it's going to happen. But once again, if he never talked to that person that he would never have got an interview. Networking works is so powerful. And the amount of people that you have in your network are there to in on your behalf. We often say we need advocates within the organization to help us. And that's what networking does for you. Okay, so, Lily, I'm going to ask your help with this next exercise. So, I'm going to show you a concentration that someone went into. And then I'm going to show you four jobs. So I want to see if you can choose what job you think this person went into based on their concentration. And all you have to do is go into the chat and just put in a letter A, B, C or D. So here we go. The person's concentration was an x-ray technologist. So knowing that which job out of these four, do you think that this person got or is in an x-ray technologist. Don't be afraid. There's no right answer, right or wrong answer. Well, there is, but it really doesn't matter. We're getting some C's. I'm seeing a few A's. Mostly C. Mostly C's radiographer. Okay, so it's here. Okay, sociologist. Do a couple more seconds. Anything else besides C's or A's? It's getting C's and A's more C's than A's. Oh, we got a B. Oh, zoologist. All right. But mostly C's. Mostly C's. Yep. Okay, so take a look. You can read. I don't need to read this to you. Yeah, the job they took. Yeah, true story. It's a true story. This is from an actual student. Not in the high school, but just a story that I was told by the student. They check this out. Concentration is computer science. What job do you think they got or have? We got a D, a B, got a D. Nobody did A's. We got one A. Okay, we got an A. Getting a few more D's, a couple C's. Marketing again. Is there a predominant one? I'm seeing actually mostly D's. D's? D's, yep. I'm not sure what you guys looking ahead at my presentation. It is D. It's Jim owners. Yeah. So you're, you're starting to get the idea that nobody, the very, there's a lot of people that think they want to get into something and they wind up in something completely different and that's okay. You know, they wound up not realizing that this is not what they wanted to do. And they're, they're finding something. So we're going to do one more. So the concentrations information management. This might be a little harder now. Because it could be any one of these. We got a we got C we got D. Another D. All right, I'm seeing mostly A's and D's. Okay. Yep. Yep. I obviously would love to start a job at so many thousands of dollars but honestly right now I have the opportunity to stick with a company. I love kick butt and make a name for myself. Supervisor. That's what they are. Hey, very good. All right, so career services help. So I'm going to take the next couple of minutes and I'm going to talk to you about career services just this helps answer the question why the high school so if you're on the fence and you're thinking about coming to a school like the high school. This is where career services might be able to help you. So first of all, here's all the things, not all of the things but this is a lot of the things that we help students with in career services. There's really the gamut. There really is no end. I mean this this graph could just keep going. It's really whatever it is you need help with, we want to help you. And we may not know all the answers but we have a lot of resources that can help you. So, you know, what I like to say is, I like to be part of your career journey. So involve me as much as you want to be as much as you want me involved, and I will help you as best I can with whatever stage you're in, whether you're in the beginning stage whether you're in the interviewing stage, or whether you're in the negotiation stage. So always feel free to involve me so that I can help you and make your life easier. This is how we work with one with students we do appointments we do workshops, often like these we do virtual and face to face workshops, classroom presentations, special events, information sessions I told you we went to New York on a road trip. So the first thing I'm going to Austin in January, Austin, Texas, that seems to be a hot area where a lot of companies are going to. And we use tools to help you practice, like interview stream big interview and job scan. So there's tons of tools that you're going to have at your to at your, it's the word I'm looking for fingertips that are going to help you practice. So come with your tuition. So in my view it's a four step process to get a job or internship resume and cover letters just the base. You we also use LinkedIn very heavily at the high school. We make sure that we have a properly created LinkedIn profile and we help you with that. And finally we do networking. And as we said, 80 to 85% of all internships and jobs are found through networking. This is the four step process, if you do this, these steps and you do it the way that we talk about doing it, you will be successful or more successful than if you don't. And what I like to tell students is if you follow my lead and do these things, then the amount of time and the amount of companies that you have to contact and work with are going to be dramatically less than those students who don't do these things. So it only makes sense for you to, you know, follow the lead of what it is that we're asking you to do. All right, how do we collaborate with employers we have two career fairs one in the fall and one in the spring. And we eat, we have different career fairs and you're able to go to all of the career fairs that are being offered you don't just have to go to the high school career fair you can go to all of them. We have employers that do information sessions, we have employers that visit the high school and table in the lobby where you can just walk up to them and talk to them about opportunities that are available. We have lectures, they're often ingrained in our curriculum so we have, for example, we have a capstone class where students are coming up with plausible solutions for actual problems that are happening in an organization. And the organization comes and they judge on how well you came up on the solutions that you come up with. This semester we're working with Adobe, and Adobe has given the classic case study. They build a solution in teams, and then Adobe is going to be here at the end of November to judge and pick a team that had came up with the best solution. So it's pretty cool. And it's nice that it's a real life situation and the company actually comes and is the judge so those things happen with employers. This is something that we encourage students to do based on year. So we know that there's not a lot of companies that hire interns freshman year so at this point we just encourage you to attend classes, experiment. Work on projects, work on your GPA, join clubs and organizations, just acclimate yourself to being in college. Don't stress, don't get frustrated. Just have fun and enjoy the experience because you're never going to have this experience again after this. Once you get into your sophomore year, now we're going to consider an iSchool concentration. Once again, don't have to choose until after sophomore. Now we're going to look into summer internships. More and more companies are hiring sophomores. But you're going to have a much better shot at junior year. But it's your sophomore year where we start honing your resources, your resume, your cover letter, your LinkedIn profile. And we start talking about networking. Junior year is when we hit the ground running and we start applying for as many internships as we can. We start interviewing. You try to earn a leadership role as something in the iSchool, maybe in your organization that you're in. And finally your senior year, accept a full time offer, or consider going to graduate school. Either one of those are fine. We don't care. We just want you to do what you think that you should be doing that's going to make you the most successful in your career. So the final thing that I'm going to leave you with and believe me, I struggled on whether I wanted to put this in or not because this is not the focus of why students should come to the iSchool, but I think it's important because we are proud of these things as well. So here are the numbers from our 2022 class. So I'm working on 2023 as we speak remember I'm the associate director of career services and data analytics so I keep track of where our students go after they graduate. The things I want to point out to you are first of all 98% of our graduating class of students got a job or I went back to school for their graduate degree. That's what that 98% means. The average salary of those students that got jobs with $79,744, which is the highest average salary at Syracuse University, and it's been the highest salary for the last four years. And I'm telling you it's going to be the highest salary again in 2023. And these are some of the employers that our students have gone to. To show these employers because I tell current students, look at where our other students have gone, look at the opportunities that are there, and you already have a networking pool to go to because you know there's an alum there that you can connect with is so it's so simple. It's like writes itself. You will also see that out of the 98% 85% are working lower left hand corner 13% are still pursuing their education. And then the average time to appointment in the lower right hand corner you'll see most of the students got their job either right at graduation, or shortly thereafter. So, once again, we're proud of these numbers. These are not things that I use to bring students into the high school. I'm much more proud of the programs that we offer the in the faculty that we have on staff. And certainly the staff that we have, especially in career services, and an enrollment which is where Lily works is a fabulous staff to work with as well. That is the end of my presentation tonight. Thank you so much for attending this presentation. I hope that this was useful for you and helpful to see the different types of things that are going on in the high school different things to think about maybe that maybe you never thought about before. These are the types of conversations that we have when you come in and talk to me in my office about career services. Welcome any and all questions that you might have comments that you might have, and whatever it is that you decide that you want to do in your college endeavors. Please find something that is something that you're passionate about, and that you really want to do. Don't do it because your parents tell you to do it. Don't do it because your friends are doing it doing it do it because you truly want to do that, and you're going to be the most successful I guarantee you.