 Right. Well, let's see. I realized the one thing Megan and I didn't discuss was who was going to intro themselves first, but since I'm talking, I'll start. So first of all, Sam, thank you so much for inviting us to be part of this program today and Danielle for all of your work on the event as well. I'm Kirsten Elling. I am the coordinator for graduate student career advancement here at the university career center and just really briefly about my role. It's kind of interesting because I'm report administratively to the university career center. And I am embedded here in the Rackham grad school so I'm actually here on campus today in Rackham. The idea being that to help the partnership which is a very strong partnership between the university career center and Rackham just really make sure that all of our wonderful resources which we're going to talk about today are accessible to graduate students. So I really love working with both my UCC team, one of my teammates is here, and also the Rackham professional development and engagement team. So I'll let Megan go next with an intro. Awesome. Yes. Thank you all so much for being here. We're excited to chat with you and share some resources that the university career center has to offer. My name is Megan Hart-Molloy. I use she, her, and date and pronouns. I work on the employer relations team in the university career center. So I work pretty heavily with employers that want to recruit Michigan students. Lovely for us. A lot of them tend to be University of Michigan alum. So there's a lot of crossover there, but I also do coaching and what we call direct service with students. So I'm one of the folks on the team that does career coaching and development work with our masters population. So I do appointment types like resume review, interview preparation and strategy, career exploration, all specifically for master students. So that's kind of how I'm positioned. I'm physically in the university career center, obviously not right now, but several days a week. And the center is located in the student activities building on the third floor. So that's me. Thanks, Megan, and thanks so much for partnering on this program. And I should have shared a little more detail too about my role. So, as Megan mentioned, we have one on one coaching appointments and we'll talk a bit more about that. And Megan and some of our other colleagues are going to be the one on one coaches that master students like all of you would end up meeting with I'm do programming and my programming that I do through Rackham is open to PhDs and master students and then my one on one coaching time is dedicated for the PhD population so but we all work as a team really closely so just wanted to clarify that a little bit. So with that, I'm gonna, we do have some slides so I've got the first part of the slide presentation and Megan has the second part we both may chime in at various points but I am going to share the slides. See if I can get into slideshow mode. Yeah, should be good. Yeah. And so we're just going to go through our slides and I'm going to try and keep track of the time so that we also have time for questions because that is part of the plan at the end there. So we've already introduced ourselves. I want to just start off by saying that we do career exploration career counseling and coaching appointments, and just to drill down a little bit. The types of appointments that we offer, you know, there's and that we're going to share a resource sheet to which has like a link for if you were to go how do you make an appointment. But there's a lot of different appointment topics and I just like to share a little bit about that so students have a sense of what each of them means but you know if you go into handshake which will say more about in a moment and say oh gosh I want to schedule an appointment. You know you'll indicate your degree which I think all of you are masters degree students and then from there there's a lot of options and so I don't want to assume that they're self explanatory so some of the main types that you'll see are exploring career options. Resume and cover letter review interview prep and mock interviews. I know you all can read these bullet points so what I'm going to say. I'll back up just a bit and just say a little bit about with the career options appointment so students often will access those maybe earlier in their grad career just so they're thinking about well, you know, as I think about what jobs I might want to get what are my options so a lot of people will come in their first, you know, semester or two, just to kind of hear about the options. Sometimes people come in later because they thought perhaps that they, they knew which direction that they wanted to go in and then after they've had a year or so of graduate school they realize actually they might be interested in another direction so at any point when you're just thinking about what I'd like to make sure I know what my options are, and how to explore them that's a great time to make that kind of an appointment. A very popular appointment type is resume and cover letter review, especially for grad students, you know, you might have a CV, but if you're applying to jobs and industry you're going to need a resume and so, you know, it's really helpful to have experts look at and I know one thing that we all do at the university career center is we have a lot of expertise and, you know, helping a student, maybe with that, like that really tailored piece of your resume where okay you've got the general structure but when you're applying to this specific job posting, you know is your resume really speaking to that we can help you with that. And then we do a lot of interview prep and mock interviews, you know, especially if you've been, you know, in undergrad and then grad school it might have been a while before you've had like a serious, you know, interview for a job. Sometimes people have done a lot of, you know, working during grad school and undergrad or even between, but at any rate for most people it feels like it's kind of a high stake situation and so you want to do as much prep for your, your interviews whether it be like the strategizing and how to prepare that we might talk about in an interview prep appointment or a mock interview where we actually walk you through an interview and ask you practice interview questions and give you feedback on the spot. That's what those point and types look like. And then, you know, job and internship searching. There's going to be points where you're looking for internships or you're looking for jobs. And, you know, there's a lot of details there and a lot of, you know, what's the timing and how do I go about this and am I looking at all of the right places. That's something that we can talk with you about in a job or internship searching appointment. We also have appointments about like how to use different resources so like we have one that's about using interest stride and going global which are sites that really focus on international opportunities. And then also like networking is a popular topic and often people feel like you know what I'm, I'm not totally sure what what I should be doing on the networking front or you know some folks are really good. You know, seasoned networkers but for others it feels a little bit like something that maybe they need to know more about or feel like oh I'm not sure I'm doing this right so we can help demystify that that process and help you connect with alums. So let's go into a little bit more detail about some of the appointment types, but the way I view it, you know, it really is that whole continuum of career exploration through all of the steps that are involved with a job search or an internship search. What we don't have on there is negotiation, but that's an important one. I know I often will work with students, you know, for multiple appointments and I really love it when I've been helping someone, you know, get their resume together and then prep for an interview and then I see them on my calendar for a negotiation appointment and that always just kind of makes my day because I know it means that the interview went well and now they have an offer and we get to dig into that and talk about how to negotiate. So that's just a little bit of detail about the the appointment types, and then, you know, we offer a lot of workshops like this one this is more of a you know intro to our offerings but we do a lot of, you know, the same topics that I mentioned with the appointment types. We have workshops. So, like, you'll see, I hope everyone checks the RACM, you know, events page because there's a lot of great programs that get advertised there like this one, but we do workshops. There's really, you know, general ones that are offered to the entire RACM community but, you know, I also get requests from different departments to come in and, you know, talk with like the whole department or with particular faculty members or, you know, maybe a school or college, you know, that kind of thing. So, I know, and I know other colleagues at the UCC are getting these requests as well so so we're always doing lots of workshops and I think that there's a really nice synergy between the workshops and the program so, you know, you can do a resume workshop to kind of get yourself started in thinking about your resume and then do a draft and then follow up with an individual appointment to get that really, you know, tailored kind of feedback. That's just one example of how I've seen students utilize that that mix of things. And I wanted to say I mean this this really our focus is really on talking about like the University Career Center resources but as someone who's also embedded in the RACM professional development development, sorry, at the end of the day. Well, I'm embedded in the RACM professional development engagement team. I also want to mention that the I have a colleague, VV Hernandez who runs the DEI certificate program and another colleague, Brian Pallard who supports all that work. And it's really, you know, whether I know the deadline just passed for, you know, applying to the program but whether or not you applied, you can still just attend the DEI certificate offerings and those are listed in the RACM events really quite regularly as are like Sam all of your programs. So I just there's just a lot of really good programming coming out of the, the RACM team. So I encourage you to regularly check that RACM websites and you'll see all the career stuff but you'll also see, see other things that are of interest. So let's see the other thing and I do have a tendency to, you know, elaborate so I want to be mindful of time and keep moving through my slides here but there's also, we do offer, in addition to all of the resources I just mentioned we do offer some assessments. And so, you know, for some people that can be really helpful in terms of just getting some some feedback as you're like making those big career decisions so I've got that linked on the resource doc which maybe Danielle if you want to share that this would be a good time because I'm starting to talk about like different links but all of the resources that Megan and I are talking about we have links in the stock that Danielle is going to put in the chat thank you. So one of the other resources that we do have some different assessments that you can go to the web page on the Career Center website and learn more about that but there's some really nice options so like Clifton strengths. You may have heard of it it's fairly popular and higher ed, but it's a really nice assessment where you get some feedback about you know your natural talents and the magic of you know having articulated those a bit more is that you can really develop those into strengths. There's a lot of conversations with grad students especially about, you know when they're trying to think about like transferable skills or, you know, how do I talk about like the special things that I bring to the table, you know beyond my research and beyond some of the details. Sometimes Clifton strengths helps give students like the language for that. And also you can take the Myers-Briggs type indicator the MBTI, which is really, you know, about decision making styles and it's more of like a personality type, you know, preferences for decision making and communication and all of that can be really good to have those insights you know as you are doing your grad work but also heading into the world of, you know, professional workplace. And then also the strong interest inventory, which is something that I think is more utilized by undergrads but master's students may find it useful as well and it's where, you know, you, it asks you a lot of questions about interests and it helps then make recommendations about different, you know, types of jobs based on those interests. So that's another part of our service that we offer. And then I want to make sure that we touch on Handshake a little bit because it's something that is related to pretty much everything that we do in terms of how you access things. So Handshake, and there are links on the dock but it's a it's a platform that the University of Michigan and a lot of other, you know, higher educational institutions use for their career development services and they're, they're just their career services so it's how you sign up for your students. So that link is on our website but that's like how you would indicate yep I'm a master's student and I want this kind of appointment and then different time options pop up and that's how you sign up. It's also where you can look for job and internship postings. So, Megan along with some of our other employer relations colleagues, you know, work with employers that are specifically, you know, like in conversation with the University of Michigan because they know that you are amazing and so they've got job and internship posting so it's a great place to look for for those postings for yourself. Also labs and workshops so different workshops that that we're running also sometimes employers come to campus either in person or virtually and they've got you know learn about consulting or you know different things like that so you can learn about those events, and then career fairs. That's another thing that we do. We've actually got a few coming up there's a link on the resource sheet about that as well but career fairs where just, you know, a lot of different employers in a lot of different sectors come to campus and you can, you know, come to like next week, the 27th and 28th. We've got it like the, probably the biggest one of our career fairs and so it's really nice because you can look and see on handshake, what employers are coming and you can also see of those employers which ones are interested in master students so that can be a really effective way to use handshake so I just want to, because we'll be referring to it I want to make sure you know what that is so really good to, you know, make sure your profile is up to date there and make sure that that you're plugged in. And I think my last slide before I turn it over to Megan is just to talk a little bit about career tracks. And so this is another, you know, part of the services and the resources that the UCC offers and so, as you can see from the slide there's some tracks that correspond to different industries so consulting, data science, finance, government, health, you know, all kinds of different things. You know, this list is like the full list and so undergrads are, you know, probably more likely to be, you know, like fashion for example. But UVEM has like a master's in fashion so I think grad students, I mean, could be that there's like some art students who are interested in that but in general that might be more like an undergrad focused track. But some of the tracks like consulting and data science and finance and government are often of interest to grad students and so we wanted to make sure that we share that resource with all of you. But by joining a career track and the link to that is also in the resource sheet. You can find, you know, you get these targeted email alerts about events that are of interest to people in that track so oh if I'm interested in consulting now I'm going to get the email alerts about events related to consulting employers that might be on campus or relevant programming, things like that. You know, relevant postings. All of that is really worth signing up for if you're interested in one of these, these tracks. Certainly you can sign up for more than one track too. But just want to make sure that you all know that that's there and I know too that, you know, master's students you know you may be in different schools and colleges and so you certainly have like those resources open to you as well but just know that you also have access to the University Career Center resources and these career tracks can be a really nice way to make sure you don't miss anything that's really pertinent to your interests. So that is kind of a broad strokes about some of our resources and now Megan is going to go into some more tell you about some more and go into some more depth about some things too. Wonderful. Can you push the slide deck forward. You'll be on slides now. Thanks for that reminder. Okay, awesome. So connecting with alumni, I will definitely talk about that, especially at a university the size of Michigan leveraging alumni collection connection sorry can be very powerful. So we're going to look at two platforms that you can use to connect with alumni. The first one is called you can it's an acronym so it's the university career alumni network. You can also use as Kirsten said your colleges resources to leverage connections with alumni, specifically maybe like within your college or within your specific degree program. And then lastly you can find alumni of interest on LinkedIn, in addition to the you can platform and I'll talk about both of those things. Can you go back one slide sorry. Thank you. Okay. I will have Kirsten queue up a video in a second. It's going to briefly demonstrate the use of you can. So that's the university career alumni network again so what's beneficial about you can over a platform like LinkedIn is that alumni will opt into this network. So folks in the you can system are willing and open and ready for you to reach out to them. Whereas on LinkedIn it can be hard to tell how active someone is if they're open to messaging, willing to connect, etc. So the nice thing about you can that has similar capabilities is you can sort by additional filters such as identity groups that you can't use on LinkedIn so I could search for an alumni who has tagged LGBTQ plus in their profile or first generation college student for example. So you can connect, not only on a professional level but maybe on a personal level as well if there's some shared identities there. And right now I checked earlier today there's over 8000 alumni in the platform in you can and it's growing larger all the time. It's hasn't been around for like decades so we're still building the network but there's there's quite a few alumni who are already plugged into it. So Kirsten I think if you click the image yeah. Perfect and there's no sound so it's just the visual overview. So this is what it looks like I'm just going to talk over it a little. You would search people using various filters so this is going to demo searching by location. So we have a lot of study for example, and now we have some results with little bios and then we could click on someone of interest, and it will bring up their profile, and then you can connect, you can send a message. You can kind of see what their work history looks like so that's how you can works. If you're familiar with LinkedIn it probably looks similar but again there's some more customized things that you could do in this platform. Yes, you can push forward to the next slide. Awesome. Okay, so the LinkedIn alumni network is much larger than the you can network like I said but it can be a little bit more unpredictable. So right now there's over 350,000 alumni who have tagged Michigan as their education, but this could be across any program and any campus so not just Ann Arbor but also Flint and Dearborn. So for example, someone could tag Michigan as their med school education but they did their undergrad work somewhere else. So tag Michigan for like a certificate program for example. So it's a little bit harder to tell who is active and willing to connect, but the network overall is much larger. So you might get a match closer to what you're studying exactly, or someone who's working for a company you're really interested in working for after graduation or interning at, or maybe they're doing kind of like a specific or a newer job I'm going to do a job related to AI artificial intelligence, where there maybe aren't as many alumni in the you can platform at this time who have that type of work experience. So, I still a really good tool to use I just like highlighting some of the differences. They are definitely filter capabilities in LinkedIn. You can search by degree program you can search by physical location like where someone is located right now you can search by a specific company where they're working. And so, both of these I usually will coach students if you really are looking to make connections with alumni to help build your network. I encourage you to use both of the platforms definitely try you can to connect with folks in that way, but also definitely look in LinkedIn to see if you can find, you know, additional people who might be willing to connect with you. Wonderful. I need you can scoot forward again. Okay. So we're going to switch gears a little bit. I'm going to go into resume resources and cover letter resources. So it's not necessarily like the hottest topic always but the resume is what gets your foot in the door it's very hard to get a job or an internship without one so we always like to talk about the resources that are available to you. So we have two primary resources for graduate students when creating and working on your resumes. So the first one is the UCC website, which is in the resources doc that's in the chat. We have a sample masters resume template we have to actually as well as undergrad templates, as well as various instructional videos on that site about how to write effective bullet points for example. How does a recruiter look at your resume and give feedback. So there's various resources available there. There's a video that I like to highlight in particular on that website, it is called the ATS video which is the applicant tracking system video. And it's becoming more prevalent in job application processes and internship applications that a system with some kind of machine learning algorithm or AI technology will be looking at your resume. There's a video on that site that kind of give tips of you know here are some things to avoid in your formatting here are some things to consider to help make sure your resume passes through an applicant tracking system. So that's all available to you on the website. The second resource that's available to graduate students is called resume worded or targeted resume, which Kirsten alluded to this a little bit it really helps you align your resume for specific positions that you're applying for. So this resource is totally free to use a student, it will give you suggestions and edits on how to make your resume more tailored for the specific types of roles you're targeting. So when you go into the website, for example, it will say copy and paste a job description or an internship that you're applying for. So you take that content you copy it into the platform, then you upload a copy of your resume that you would use to submit for this posting, and then it cross references those two things, and it gives you a score to tell you how aligned you are. So I'd like to use the example. If a posting mentioned being detail oriented five times in the description. And that specific phrase is nowhere on your resume it's going to flag that and it will say, think about how you could include this phrase or this type of skill in your resume to be more targeted for the posting. So these are two things I would really encourage you to lean into. If you are editing creating wherever you are in your resume journey definitely check these things out. You can push forward. Okay, this is just a brief one I wanted to show so this is one of the copies of the master's resume template that we have on the website right now. Just as a disclaimer, this one is more tailored towards technical role so if you are not in a role that has a lot of technical skill demands your resume might look slightly different. But I just wanted to showcase what one of the examples looks like you're you're welcome to literally take that whole template copy it pasted into a Google Doc, and then plug all your own information in. Obviously I would recommend tailoring it like I just said but these resources are available to you. Okay, 15 years a little to cover letter resources. So we also have cover letter resources that are certainly available for you to utilize including sample cover letters. The website that's listed here that is also again in the resource doc that's in the chat includes considerations for what you may want to include in a cover letter how to format them effectively this can be really important. And then more recently some considerations that you might want to think through when utilizing AI to assist with the writing and reviewing of your cover letter. So if you're not familiar with writing cover letters, I know it's a very, it's a very like US culture thing in terms of applying for jobs so if you're not familiar, that's very normal we hear that all the time. I would suggest maybe just checking out the website to learn more. I would also say with AI implementation, it's a really good tool to use to review something that you've already written. So if you do write a cover letter for position if it's required and you kind of want some feedback, we certainly will do coaching around that and you can utilize some of the tools we have suggested on the website to help kind of review it for effectiveness for example. So that is cover letters. Okay. Yes, so how to connect with employers. So this is kind of my domain where I'm living most of the time employer connections. But students are usually curious about, you know, how do we connect with employers of interest how do I know who's recruiting on campus where can I find this information. So as Kirsten mentioned, we use handshake as our career management platform. So, like she said you're booking appointments using handshake you can find workshops and events on handshake and you can also connect with employers through handshake and every University of Michigan student has a handshake account. So your college might have a career management platform that differs from handshake could be 1220 could be Ross recruit. There are several that exist on campus. So it is very possible that you have more than one tool available to you. Some of the other colleges also use handshake. So you may just have handshake but both are very typical for the student experience. At the career center. We have over 82,000 employers in the handshake system. So there's a large demand to recruit Michigan students for jobs and internships which is wonderful. And we on the employer relations team have to approve every employer that joins the platform so we kind of do some validation in terms of what types of opportunities are you offering. Who is your target audience right is it undergrad students is it master students PhD is it MBA is we kind of help strategize with them around that. And then we also review postings that they want to list with us so I think this morning I looked there were over 45,000 openings in the system right now. Obviously that's across every degree level looking for students in particular colleges looking for you know to cast a wide net in their recruiting. But there are a lot of opportunities that do live in handshake on any given day. Lastly employers utilize handshake to host events to attend and register for career fairs just like students do. We have on campus interviews with us which we can host in our office suite for them post jobs post internships, and then connect with or message students through the platform as well. The image that I've included here is just it took a screenshot of a sample event that Capital one is hosting in October. So that's typically what it looks like from the student view. You can register for it. I have a non active student account so that's why that that menu item is great out there that register button is great out. But you can get a lot of information from the event posting as well. You can push forward. Wonderful. Okay. Here's an example of what an employer page looks like on handshake. So if you wanted to learn more about an employer. The go to is typically okay I'm going to Google Nike and I'm going to go to their careers page. That's wonderful that is a great source of information for learning about a company about career pathways with them and various other information. They also have pages listed on handshake most of the time especially if they're very active in recruiting with us. So I chose Nike because they do often hire graduate students in particular for jobs and internships. Nike probably does a little bit more recruiting for master's level and PhD level than with undergrad students actually. So I wanted to highlight them a little bit and they have a really robust profile. So they have reviews from students who have worked or interned for the company, which I always think is helpful. And these are students across colleges like across the U.S. so it's not just Michigan students it's any college that uses handshake as their career management platform. Students within that school can leave reviews on the company. They also have tips on interviewing with them so that's what that little interviewing menu item is. If students have interviewed with them it will say what's one question you asked. And then do you have any advice for responding? So that's a really good resource as well that you're likely not going to find on their website, their company's career page for example. So employer pages on handshake are a great source of information. I don't think that they get utilized enough by students, but you can find a lot of information here. Alright, you can push forward. Okay, so how does this all connect back to making the actual connection with the employer? So I certainly suggest utilizing handshake to connect with employers before trying LinkedIn or other platforms unless you've already have some sort of degree of connection with that person. But handshake is a really great and easy way to kind of facilitate that connection so you can begin by following companies of interest in the platform. So like that Nike page, there's a follow button right at the top, you can click that and then you would get updates on open positions they're recruiting for, events they're hosting for Michigan students. If they're coming to the job and internship fair it would alert you to all of those things. So in that way it's very helpful to just kind of passively receive information about what are the opportunities for me to connect with this employer. On the right side of the slide is an image that I included this is also from the employer page. So they will have like a little snapshot of jobs but then they will have many of them will have a public staff list of folks who work for the organization who are typically involved in recruiting in some way. So they might have a title like talent management, it could be campus recruiter, it could be human resources. They called them various things across companies, but there are people with contact information on the employer page that you can find if you want to connect with someone directly using handshake and then you can message them right from the platform. So that is a really great way to connect with employers. You can also look them up in LinkedIn if you prefer to connect with them that way after finding their contact information here. If you are going to message someone through handshake. I recommend messaging including in that expressing your interest either in the organization or the opportunities that they're currently recruiting for that can be a great way to connect with companies just to show I'm really excited about what you're doing, what you're hiring for. I'm really interested in learning more. And that's a great way to kind of put yourself out there express interest and then hopefully your message back by someone with the organization. I'm also going to talk about the career fair is just a little bit more as a great way to connect with employers because they are coming up and they are very active. So briefly I'll just say, many of the schools host their own career fairs in addition to our office hosting fairs. So if you're in a college that hosts fairs certainly check out those programs, they're probably recruiting for very specific majors that live within the college. So that can be a great resource for connecting with employers. Those really large career fairs that are open to all students across every industry. So casting a very wide net for the types of positions that companies are recruiting for whether it's jobs or internships. This year I put the fair dates on the slide, the 27th, the 28th and October 4th, all from 12 to four. They're all in person on the second floor of the Michigan Union. It's pretty easy to find us. You don't need to preregister, you literally show up and we register you super quickly on site and then you are good to go. We have 60 employers coming each day. So 60 employers coming on the 27th, 60 different employers on the 28th, 60 different employers on the 4th. And then we are doing a virtual fair that's taking place on October 6th, which will be some of the employers from the in person fair. Some of them like to do both. We also like to make sure the option is accessible. Some folks just engage better in a virtual format and so we do host the virtual fair every year as well. So these are great ways to connect with employers. If you're looking for help preparing for the job and internship fair, if it's feeling overwhelming, not sure what to do, what to wear, what to say. We have a lot of programming going on all of next week to assist with that, but we can also work with you in one on one coaching appointments to help you feel prepared for the event. Wonderful. So that's what we have for slides. Obviously, you know, we have our contact information is definitely available if you have questions for us. I know we will take some questions as well. I recommend 2 things follow up on Instagram. We post a lot of helpful content on there, but also events that are coming up. And then if you connect with us on LinkedIn, we're actually trying to facilitate more student employer connections on LinkedIn. So if you have a LinkedIn account, you want to follow up, you'll be able to get information that way too and you'll see employers and recruiters tagged in a lot of the posts. So that could be helpful as well. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Kirsten. I literally learned so much that I about the job search and all the job offer in terms of support that I just had no idea existed so I'm really grateful to learn this information. Okay, so now everyone we will transition to a Q&A. And as you gather your thoughts and your questions for Kirsten and Megan my colleague Danielle was going to place our evaluation survey in the chat. If you have any favor and just please open the tab now so that you'll have it ready for you when we're done here today. Okay, thank you for doing that. And I also want to ask again, can you please change your name to the name that you registered with, so that we know that you're here. Thank you. Okay. What questions do you have for our panelists today. You can type them in the chat or you can raise your hand through zoom and ask them yourself. Yes, Lee. Yes, can you hear me. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for such a rich full rich session I really learned a lot. And I would like to know how can I make an appointment with Korean Center. Is there any link or do I have to mail it. There's a on the resource doc. There's a link, which will take you to our page. It takes you to handshake. Well, there it's I think it takes you to our web page and then it's like make an appointment and you press a button that takes you into handshake. Also just put that direct link in the chat because if you haven't set up your handshake account it will prompt you to do that before you can make an appointment. Thank you so much. Thanks for the question. And there, there is, you know, when you get to that point it'll ask you, you know, like, are you a master's student or an undergrad or you know so you pick your, you say, I'm a master's student and then it gives you your different options of appointment types. Speaking of which, how early should we book with you. Before we begin the job search. I wouldn't there's, there's no time to early. We, we typically, I will say, we typically have like same day availability. That is certainly less likely in September. But October, November, it's pretty likely you'll be able to get in at least the same week, if not the same day right now, because there's so much activity around recruiting and students wanting to utilize the career center resource. And they, I think we're booking about a week out maybe two weeks out at this point but you do not need to come with work completed, or you don't need to come with like, you know, like a plan. We, we are happy to work with you if you just want to come and you're like, what's going on at the center we're happy to really kind of connect with you about anything. I just want to underscore that point I think sometimes especially grad students feel like why should already know the answers or I should come in with like polished materials or having done more research and sometimes students come in and they've already done a lot and that's great but a lot of times people come in and they're like, I am not sure where to start. Where do I start, and we can meet you wherever you're at and the earlier the better I think we all would agree. And there's also, you know, a lot of times, you know, it varies but sometimes students they'll get like all the their questions answered, you know, in one appointment and then off they go and, you know, they may not come back and then other students might come back pretty regularly like okay they go and get some next steps and then they do those and then they come back and you know it might be a, you know, a pretty regular thing so it's really whatever works for you. Thank you. So first lines. How do I know if when I need to come in for an assessment of those. I think you offer three different types of assessments that. How do I know if I need that. It's a good question. And the way our process is is that it's actually like, if you want to take one of those assessments we recommend talking about it with a career coach first. So if it's kind of piqued your interest you're like what is this I think that might be helpful, then you know you could make a career, you know, exploring career options kind of appointment and say gosh I want I wondered about these assessments and could they be helpful. And then your, your career coach can really talk through. Okay, how like what questions do you have how do you think you might use this information, and then steer you towards the right, because there's three different assessments so you know what you're trying to figure out, you know, one might be a better fit than the other. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it's a good question. You mentioned that career fair to career fairs that are coming up soon. What type of prep work. Do we need to do for this. Yeah, great question. Let's say it's not required that you bring copies of your resume. But if you are targeting some companies, it's only going to help you to to give them a copy of your resume. When you speak with them so some people engage with career fairs just to do some exploration they have no plans of being like I'm applying to this job or I'm applying to this internship. And they kind of see like what could I get out of this who's here on power people engaging and we certainly have students that come through just to do that. Then we have students that look at the list of who's going to be there which you can find in handshake, and they're like wow I'd love to work for that company I'd love to work for that organization that nonprofit whatever it may be I definitely want to introduce myself and make sure that they know what kind of skills and education I'm bringing to the table. So I would say if that's more of the approach I would come with, you know, whatever policy polished version of your resume you have right now. And then, you know if you're coming just to explore maybe you don't necessarily need that. We also tell employers, students could be coming from class they could be coming from practice they could be coming from work. There's no expectation to come like business formal, or even business casual. You might see other students there who are in like a three p suit that is their choice. There are some students that come in jeans and sweater, and that's wonderful to and we tell explorers, we tell employers to expect the whole range. Those are the two primary things with employers you you probably have you know anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to connect with them physically like at the table, if you're there. So maybe thinking about like what do I want to say what's important do I have a question I want to ask can also be really helpful, just to help you feel confident you know kind of coming into that conversation. Thank you. Yeah, with with that that point that Megan just made about you know you might have 30 to 60 seconds it can be worthwhile to, you know, practice either with a career coach or with a friend like okay gosh like if I'm going to have 30 seconds with an employer like what would I want to tell them about my self and so maybe you bullet that point bullet point that out for yourself on paper but then you practice saying it, just because I know for myself and a lot of people that would be very clear on paper, and I feel like I've got my thoughts organized, but then if I'm trying to speak it it's a different thing. So that can also be something where you just like run through it a couple times and then you feel like oh yeah I can. I can go through this of an employer says so you know what are you interested in what are your skills you'll know what to say. I think it has a hand up. Yeah, so I'm not sure how have a how seriously I should consider about the conversation with the employers in career fair. So if I have more than one companies that I'm really interested in, do I need to kind of spread my resume to all of them or do I need to really seriously pick some of them and then have a kind of really talk with them with my interest. Yeah that's that's a good question. I mean I, I think it's definitely valuable to maybe take you know two to three, three to four employers that you definitely want to connect with at the fair. I'm not doing a game plan to use some sports vernacular but I would make sure you you minimally have a copy of your resume for each employer you want to talk to. Maybe you have a couple extras but definitely like bring some physical copies of your resume if you do plan on talking with employers. Maybe there are some people there that do kind of like peak your interests that you're like what I didn't consider chatting with them but you know they actually sounds really interesting what they do. And so maybe have a couple extra copies available there as well. You could anticipate maybe like standing in line a little bit so if you are talking planning to talk to four employers like that that could be 30 minutes of your time it could be an hour of your time depending on how popular they are in standing in line chatting with them at the table. I would say like realistically it's probably not feasible you're going to get to every employer. If you do come and find me, because I want to know how you did it. But, but otherwise, yeah I would I would say come maybe come with a few copies and come prepared if you're looking to connect with people come prepared to connect with at least three to four employers. I'm not sure if they answered all of your question or fun missing anything. Thank you so much. Okay. How would you all suggest connecting with alumni. You said you can't a great place to do so but also linked and like how do we reach out to be just, are we just cold calling saying, Hi, I'm interested in you. How would you suggest we go about this. Well, yeah, it's a great question. And there's, we do actually see if I can like talk and do stuff at the same time but we I'm going to paste this networking resource page in the chat because we do believe we still have a like a template. You know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel on that so there's a template and some of these questions. But like, yeah, it's like sort of in the middle of the page where there's an idea of how would you someone you don't know how would you just reach out to them. So, on, you can it's going to be a little bit easier because everyone on there is you have I'm affiliated so you know that's much more like hey I saw your profile and you can and I'm really interested in your role or the company you work for I see we had the same major whatever it might be, like you're both, you know, they're a U of M alum your U of M students so you already have that, but you might just say like, just a very one liner about what why are you, why did their profile interest you, and just say you know I'm a current student I'm thinking about my options I saw that you work for this company that just I'd love to hear more about you know your path. And then if you're like on LinkedIn, you found some people to talk with on LinkedIn. Again, it might be that you found them through the alumni, you know, filter that was your question was about alumni, but because they're on LinkedIn it's a little bit more like they didn't opt in to you, like you can they're opting in because they want students to contact them with LinkedIn they didn't necessarily make that opt in but U of M alums are very loyal sorts and they're often really happy to hear from current students. So again, you would kind of reach out and just say oh you know I see that we you know you're a U of M alum, I'm currently there, and then something about yeah like the field of study or where they work or whatever it is. But usually just a sense or two about you know kind of that common, that common connection and that you'd love to, and whatever it is you just want to either be connected or do you want to, you know, chat with them for 20 minutes about their job like whatever it is. Was that answer your question. Yes, thank you and actually have a follow up question from what you said. Would you recommend you can beyond just the job search and just sort of for that. What if okay I'm not in the job search right now, but perhaps you know, networking is always important, like, is you can a space for just like, Hey, can we connect or is it typically more for job search in particular. It's more for connecting and that's actually a really great question because I think that, especially, you know, when you're now it's good to network like early in your career. And, you know, a lot of times like if you're reaching out to someone like hey I'm job searching like I need a job, like you that that actually there's people that may not even respond to that. And part of it is that, not that they don't want to be helpful but not everyone has jobs to give right. So if you're leading with that like, you know, if I heard that I'd be like, I actually have any jobs to give so I'm not sure. Like, hey, like I'm just wanting to talk I'm wanting to learn more about you know my options. So you're asking for information. Everyone has information to give and so it's actually, it's that like networking and learning about different companies or roles or possible trajectories from a certain major. That's where you want to lead with in terms of your networking and everyone knows that part of why you're networking is one day you'll be job searching. You know, and certainly networking conversations can lead to learning about a job opportunity or someone saying hey send me your resume I'll keep that on file for when we have a posting. I really want to lead with, hey, I'd love to learn more about you and your career and where you work, and you'll get more response from that and more people will feel like they can be helpful in that space. And people often feel flattered, actually that you're asking them for, you know, some information. Yeah, that's what I was going to say is like if nothing else people love to tell their story and like share their experience and so if that's what the ask is like I'm just curious about how you got to this company or how you selected this area of study, or what it's like to be a lawyer in the city or you know whatever it may be. People are usually willing to share, you know, it's just kind of in our human nature so it does it does tend to be fruitful if that's kind of the starting place people are usually pretty willing to connect with you in that way. Thank you okay and on the different side of the same coin, could we do the same with employers and like the ones that have like their public staff list and people that you could contact. Is it weird to reach out if I'm not in the job search and just try to make a connection or is it more for like, I am job searching and I am available for a job soon. Yeah, that's a great question I would say probably like the best route to take there would be. If you find that someone at the organization is an alumni that is like a great kind of like checking both boxes of I'd really love to hear your story and you know about your time in Michigan, and I'm interested in the organization and the company work for it like you're still not asking for anything other than a connection with employers, it can be kind of dependent on like their organization size if they're in a recruiting season or recruiting cycle. So, you know like obviously there's a lot of demand for, for tech. So if you reach out to someone from Google and you're like hey, I just would like to connect with you. They might not be as motivated to because they could be in like hundreds of those messages every single day. But if it's like, you know, a smaller mid to small size organization you're really interested in. I think there's probably a likelihood they're very happy you're reaching out and trying to connect with them. Not to say that those are like definite rates definitely going to be that way in either one of those situations but I always like to kind of like be realistic and transparent to make sure you know people aren't thinking like this is a guaranteed way to connect with employers I think with them it's just like a little bit different. LinkedIn actually the alumni tool on LinkedIn on the University of Michigan page. You can find people who are alumni by specific company you can do that and you can too. But I might take that route to if you want to connect with an organization see if they have you know an alumni community and then you can get plugged in that way. Thank you so much. I am so grateful for your time and your wisdom that you shared with us today. And I also want to thank our audience members for your presence and your participation. The recording of this event will be sent to you once it has been processed, which takes a few weeks and remember please when you get the opportunity for short break pop over to the evaluation survey so that we can continue to improve our programs for the panelists email addresses will be placed in the chat right now so that you can reach out to them if you have any further questions. Okay, thank you. Have a good day. Take care of yourselves. Thanks everyone. Thank you.