10 Months On The Job

It’s been 10 months since I started working in Career Services at UMD. Seriously, 10 months?! I cannot believe how time has flown by. I’ve spent that 10 months acclimating to UMD, Duluth, and Minnesota. I have absolutely fallen in love with the campus and the new city that I call home. I hope that I don’t leave here for a long time to come. At this point last year, I had found a place to live and I was working my butt off to finish the required contact hours for my internship. I may have had a job offer, but I still had to graduate.

I’ve talked about my roles in the office before. Since my position in the office was brand new…it was largely undefined (though there were rough ideas) with exception of being a counselor. I fell into the roles of working with technology and international internships. I’ve loved both of those areas so far and want to immerse myself into them more as my time at UMD continues. With technology I’ve increased my overall comfort level with tech and now I want to learn some new programs. Our social media efforts are really starting to take off. Probably one of our most exciting additions this year has been the use of Pinterest. Yes! I’m running a Pinterest page for our office. You should check it out here! I love it especially for showing students how to dress for interviews, job fairs, and on the job or internship. I have also had the opportunity to add or flesh out a couple content areas on our website: current trends and social media. I have some new website content projects in the works that I’m really excited about. I will definitely share when they’re live! My interest in international internships has led to attending the Global Internship Conference at UC Berkeley in June. I’m super excited to spend two days learning even more about international internships from educators from around the world. Getting to see Laura during that conference will just be icing on the cake. A few other roles that have started to creep into my position include assessment and marketing. These two items are still fairly new and I’m curious to see how they really pan out.

I spend the majority of my day working with students either individually or in groups. I love my time working with students! They are all so interesting and I love helping them realize what it is that they want to do with their college education. I’ve had more students this semester that are repeats and I love being able to follow up with how their searches and other issues are progressing.

Making friends in Duluth has been a bit of a tougher challenge than I thought it would be. Enter Kendra. She has been a solid lunch buddy and a fellow new professional. We work in completely different areas of the University (she in the Med School and me in Student Life) and we have be able to use our time together to debrief about different issues we are facing in our respective work environments. Beyond lunch buddy and fellow new pro, we’re friends (and technically family). We’re friends who can spend a Saturday running errands around town, crafting, blogging (she just started blogging and I recommend you check out her blog!), or just visiting. While I was at ACPA a few weeks ago, I finally voiced out loud to my friend Steph that if I didn’t have this connection with Kendra, I don’t think I’d be as happy as I am now. I don’t know if I would love Duluth as much as I do if I didn’t have this solid friendship. So, thanks Kendra! I think that professional and personal realms really do impact each other greatly and I’m glad that they are both so positive right now. I will say, it wouldn’t suck to find a few more solid friends that could join in on our weekend frivality.

Ultimately, things are going well. The last 10 months have been a blast and I’m excited to find out what the future months at UMD and in Duluth have in store for me.

Breaking into Spring

It’s Spring Break here in the Northland…which means work is super quiet. Yay! As much as I love working with students day in and day out, it’s nice to have the day to myself sometimes. I’ve used my time to get ready for the conference I’m going to at the end of the month, to work on a couple long-term projects I have, and to prep for an event on-campus our office is participating in next week.

My Spring Break kicked off with a weekend visit from my parents. We spent a very strenuous (insert “Sarcasm” sign a la Big Bang Theory) weekend of eating out and enjoying the nice weather by walking on the Lakewalk. I still need to go through my photos from the weekend so I should have those up in the next day or two. Here’s a photo I snapped with my phone…my brand new iPhone 4S! I’ve had an iPhone 3G for the last 2 years, so it was absolutely wonderful to upgrade finally.

Lake Superior from the shore by Canal Park

With my parents came a brand new bookcase my dad built for me. On Monday evening I finally put binders from grad school and books on it and did some styling. It’s mind boggling the amount of books I could actually stuff onto that thing. However, I think it’ll always be a mix between books and decor.

My new bookcase!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this week. We’ve had temps in the 50s and there’s promise of warmer weather this coming weekend and next week. I did my exercise outside Tuesday after work and tackled another chunk of the Lakewalk. It seemed that everyone from the casual stroller to the serious runner were out on the Lakewalk.

Lake Superior & Duluth from the Lakewalk

I’m excited for tomorrow because my lunch buddy will be back in town! How does it happen that the week we could have our pick of lunch tables at the prime lunch time, she’s off across the country at a conference? Ah, it’s all good. I’ll get to hear about her trip at lunch tomorrow.

All in all, it’s been a nice Spring Break. How are you celebrating the return of spring?

 

Snow, Snow, Snow!

This week has been all about the snow. Last Saturday, I attended the American Birkebeiner in Wisconsin to watch some friends ski. On Sunday, we all went snowshoeing. Yesterday, we had a snow day in Duluth because we were hit with a blizzard.

First, let’s start with the Birkie. This race is kind of a big deal. It reached its cap of 9,000 participants total for all the various races that take place during the event. It was my first time attending the event. Heck, it was my first time attending a ski race of any kind. All I can say is that it was fun. My hosts were awesome by giving my a crash course on cross country skiing and the history of the event. The weather was decent and we had fun traipsing around Hayward while we wanted for all in our party to finish the race. I hope that I’ll be returning to this race to cheer friends/family on for years to come.

The Birkie finish line on the Main Street of Hayward

On Sunday, our whole group went snowshoeing on the North Country National Scenic Trail near Brule, WI (teeny tiny town in northern WI). Yet another first for me…snowshoeing. It took a little bit (and some readjusting) but I got the hang of the whole snowshoeing thing. So fun! I want/need to do this again! It was so much fun being out in the woods and the fresh air. The company was pretty fantastic, too.

My snowshoes

The trail sign

Our group: Eric, Kendra, Peter, & me (Deb’s behind the camera)

Some trees looking from below

The next epic occurance of snow included a blizzard that basically shut down the entire city of Duluth yesterday. On Tuesday evening at 10:45pm (before it even started snowing), I got the most wonderful text message, “UMD Alert: UMD will close on 2/29/2012 due to weather. All activities are expected to resume on 3/1/2012.” Yay, a snow day!! I still ended waking up early, but took a nap during the morning. I spent my day being amazed at the amount of wind coming off Lake Superior, watching daytime tv like Live with Kelly, knitting, cleaning, laundry, pinning on Pinterest, and watching Beauty and the Beast. Yep, it was a pretty awesome snow day. All I can say is that I love that I signed up for the text alerts for our campus. Great way to get pressing news right from the source. We were suppose to get about half our snow Tuesday night and the rest on Wednesday during the day. Well, it didn’t start snowing probably until around 4am. The real action started around 7am. The wind was CRAZY!

Blizzard from the front door of my apartment building (taken with my iPhone and looking through the glass of the door – I was not about to try going outside)

When it was all said and done, I think the reported snow total was 9-10 inches. However, that was near the airport which is not near the water at all. We have multiple climate zones in Duluth depending on your proximity to the water and how high up on the hill you are. All I know is that we got a lot of snow and it was heavy.

Out my window Wednesday late afternoon (base of the window is ground level)

Trees this morning while I went out to my car

The mess behind my car (not fun!) – I’m the blue car on the left

It took me about a half an hour to clean the snow from behind my car. Luckily, during the last 10 minutes of my shoveling, 3 guys helped me and were going to help push me out if needed. Yay for nice neighbors!!

So that’s my story of snow. Snow has been a rarity this winter so it was nice to see it finally arrive. I will say though, Spring better not be delayed just because Winter finally decided to show up at the end of February.

Anyone else survive a blizzard recently?

Career Counselor by Day

The past weeks have been lacking in the writing inspiration department. I have a list of topic ideas I could have worked from, but I just wasn’t feeling that spark to write. Leave it to Katy Widrick’s Healthy Living in a Hectic World blog to save the day. The other day she had a post chronicling her day and I thought, I could do that. I love my day job of being a career counselor and I have no intention of leaving it anytime soon. I thought doing a “day in the life” type post could be helpful for other student affairs individuals to see what career services is like, and also to lift the veil of mystery for those people who don’t work at a university. I sent out a tweet during the day yesterday asking if people had questions they would like to see addressed. I was excited that I actually received a few responses. So, I’ll be making sure to answer those questions throughout the post. If you have other questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you!

Day of chronicling = Thursday, February 16th, 2012

5:30am: I woke 30 minutes before my alarm went off. I didn’t sleep well and I blame the Culver’s dinner I had the night before. I’ve been eating healthier lately and I think my body was just sending me a message to just not even get the greasy food. Anyway, I laid in bed reading blogs on my phone until my alarm actually went off.

6-6:20am: Shower

6:20-7:10am: Eat breakfast (cereal & orange juice) and read more blog posts. My blog reader is out of control at the moment. I used the extra time during my morning routine to get some reading done. I have over 40 blogs in my blog reader and I don’t read every one everyday…and the build up happens.

7:10-7:35am: Finish getting ready by doing my hair and putting my face on. I also use this time to make my morning cappuccino (to be enjoyed at the office) and to put together my lunch.

Stuff to take into work

7:35-7:50am: Scrape off the car & drive to campus. There was hardly any traffic! I only have about a 5 minute drive to campus, but with 2 left turns, I can end up waiting a ridiculous amount time. I currently have a mix cd from about a year ago in my cd player and I had Adele’s Rolling in the Deep blaring. How better to start a morning than to think I could ever match Adele in singing ability? Here are my favorite parts of the morning commute into campus, 1) coming over this one certain hill and having an amazing view of Lake Superior, and 2) watching the American flag in front of our administration building being raised by students from our Air Force ROTC program. On this particular morning, I was probably about 5-10 minutes early for the flag raising.

Proof that we actually got a little bit of snow

Early morning sun

7:50-8am: Get settled in my office and rev up the computer. My normal work hours are 8am – 4:30pm. I always try to come in a little early so that I can have a semi-decent parking spot.

8-8:40am: Drink my cappuccino that I brought from home. I bring in my own so that I don’t have to shell out $4 on a coffee on campus. I’m working on a hazelnut flavor. It’s no peppermint mocha, but it’ll do for the time being. I also use this time to rev up email and Twitter (my own and our office account). I also take a little time to check in with a few of my regular blogs that post every morning.

My office

One of my favorite features in my office

8:20am: Pandora is on for the day. I’m loving my new Keri Noble station. I saw her in concert here in Duluth last weekend. Amazing! Think Adele meets Sarah McLachlan.

8:40am – 8:55am: Walk over to our administration building to fill my water bottle (it’s a new fountain that counts the number of plastic bottles being saved; side note #2 – our buildings are all connected thanks to being in Northern Minnesota and on top of a huge hill next to a Great Lake) and also take time to check in with people in the office who’ve come in since I did.

8:55-10am: Tackle my inbox, work on a Prezi presentation for a workshop I’m giving next week on job search strategies, consult with another counselor that I am co-presenting with later in the day for an interviewing workshop.

10-10:30am: First student appointment (I very rarely have an appointment before 10am). The student wanted to talk job search strategies since they recently graduated. After each appointment, I quick jot notes on our check-in sheets so that I have something of substance to enter into our online note system at a later date.

10:30-11am: Catch up on email and Twitter. I noticed there’s an interesting conversation about the impact of gaming, gender, and campus involvement/engagement happening between student affairs people on my personal account. A skill set that really helped me in securing my current position is social media. A key part of my of my role is to monitor our Twitter account (@umdcareers) and to help coordinate all of our social media efforts that also include Facebook and LinkedIn. I also am tackling how we can use Pinterest for our office. I know, I brought the addiction to work. It’s also the time to sneak in my morning snack.

Morning snack

11am-12:05pm: Appointment #2 for the day. This one is trying to figure out shifting of the major and minor after realizing the career they’ve been working for, isn’t something they actually want to do. To be honest, while we got some great work done in this session, it was draining for me. I really do like this types of appointments because I feel that they tend to make the most difference for the students involved. Deciding what to major in and what to do with that major are heavy, daunting, and sometimes scary questions to answer. It’s the meat of what I do on a daily basis, and I love it! It just takes a lot of effort.

12:05pm: Realized I totally forgot to email the knitting group that the space was reserved for the lunch hour. The one time I’m in charge of that task and I partially drop the ball. I say partially because I did reserve the space.

12:05-1pm: Lunchtime! Thursdays are knitting group day. We had kind of a small group because some people were out of town for the day. I joined the knitting group because, 1) I knit and 2) my assistant director is a part of the group and she invited me to come when I first started working on campus last summer. It’s a nice way to get out of the office and to meet up with people from across campus that I normally would never see.

Current knitting project - an awesomely pink scarf

1-2pm: Appointment #3 – a UMD alum who is looking at a career shift and wanting to know more about basic computer and other skills employers are looking for.

2-2:20pm: Touch base once again with the other counselor I’m presenting with later in the day. I also chatted with one of our student employees and stretched my legs a bit.

2:20-3pm: Email and Twitter catchup. I worked more on my Prezi presentation for next week.

My daily view, currently boasting a beautiful picture of New Zealand by Devon from answeringoliver.com

3-3:40pm: I tuned in for HigherEdLive, a webcast that happens as a form of online professional development. The topic is Twitter in Education. While I listened, I worked on putting together information on career development theory for a presentation I’m doing for our student employees next week.

My Target dog displayed prominently on my desk

3:50-5:40pm: Interviewing workshop. We had a small group attend and it was highly interactive and they had great questions. Completely quality over quantity.

5:40-6:30pm: Light grocery shopping and drive home. My favorite part of driving home in the dark – seeing College of St. Scholastica (the Catholic college right by UMD) all lit up. It’s beautiful.

6:30-7pm: Check the mail, put groceries away, put on my pajamas, and make dinner.

7-7:30pm: Big Bang Theory time! I also ate dinner, which was a yummy pizza I picked up while grocery shopping.

7:30-8pm: Read blog posts

8-8:30pm: Tried to watch something on Netflix, but my internet was moving super slow.

8:30-9: Edit pictures taken throughout the day to be used in this blog post.

9-10:20pm: Call my sister and we have a wonderful chat to catch up on our week. Our calls always seem to be long like this. I blame my mom and aunt for setting the precedent of always having long phone calls.

10:20-10:50pm: Get ready for bed and read in a book.

10:50pm: Lights out and I’m ready to do it all again the next day.

Questions people asked:

Biggest challenges associated with the position: fitting everything into the day. On this particular day I only had 3 appointments and I generally have 5 a day on most days. I cherish the 2 hours in the morning and every spare minute I can grab throughout the day to work on various tasks and projects.

Direction I see the field heading: embedding technology and different media in everything we do. Our office is heading this way already, which is awesome. We are utilizing various methods of social media and also seeing how we incorporate items, like iPads, into our daily routine.

Using social media: we use it and I love it! We are able to have students utilize reliable resources at any time of the day. Plus, getting to connect with students 1:1 even when they aren’t in our office, is great.

How do I encourage students: I try to help the students find the good in every situation, even if they are devastated at realizing they don’t want to do whatever career they’ve been planning for, for however long they’ve been planning it. Two of my strengths (according to StrengthsQuest) are positivity and developer. Both of them work extremely well for encouraging students to explore their options.

My favorite part: when a student realizes that everything is going to be okay and when they transition from confusion and not knowing, to making a decision (it’s a beautiful realization to watch as it unfolds). I haven’t been in my position long enough to work with students at multiple points in their time at UMD (such as freshman year and almost graduating) and I am very much looking forward to seeing those changes in students too.

Okay, so this post ended up being incredibly long. Sorry about that, but I finally had something to say! Hope you enjoyed this snapshot of a day of being a career counselor. I enjoyed chronicling the day. It brought back some memories of my internship last year where I had to account for every minute of my day. Let me know if you have more questions.

And Semester 1 is Done!

Well, it’s almost done. We have classes this week and then finals before winter break officially starts. One thing I didn’t expect from this first semester at UMD was for my blog to take a back seat. I figured I’d have more time to commit, not less. I definitely worked on post ideas. It was my execution skills that were lacking. I want to change that. I have some exciting things in the works for my 2nd semester at UMD, all of which I cannot wait to share with you!

On the 20th of this month, I’ll be hitting my 6 month mark at work at UMD. Yay! As I shared with family and friends in my Christmas letter, I knew UMD was the right place for me even before I was offered the job. That first night when I walked around campus before my interview, I just felt at home. Honestly, I still feel that way. I couldn’t have asked for a better reception.

My semester has been filled with a lot of presentations and individual appointments. I completed over 40 presentations this semester (some alone and some with another presenter). The majority of these presentations were for the freshman UMD seminar class, along with presentations about interviewing, using social media in your job search, and interning abroad. I even got to present to a few student organizations on various topics. In the UMD Seminar presentation, I talked about Career Services, choosing a major and/or career, and a short interest assessment with more information for the students about interests. My favorite part of these presentations was working with our intern who is a graduating senior from the psychology department. It was fun to watch her become more comfortable with the presentation content and to really settle into her own career choices. She came into our office wanting to pursue either K-12 counseling or Career/Higher Education counseling. It was exciting to see how sure she became with her choice to pursue higher education as the semester continued. Next semester will bring us another intern and another adventure of self-discovery.

This semester I had the opportunity to travel in Minnesota for various reasons. I was able to attend the MCPA conference in October down in the Twin Cities. MCPA is the Minnesota College Personnel Association and is a state chapter of the larger national organization of ACPA. It was nice to start to get to know other people from throughout the state of Minnesota. The only thing I really didn’t like about the conference was being the only person from my institution to attend. It was hard to be introduced to new ideas and not be able to debrief with someone who could understand how the ideas could be implemented on our campus. The fun part was staying with a friend of mine instead of at a hotel. The week after I was at MCPA, I returned to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St.Paul for anyone not familiar with the Midwest) for training on the StrengthsQuest assessment. This training was awesome! It was an intensive day, and I learned so much. The philosophy behind StrengthsQuest is to find out what we are naturally good at and then work on those areas to elevate them from natural talents to bonafide strengths. Basically, instead of trying to elevate our weaknesses to mediocre, we work to excel at what we naturally are good at. My strengths are: Input (collecting things, ideas, etc.), Learner (thirst for knowledge), Positivity (glass super full type of person), Developer (encourage what we see in others), and WOO (people person). All of my strengths help me to understand how I can best serve my students and their needs.

Now that semester 1 at UMD is just about wrapped up, I’m excited to see what semester 2 will bring!

Photo Friday: One Step Closer…

…to being a Minnesotan. I recently bought Minnesota plates for my car and attended the MN State Fair. I had some really good food at the State Fair. However, I did miss out on cheese curds, and that just bummed me out a bit.

No joke, I've wanted the Loon license plate since I found out I was moving to MN.

These were the cutest darn baby goats I've ever seen.

Award winning apples

…to having my apartment finally settled. Last weekend, I bought a couple great prints for my bedroom. I can’t wait hang them. Yesterday, my office/craft room (aka: the second bedroom) went from a disaster zone to almost completely organized. I had water issues in this room a couple weeks ago and those are finally cleared up.

Bringing the outdoors in

Office/Craft room post-flooding, pre-reorganization

Office/craft room in much better shape

…to the autumn season. First off, I just have to say that I love Fall. It has something to do with the smells of the season. Yum. A couple days ago, I had to break out a sweatshirt because I was a little cold. Even though it’s rather thin sweatshirt (which is awesome), it made me a little sad to have to break it out. Also, the academic year is starting! The buzz on-campus is definitely increasing and I’m excited to find out what it’s like to be at UMD while students are around.

The awesome lightweight sweatshirt I wore this week. Yay UMD!

…to being tech savvy. I recently got an iPad through work. Three words: I love it!

LOVE!

What’s Now? Goals for the Academic Year

Last night, I wrote about contemplating the question of “What’s next?” in relation to my professional career. As I was writing, I was thinking that I should focus on the present (something we’re taught to do as counselors) and enjoy my first year working at UMD. I have a long career ahead of me and I don’t need to rush into figuring everything out right now. I’m only 28 and that is rather young for working in higher education (I think that’s the result of needing at least a master’s degree to really break into any department). So, I might as well figure out what I want to accomplish in my first year on the job at UMD.

Here are some of the preliminary thoughts I’ve had in relation to goals for the upcoming academic year. (For those reading this who are not in the world of education, I live my life as if August is the first month of the year.) Also, some of these goals are personal ones and don’t have much to do with my job.

• Expand on the roles that I’ve found myself gravitating towards (technology & work/intern abroad). Read more about these areas. I need to kick my Input & Learner strengths into gear.
• Involvement in on-campus activities. I don’t know yet what this is going to look like. It could be being on a committee of some sort or attending events from plays to hockey games to support students.
• Join professional organizations in Minnesota. I plan on being here awhile, so I might as well get to know people working at other institutions.
• Increase my involvement in ACPA. I’ve already volunteered to review proposals for convention programs for the national convention taking place next March in Louisville.
• Write more. I’ve been thinking about proposing guest posts for a few sites and am excited about the prospect of branching out on my writing abilities.
• Work on improving my blogging skills. I posted on this a bit ago.
• Have fun at work!
• Learn more about the hard sciences (biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, etc.). This is definitely needed seeing as biology is one of the top 3 majors at UMD (along with psychology & communication) and we have med & pharmacy schools on campus.
• Earn my certifications for the Strong Interest Inventory and StrengthsQuest. These are two assessments offered by my office and I need to be able to interpret them for students. Training for the Strong is already underway!
• Cut down on my soda intake and increase my water intake. I’m doing well on the water front and not so much on the soda front. However, I haven’t been conciously working on the soda cutdown much lately.

I’m sure this list will change as time goes on…especially as I begin to flesh out my role as a career counselor. I’ll try to keep you updated on my goals as the school year progresses.

What is one of your goals for the next year?

Month 2 On The Job: Finding My Role(s)

I’m smack in the middle of my 2nd month at my new job and thought it was time to take a look at the roles in the office I find myself in. I have the distinct pleasure of having a position in the office that it brand new. It’s so nice during introductions to not have to listen to: “This is Ellen, she’s the new so-and-so.” Instead, I get: “This is Ellen, she’s our new counselor.” So much better. Since I am not following someone in a position, I didn’t automatically have roles in the office that I needed to fit into. While some roles were clearly stated in the position description, such as taking counseling appointments, other roles were either vaguely implied through the PD or I have just naturally found myself in them. Does that make any sense? By finding my roles, I’ve begun to settle into the normal hum of the office.

One of the main roles I have found myself in has to do with technology. I’m not talking about the “maintain our website” type of technology. I’m in more of the “social media; web research to find, analyze, & synthesize new resources; help put cool buttons in the email signature” type of technology. I love it! Coming into this job I had a decent set of tech skills and I’m excited to hone and expand those skills. In fact, my new director said that my social media skills (among other facets of my background and interview) were what set me apart from the other candidates for the position. Yay!

The other main role I have found myself in is knowledge of using resources to research working/interning abroad. We subscribe to a program called “Going Global” that is a huge database that students can use to research different countries, look for jobs or internships, research companies, etc. They can also do all of those things for major metro areas of the United States. There’s information ranging from cost of living, to employment trends to lists of nonprofits and volunteer opportunities in the area. Long story short, I have extensive experience with using the program because of my internship at UW-Madison. The UMD office purchased the program within the past year and have been so busy that they really haven’t had time to get  to know the program. I’ve been tasked with training the rest of the staff on the program and my knowledge of Going Global has mushroomed into other responsibilities.

So where have these roles taken me so far? Presentation land! When we were scheduling all of our presentations for the fall semester, I was asked what I could do. We ended up adding two new presentations to the roster. I’ll be presenting on Social Media in the Job Search and Working/Interning Abroad & using Going Global. I’m on the docket to present about social media four times and the Going Global piece twice this semester. I can’t wait to start diving into the research and putting together the presentations. I hope that I can relay my enthusiasm for the topics to the students in attendance. One of my goals is to incorporate more daily reading about both topics so that the knowledge becomes second nature to me.

How have you found the roles in a new job? Was it difficult to settle into someone else’s spot? What are your favorite roles at work?

What’s in a Brand?

Next week, I’ll have been at my new job for a month. Yay! That fact coupled with articles and a few books I’ve been reading at work have got me thinking about my brand. Yes, my brand. For those not familiar with branding here’s the quick version I use when working with students: You are a product (skills, abilities, experiences, ideas, etc.) and you are trying to market, or “brand,” your product to eventually secure either an internship or job. The branding materials can encompass print (resume, cover letter, & other application materials), in-person (interview), online (blogs, other websites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), and who you surround yourself with (references). The goal is to have each of the branding materials to send the same message about you out into the world. With all of that said, I worked hard during grad school to ensure that everything I was putting out into the world was true to my personality and my “brand.” The biggest test that my brand has endured thus far was the interview process for the job I currently hold. One part of the interview was to conduct a 10 minute role play of a career counseling appointment. I learned about the topic when the student talking about her issue. Good counseling skills are hard to fake. Either you’ve got them, or you don’t. I’m thinking my brand passed the test, otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this branding idea. As I have been reading different articles about branding, I started to think about how I’ve brought my brand into my new job. Am I living up to how I interviewed and what my references said about me? This question was rolling around in my head for a solid day or so before I really came up with the answer. Summer is a fairly slow time in career services, so I’ve spent a lot of my time working on training items, reviewing resumes that students are sending in, and reading (books & articles). My new director had a handful of books ordered for me to get my library of resources going. What I have done includes contributing ideas in the few meetings we’ve had, and just being myself. I’m excited to experience what the office is like during the regular academic year.

The other question I’ve been asking myself is, “How can I continue working on my brand through my new job?” Here’s what I came up with so far:

• Expand my knowledge and abilities in relation to social media. This skill set was what set me apart from my competition so I need to make sure that it keeps growing.
• Getting involved with professional organizations and on-campus. So far, I have been involved mostly with organizations that service the student affairs profession as a whole. I’m excited to become more involved with career-related organizations about both the national and state levels.
• Sharing resources with colleagues and students. Finding new resources is always fun, too.

So here’s my advice for students/grad students/new professionals: if your brand represents who you truly are, transitioning your brand into a new workplace shouldn’t be too difficult. Growing your brand is where it can get a bit challenging. Keep your eyes and ears open for possibilities. If you have connected yourself well connected through social media, ask if anyone knows of opportunities in your field that would allow you to establish yourself as a legitimate player and the result will be your brand growing. You can also ask this of people you know in-person as well.

Here’s a brand growth example that I follow and use to inspire where I want to go with my “brand.” Laura was one of my co-workers at UW-Whitewater and she has worked diligently to establish herself in the field of career services with an emphasis in internships. The following examples of her work encompass her online presence and professional organizations. From my own observations, she works well with students, colleagues, and employers.

Laura utilized the UWW Internships Blog as a vehicle to relay information to students regarding internship resources, tips, event topic connections, and highlighting student internship experiences.

The director that Laura and I shared at UWW (hi Ron!) was always (and still is) encouraging when it comes to trying new methods of technology and connecting with students. Laura was the leader with Twitter in our office. She shares articles and advice from credible resources, interacts with students when they make comments about internships or ask questions, and she advertises local internship opportunities available to UWW students. Laura also contributes to the UWW Career Twitter account that I managed during my last year as a grad assistant.

Laura has also served as the secretary of MACIC (Milwaukee Area College Internship Consortium) and is the new president-elect. Over the years, she has also belonged to broader student affairs and career-related organizations. Currently, she is putting a concentrated effort into internship related organizations.

The final way Laura has grown her brand is as a contributing author to the Student Branding Blog. She was referred to be a contributor because of the work she was already putting out into the world of career services (internships blog, twitter, in-person, etc.). Check out her posts on Wednesdays.

Here’s the lesson I’ve learned from Laura: make sure that your brand is true to who you are and who you want to be in the field that you work in. Thanks Laura for letting me do this little feature on your work!

Also, Laura has some awesome branding skills outside of work. Check out First Class Great Outdoors!

Photos were screenshots from UWW Internships Blog, UWW Internships Twitter page, and the Student Branding Blog.

Week 1: On the Job

This week has marked the first week of my new job as a Career Counselor for the University of Minnesota Duluth! Woohoo! I’ve been waiting so long for this week to come and it’s gone well. I don’t think I could have asked for a warmer welcome. Finally, I have my own office to decorate. It’s a little sparse at the moment and that will be changing in the weeks to come.

 

Can I just say, I love having the double monitor thing going on. It’ll come in handy when I’m meeting with students and am wanting to show them something online. I also have some shelves coming that I think will be going up on the wall somewhere. So what’s more exciting than my office…the name plate next to the door!

One of the neat things about UMD is that all of the buildings are connected to each other. This concept is so beneficial when you have weeks like the current one where it’s raining almost every day all day. I’m slowly learning my way around and I’m told that it’s just going to take a bit to get used to. The “building” that the career services office is located in is nicknamed The Wedge and for good reason…

 

It’s wedge shaped! Our office is on the right hand side along with financial aid and admissions.

I think it’s safe to say that the first week has been quite successful. One of the funnest things was that the staff took me out for lunch on my first day to a restaurant I originally saw on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives called At Sara’s Table/Chester Creek Cafe. Yes, it has two names, and yes, it was awesome. They use a lot of fresh and local products in their menu and the atmosphere was great. I’ll be definitely be visiting there again because I had the most amazing chicken quesadilla. Yum!

Do you remember your last first day/week on your job? Was it better or worse than you anticipated?