The Center for Calling and Career is a center on campus that everyone has heard of and has received emails from, but maybe is not familiar with what kinds of services it has available. Its official mission statement is “to equip students in their pursuit of meaningful work.”

One of the main ways that they do this is by connecting incoming students, but also current students with vocational assessments. They have partnered with PathwayU’s program, which can be found on their Covenant website page, to help with assessing. The website PathwayU is where these assessments can be found. 

“Based upon how they answer questions, they can look at different career matches for them and they can see what sorts of things are out there. And they can actually find out more; they can actually drill down and find out what are hiring forecasts in this area, what the salaries look like in these fields, and things like that,” the Director of the Center for Calling and Career, Dr. John Plating said.

Out of all of the features available on PathwayU, Plating wanted to highlight the “My Journey” feature. “It’s a checklist of things that you can do to help prepare you for life afterwards,” Plating said. The feature breaks down some of the important things to consider and do in each of the four years of College, such as when to work on resumes and when to search for internships.

Another available resource to students is Handshake. Handshake is a tool that allows students not only to see what events the Center for Calling and Career has coming up, but also to search for jobs and internships. Part of Handshake’s usefulness comes from its customization of the jobs that it shows based upon previous searches. 

“Spend a little time on it occasionally,” Plating said. “And then what happens over time is that Handshake starts pushing opportunities to you.”

But what happens if a student just wants to talk to someone in person? Or if a student has questions that looking through these programs cannot help with? “You can always make an appointment right through Handshake,” Plating said. 

A part of the reason that the Center for Calling and Career has started their Buffalo Brunches is in order to help Covenant students to begin to put a face to the emails. If making an appointment is too intimidating for a student, these brunches are a chance to meet Dr. Plating and to ask some questions.

The Center for Calling and Career really wants to help Covenant students; to help them with writing resumes, finding internships, and finding jobs after graduation. 

“People should start to think about getting their resume written sometime in their sophomore year, but if they haven’t gotten in touch with us sometime by their junior year, it would be good for them to do so,” Plating said.

In fact, one of the center’s long term goals is to see students connect with the center earlier, and see the value of the center’s assistance in their career searching.  

But just in general, students should visit the center because according to Plating, they have really good coffee.

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 24, 2021 issue of The Bagpipe.

 

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