With graduation quickly approaching, seniors search for jobs to start their professional careers. ISU Career Services assists students with this process and strives to achieve maximum placement ratings.

Kathryn Wieland, director of Career Services for the College of Business, said they are currently focused on helping students execute a comprehensive job search.

“We build a strategy with each student and then help the student with the execution of that process,” Wieland said. “At this point, we are working with job postings, specific companies and contacts.”

Wieland said it is especially important to have this type of strategy right now because it is beneficial to mix your methods and use several different tools.

Carefully looking through job postings and seeing what is available is one tool for finding jobs, but this alone is not enough, Wieland said. 

“The second tool is identifying good companies and organizations who have hired people in your field before,” Wieland said.

Wieland said that finding companies with a reputation for making good things happen for recent college graduates could have great outcomes.

The third tool is to identify contacts — people in your field of work that may be able to help you with your job search.

“That may mean reaching out to individuals who are alumni from your program here when you don’t know of any other openings,” Wieland said.

Wieland also said that having experience in your field through working an internship could be vital to finding a job.

Taren Crow, director of Career Services for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said typically things die down around this time, but it is still very busy right now.

“Some students really feel good and are really ready to go and have already tackled this process in September. Others are not really sure what they want to do and just start the process later,” Crow said.

Crow said she believes this year has been busier than most because a lot of students are coming back multiple times for one-on-one help.

“Our job search process varies with each student. We mainly focus on getting students’ questions answered and giving students direction as to where they want to go,” Crow said.

Crow said LAS works a little bit differently because when students choose an LAS major, they are essentially choosing a specific career path.

“Because of this, students who are a little more confused tend to delay the job search process a little more,” Crow said.

Overall, Career Services meets their goal of assisting most, if not all, students with the job search process.

“Between graduation and six months afterwards, our placement ratings are typically between 91 and 95 percent depending on how good of a year it is,” Wieland said.

Crow also said that in the 2012-2013 school year, 93 percent of LAS graduates had a job by six months after graduation.