As scary as it is to admit, one day, I’ll have to go out into the real world and do the unthinkable…get a job. While it seems ages away at this point, it is still something very crucial to start to think about.  One of the great things about Hopkins is the career center, where students can go to get resume advice, learn to write a cover letter, contact employers and get help in seeking out their future careers.

There are several things which the career center has done very well, and resources that I have found to be very helpful in my search for summer internships. Here are several things which I believe makes our career center unique and which have helped me get a fantastic internship for this summer.

1. Walk-in hours. Depending on your year, the career center will hold walk in help hours. No appointment needed, simply show up an get advice on whatever you need. I took advantage of walk in hours during the fall semester, expecting to enter in to a madhouse of people waiting, only to have someone look at my resume for all of 5 seconds and move on to the next one. But, when I arrived, I found that after only a minute or two of waiting, someone brought me in and stayed with me to go through my entire resume, start to finish, and to give me tons of much needed advice.

A typical career center email

2. Recruitment emails. Every Friday, I get an email with the subject line “Hot Jobs, Cool Internships” sent to my JHU email. In this email is a list of dozens of job openings which match something similar to my major or future career goals. These weekly emails are very helpful in keeping you posted on what kind of opportunities are out there, as well as to remind you to keep an eye on new job postings.

3. J-Connect. J-Connect is Hopkins’ own job listing site, where you can upload your resume, cover letter, and transcript and apply directly to jobs. When you go on, it is often overwhelming the number of posts for job listings. After some search narrowing down, however, chances are you’ll be able to find something that interests you. Once you have found it, you can apply directly from J-Connect and then all that is left is to wait for a reply!

4. Other career centers. In the fall, the employer I will be working for this summer came on a recruiting visit to campus. Due to limited availability and high demand, you actually had to apply to attend their info session. I applied and was not accepted to attend. However, a few months later, the Hopkins career center sent out an email regarding a career fair in New York, which Hopkins teamed up with several other schools to put on and was only open to students from those schools. At this fair, I met with the same employer that I had been turned away from, got an interview, and two weeks later had a position for the summer!

So, when your here, be sure to use the career center as a resource, because it is a great one!

Thanks for reading,

Nick

Current track: Over, Hyper Crush Remix by Drake (JHU_Ruthie, if you are reading this, you should download this song)