Preparing Trinity students to take the next step

By Jim Smith

When Daya Fields enrolled at Trinity in 1994 as an engineering major, there were very few first-year students who took advantage of the opportunities offered by the College’s Career Services Office. Traditionally, Fields recalls, most students did not begin to explore how Career Services might be able to help them until they began to think about careers in earnest. And that usually didn’t happen until their junior year; maybe not even until they were seniors. Shortly after she discovered Career Services, however, Fields became one of the department’s strongest advocates, and today she eagerly encourages students to become involved as early as possible in their college years.

            “It’s important not to think about Career Services as just an immediate outlet for finding a job,” Fields says. “It’s much more than that. It can also provide students and alumni with valuable tools to help them position themselves for long-term career goals, which may be decades away.”

            Fields’s initiation into Career Services came in 1998. After a semester of working closely with staff members at the Career Services Office, she accepted a position as a coordinator for the office’s summer internship program between graduation and the start of her full-time job. The Hartford Summer Career Exploration Program (HSCEP) is an innovative effort through which Trinity students participate in paid summer internships in both nonprofit and for-profit businesses throughout Greater Hartford while engaging in community service and leadership activities. Residing on campus and working in the city, they learn about the world of work by participating in business-related projects and developing career-related skills, such as time management and business writing. They also benefit from an intensive summer of career-related programs, during which they learn about professional writing, presentation skills, networking, and social options for young business professionals in the Hartford area.

            For Fields, who spent the summer managing events for the participating students, the program was an eye-opener. Exposure to representatives of various local corporations ultimately led to her first job after graduation. She became an engineering consultant for

the American Insurance Group, formerly Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, where she discovered a career focus while working on the company’s first e-business initiative.

            In January of 2000, when she decided to move back to the Boston area, she knew exactly what kind of resources Career Services could offer her as an alumna. With the office’s help, Fields was able to identify Boston-area alumni working in e-commerce. She also turned to Career Services for assistance in updating her résumé, as well as brushing up on interviewing skills.

            By February of 2000, after posting her credentials on the Internet, she received several calls from executive recruiters and companies concerning a variety of e-business positions in the Boston area. Faced with an unexpected wealth of opportunities, she turned to Career Services again -- this time for counsel on how to negotiate a higher salary offer. After briefly holding a position with an e-business consulting firm that suffered severe layoffs within months of her start date, Fields quickly landed another opportunity with State Street Global Advisors in their Internet Technology Services Group, where she is currently employed. “During the time I needed to get back on my feet, Career Services was there, and that’s why I value their guidance and direction even more as an alum,” Fields says.

Evolving services in a new economy

            Fields’s story exemplifies many of the changes that have made Career Services a rapidly evolving work in progress over the past four years. Key to the department’s success has been the arrival of Lanna Hagge, the department’s director [pictured below], who came to Trinity from Oberlin College in 1997. The dramatically expanded scope of programs offered by Career Services, now available in the new 4,400-square-foot Admissions and Career Services Center is a tribute to Hagge’s vision for what the department should be and do.

            “Career Services is about more than simply finding employment,” she says. “It’s about training for the management of one’s career. We try to equip students with the skills they’ll need to make wise decisions and develop rewarding careers.”

            Toward that end, Hagge works hard to ensure that all Trinity students are aware of Career Services from the moment they arrive on campus, and that they come to see the department as a significant asset to their education and to their lives.

            To help her in that process, she employs a variety of informational tools, including a plan designed to help every student move through college with an increasingly clear perspective on career goals and growing proficiency in the skills needed to make career dreams come true. For instance, “Check Points Leading to a Successful Launch from Trinity,” a list of activities that every first-year student receives before arriving on campus, includes 21 items to be completed during the first year. Among them:

1.  completing a personal profile on the “Trinity Recruiting” Web site “to ensure you receive information about summer opportunities and alumni networking events and information sessions,”

2.  creating a résumé “to be ready for volunteer organizations and summer opportunities by October,”

3.  developing good academic skills, and

4.  completing an interest inventory designed to help you identify career areas you might want to explore.

            “It’s important for students to begin thinking about careers early, so they can make the most productive use of their four years of undergraduate education,” says Hagge. To maximize the likelihood that students will avail themselves of what Career Services has to offer, she is a relentless and unabashed communicator. Enlisting parents in the process, for instance, she sends out copies of “Check Points” with a note that says, “How well is your son or daughter positioning himself or herself for the initial years after Trinity? A helpful nudge from a family member can get a student started in the right direction.”

            The Internet is also one of her greatest allies. With e-mail, Career Services is able to reach most students much more conveniently than in the past. Hagge uses e-mail to inform students about the wide range of programs -- such as workshops, alumni presentations, campus visits by potential employers, and presentations about career-related skills that Career Services offers on a regular basis. When students have completed a personal profile and interest inventory, Career Services uses e-mail to alert them to upcoming programs about which they might have a specific interest.

 Satisfied students

      “My involvement with Career Services was a very positive experience,” says Christina Hull of Teaneck, N. J., who graduated in May with a degree in biology.

            “I had a clear sense of the kinds of career-related things I wanted to accomplish during my undergraduate education,” says Hull, who also came to Trinity with an interest in pursuing more than one career track. “I majored in biology, because I have an interest in medicine. But I also knew I wanted to explore other options. To make the most of my education, I felt it was important to find a significant internship opportunity for the summer following my freshman year.”

            With Career Services’s assistance, Hull landed a slot at the prestigious Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, Maine, one of the world’s leading genetics research facilities. Hull’s successful actualization of her first-year goals began with her first visit to Career Services a week after she arrived on campus. During her first year, career advisers helped her develop a résumé and craft compelling cover letters, worked with her on interviewing skills, and talked with her extensively about career objectives and the advantages and disadvantages of career alternatives.

            In the summer following her sophomore year, Hull applied for a business-related slot in the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity career program and landed an investment banking position in the global chemicals group at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. It was a good fit, allowing her to use knowledge that had won her a chemistry award at Trinity during her first year.

            It turned out to be an employment adventure that paid off. Intrigued by the world of business, she applied for, and was hired for a management consulting position in the strategic practice group at Booz Allen & Hamilton in New York the following summer, where her business and science interests continued to run parallel as she became involved in strategy development for a large biotechnology practice.

            Though Hull remains interested in science, she has found business to be a rewarding career option and, thanks to assistance from Career Services, took an investment banking position with Goldman Sachs in New York right after graduation. “Career Services helped me throughout my undergraduate education,” she says. “I got help with practical matters such as résumé development and interviewing skills and equally useful counsel as I sorted out career alternatives.”

            Adam Strogoff, of Worcester, Mass., another May graduate, concurs with Hull’s assessment. “The advisers at Career Services were like coaches for me,” says Strogoff. “When I actively started looking for a job, I had already worked with them on my résumé and job search tools, so I followed their method of looking for a job religiously.”

            Strogoff attended seminars and programs on job-search strategies; posted his résumé on the Career Services Web site and used the site to research job leads; attended recruiting consortia in Boston and New York, where he had several interviews; and talked with alumni. In the spring, following interviews on campus and in New York, he was hired by Berkshire Capital Corporation, where he will serve as an investment-banking analyst in the mergers and acquisitions area.

            “At every step of the process, Career Services was enormously helpful,” Strogoff says. “They’re very thorough. They helped me stay focused on my goal, set up interviews, and follow through. Nothing falls through the cracks.”

            Equally quick to applaud the program is Hartford resident Melissa Craig, who found two different summer jobs -- as a ranger with the Knox Parks Foundation after her first year and as an assistant program coordinator as a rising junior with the Greater Hartford Arts Council -- with help from Career Services. Craig, who just graduated, also worked as a Career Services office assistant during her sophomore and junior years.

            “I benefited in many ways from my involvement with Career Services,” she says. “They set a high standard and help you to live up to it. Working in the department, I’ve watched it grow. More students are definitely using the services offered today, and Career Services provides many tools to help them achieve their goals.”

            “Trinity has a long history of graduating leaders in academia, industry, and communities,” says Hagge. “One of the truly extraordinary qualities of this institution is that individuals can chart their own unique paths to success. Whether a student decides to attend graduate school, apply for a fellowship, or take a job, we are here to help remove the roadblocks.”