Offices to keep in mind: Career Services and Cooperative Education Center

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With the fall semester coming to an end in little over a month hopefully you are doing well in your classes and are adequately prepared for your remaining exams and quizzes. If you are a freshmen you might be asking yourself a few questions like “Do I want to continue my major?” or “All of these classes are great! My only concern is that classes don’t give me a competitive edge when I graduate, how do I go about gaining that experience?” Ok, most of you maybe were putting that last question off until later but it is definitely a question that you need to address because having work experience coming out of college is shown to give people a competitive edge in the job market. Luckily for you UMass Lowell has the Career Services & Cooperative Education Center which can help, which is conveniently located in room 328 of Southwick Hall on North Campus.

Co-op
The co-op program is open starting your Sophmore year only if you have permission from your department and are in good academic standing. The co-op program is described in three phases. The first phase being Preparation, this phase is meant to ensure that you are professionally ready to begin your co-op. The way that you go about achieving this readiness is by taking a one credit seminar, The Professional Development Seminar. This seminar is meant to provide you with the “necessary structure, resources, and support” to be successful in obtaining and maintaining your co-op. The second phase is the actual work experience. The co-op periods are split up into two different periods. You can either work a two, three-month summer co-op periods or you can work two, six-month co-op periods that take place during the school semester. The summer co-op periods do not interfere with your graduation time but the periods during the semester do, which is something to keep in mind because some classes are only offered during certain semesters. Some employers like to keep the students for the two periods but at the discretion of the company or yourself you can choose to work at another company when it comes time for your second period. After you have completed a period of co-op experience you need to enroll in a one credit co-op assessment course which is meant to assist you in “evaluating, reflecting, and presenting” on your work experience.  
More information about how to go about participating in the co-op program and more information about the program in general can be found at 
Interviewing

What I find to be one of the interesting services offered by the Career Services office, besides a co-op, is the ability to conduct mock interviews. Let’s be honesty everyone loves a good co-op.

Ok, maybe Infinity Ward doesn’t, but most people do

The office goes about conducting them in a number of different ways that are entirely up to you as the student. You can either have your interview recorded, have a face-to-face interview, by phone to rehearse the commonly used phone screen interview, or if you have a webcam you can use “Interview Stream” which functions 24/7 and can be done from the comfort of your room. The interview practice is very helpful so that you don’t have something like this happen to you…

Just one, can you name one magazine?

Hopefully after practicing your interviewing skills and going over the commonly asked interview questions, which can be found at http://www.uml.edu/student-services/Career-Services/For-Students/Interviewing/Interviewing.aspx, you can name a magazine if asked to do so. 
Resumes 

More than likely you have had to submit a resume at one point in your life whether it was to be a Crew Member at McDonald’s or to that job at Best Buy that you keep telling yourself that the reason you didn’t get hired was because you were overqualified and knew more about electronics than everyone else that worked there combined. You are also not holding a grudge against Best Buy. What is also more than likely is that you will need to submit a resume to a company if you are applying for a job after college or if you are looking at an internship or co-op of some sort. Luckily for you the Career and Co-op Center is here to help, again! The Career and Co-op Center allows for you to either drop-in to have your resume looked over or you can schedule an appointment to see a career counselor for help. These resources are available to you as a student so that you don’t have this happen to you the next time you apply for a job.

-Brady