The Boerigter Center for Calling and Career has many useful resources available to students to help them answer the tough questions that every student (and distant relatives on holidays) asks at one point in their career: What is my major? How/When should I apply for an internship? How do I find a job after college? Where can I find connections in my field?
A great place to begin is PathwayU, a site full of questionnaires, personality tests, and personal value assessments that can find numerous majors/careers that fit your character. The picture on the right shows the four main assessments used to categorize your interests and beliefs: Interests, Values, Personality, and Workplace Preferences. Under each category, you can see the factors that you would most enjoy in a major/career. Once you take the assessments, you are able to see subjects and careers that match your interests in the “Careers” tab. Check out a previous blog for more in depth insight into this tool.
Handshake is another great resource for students to find jobs/internships both around West Michigan and internationally. When you login and create your student account, you gain access to the over 13,000 employers and their job postings, allowing you to filter through them based on field of study, location, part-time/full-time employment, industry, and job function.
In addition, this platform is also used to schedule advising meetings with our staff that can help you answer some of those questions that seem too big to handle on your own. Advising meetings can cover anything from major discernment, internship preparation/location, mock interviews, grad school preparation, resume construction, and any other questions you may have! Finally, information on networking events, synchronous webinars, and job/internship fairs put on by our office can be found under the “Events” tab, all of which are open to students of all majors.
If you want to grow your network and connections even further, then head on over to one of our newest resources “The Hope College Connection”, which provides current Hope students and alumni with connections to 2200+ Hope alumni around the globe. This is a great place to ask questions about life after college to people who have experienced it: “What kind of job can I get with a major in ____?”, “What type of industry does a _____ work in?’, “What advice would you give me as I enter the workforce?”. With the map feature, you can easily see where in the world Hope alumni are working and what they are doing, and start a conversation with them.
Hopefully, this gives you a good overview of the different services we offer and all of the different ways we can help you find and achieve your career goals, one step at a time!