Use Your Alumni Career Counselor

Typically colleges and universities offer a career counselor or adviser for current students and alumni.  If you have a degree most likely you’ve paid tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a degree; use your advisers you’ve paid for them.

In fact you should know your adviser by name. Often advisers will hold meetings for job fairs at your school, host resume workshops, and internship workshops.

As with all type of service based positions not all of these advisers are created equal.

An adviser at bare minimum will likely provide these services:

• Simply act as a gate keeper to get your resume approved to add to your school’s resume talent bank
• Help peer review your resume
• Host workshops
• Recruit employers for attending your schools career fair

A good adviser will:

• Proactively work with you to find a job
• Review and help with a cover letter
• Proactively inform you about career events

A great adviser will go above and beyond:

• Offer to make introductions to contacts at companies that you are interested in working for
• Help craft you message or pitch

If you didn’t go to college or a university don’t feel discouraged from a lack of support.  In fact many of these institutions work with the public.  In Michigan a great resource to utilize is MI Works! the local offices often host workshops and have advisers that can help you in similar ways a college counselor or adviser.