Offices & Services
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The Center for Career Services offers students a comprehensive program to explore career options, conduct self-assessment, pursue internships, network with alumni and make connections to full time jobs, fellowships/scholarships and graduate school opportunities.
Evaluating skills, defining personal values, learning about career fields, conducting career research and gaining experience through internship and exploration programs are important steps in the right direction.
- Your role - how to help your son or daughter and how to become involved.
- Career Profile Class - is an important document of Colgate's institutional research. The profile is a one year follow-up study concerning the career outcomes reported by our most recent class of graduates.
Services
- Career advising – Counselors meet with students individually to assist with a variety of career-related issues, including internships and postgraduate plans. Meetings are about 30 minutes.
- Counseling walk-in hours – Monday-Friday, 1:30 - 4 p.m., conducted on a first-come, first-serve basis. No appointment is necessary to speak with a counselor for five to ten minutes.
- Self-assessment – We offer the Strong Interest Inventory self-assessment tool, designed to help students transfer their skills and interests to satisfying career choices.
- Mock interviews – The opportunity to role-play an interview with a counselor in front of a video camera. Following the "interview," the tape is reviewed and discussed to help students hone their skills (process requires a one-hour appointment). We also offer "interview prep" sessions, scheduled for 30 minutes with a counselor.
- Pre-law & graduate school advising – We provides guidance for those students interested in pursuing law school or graduate/professional school, and offers assistance with personal statements and the application process.
- Scholarship and fellowship advising – We advises students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate fellowship and scholarship opportunities, such as Rhodes, Fulbright, Watson, and many others.
- Colgate Connection – A group of approximately 3,000 alumni and parent volunteers that offers students and alumni opportunities to explore career options and make professional contacts. In addition to those who have specifically volunteered to help, Colgate alumni in general usually are receptive to being contacted for informational interviewing purposes.
- Peer advising – Peer advisors are Colgate students who are trained to critique cover letters and résumés. They also represent CCS outside of the office: hosting Coop Tables to promote our programs, conducting Satellite Office Hours in various locations around campus and at The Barge, and presenting workshops in residence halls and special interest houses on topics such as résumé writing, networking, or finding an internship.
Recruiting Programs
- On-campus recruiting – Employers come to campus to conduct first-round interviews with graduating seniors.
- Résumés – Résumés are collected and forwarded to employers who wish to interview candidates at their offices rather than on campus.
- Internships – Employers come to campus to interview underclass students for summer internships, and also participate in the Résumé Collect Program to fill internship positions.
- Consortia programs – Programs in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City, Syracuse, N.Y., (communications) and Cortland, N.Y., (certified teaching) provide opportunities for students to interview with organizations from the host cities representing specified career areas.
- Law fair – Each fall we coordinate a Law School Fair, bringing representatives from some of the top law schools in the nation to campus.
Resources
- Stanley Newell Kinney Resource Library – A comprehensive library containing information organized by career field, which includes job search information, employer directories, fellowship/scholarship/grant information, graduate school directories and application information, and more.
- Publications – We produce guides for students on résumé writing, job search correspondence, and interviewing, along with guides for graduate and law school application.
- Blackboard – Threaded on-line discussions that provide students the opportunity to pose questions of alumni regarding a specific career field.