By Claire Luo, grade 10
In January, CareerConnect hosted a three-part workshop series to help students develop their professional skills in interviewing and resume-building.
The first workshop, the LinkedIn Resume Building Workshop, was designed to help students create an effective LinkedIn profile. Michael Acheatel, CareerConnect advisor, prepared a presentation to give an overview of the features of LinkedIn and its applications, and members of the CareerConnect officer team were on hand to help students with their individual profiles. The skills taught in this workshop are very useful as students explore professional internship and job opportunities.
In late January, CareerConnect invited senior Enya Lu to speak at the Interview Tips & Trick Workshop. Lu has had experience interviewing for jobs, internships, summer programs, club officer positions, college and other opportunities. In her presentation, she described the different types of interviews and gave advice about what to do before, during and after interviews. In addition, alumnus Lucas Wang ’17, now at NYU Stern School of Business, was at the workshop to give his advice about interviewing. Their tips for the attendees were very practical and provided a great way to prepare for future interviews. “This event I felt was really helpful,” said Ishaan Parate, grade 9, “I do feel like I can put this information to use in the near future.”
As the final part of the professionalism series, CareerConnect held the Mock Interview Workshop on Jan. 29. This event consisted of one-on-one mock interviews with industry professionals and allowed students to put to use the advice that they received in the previous workshop. During their interviewing sessions, students were given the choice of either interviewing for a club officer position or research internship. Then, they were asked questions by the professionals and responded. In the end, students received personalized feedback from their interviewers to help them improve for the future. As this workshop was an opportunity to get valuable advice from industry professionals, students learned a lot from the event. “The interviewers were really helpful in teaching me techniques for getting a later job,” said Camilla Lindh, grade 9. Similarly, April Sun, grade 9, said, “It helped me understand what to do in a future interview, and [the interviewer] helped give me some tips on what to do.”
In all, the professionalism series was a great success and helped students develop their professional skills as they start applying for opportunities such as club officer positions, summer programs, jobs and internships.