With graduation for many Park University students right around the corner, trying to find a job can be a stressful situation. But even for students not graduating soon, the pressure to find and be prepared for a job can be overwhelming.

Job-hunting can be a daunting and tedious task, but it does not have to be if students know what resources they have around them.

For Park University students, that resource is the Career Development Center.

Located in the Mabee Learning Center/Academic Underground, the three Career Development Center staff members work with students every day to assist with finding internships and jobs.

“Some think we’re a placement office but we’re not,” said Tess Suprenant, director of Career Development. “We offer students services that are necessary when it comes to looking for internships and careers.”

Some of those services include helping students put together résumés and cover letters, along with preparing for job interviews.

“We also work to maintain relationships with employers,” said Suprenant. “We let them know about the school and students who are looking for jobs and internships, and we help the student find what they are looking for.”

Throughout each academic year, the Career Development Center hosts a variety of career-related events including a Career Fair, which is usually held in the fall semester in mid-September.

The center also hosts different workshops for learning how to write résumés, cover letters and preparing for interviews.

Special trips, called “treks,” are also hosted by the center for students. Through these treks, the Career Development Center takes interested students to area employers to get real interaction out in the business world.

“These treks allow them to see businesses in person, sometimes for the first time,” said Suprenant.

But due to poor attendance at many of these events, particularly the workshops, the center has to make some adjustments and is in the process of moving these onto an online format.

“We are making them more interesting to hopefully get more students to participate in these events,” she said.

Suprenant also said having these workshops online will allow more students to participate because students can do them from whatever location at a time that is more convenient for each student.

Amanda Moore, a career counselor in the Career Development Center, explained how the center’s new career website will benefit Park students in the future when it comes to job-hunting.

“We are currently trying to alter the activities and resources we offer to students,” she said. “The new Hire A Pirate website is a big step because it’s much easier to navigate and will provide expanded functionality to the students, employers and the CDC.

“We are also trying to partner with specific professors to organize site visits with area companies. The main push in the near future will be how do we better serve our commuter and campus center students. This will turn into our content and resources moving online with activities such as Google hangouts and using social media as a resource.”

But poor attendance at their hosted events is not the only problem the Career Development Center appears to be facing.

According to Suprenant, the center’s location deep in the Academic Underground most likely adds to why so few students take advantage of the services the center has to offer.

Another problem is also the fact that many students do not start looking for internships and jobs early enough, said Suprenant.

“Many students don’t want to think about it until graduation,” she said. “They need to start a year earlier, around the beginning of their junior, when it comes to looking for jobs.”

Moore agreed, saying she thinks students are putting more focus into their classes while in college.

“I think more and more students are concentrating on school while they’re in school,” Moore said, “and concentrating on finding a job once they are done with their education.”

According to Suprenant, employers have their hiring timelines during the fall, which is the main reason for the Career Development Center holding their annual Career Fair in mid-September.

She also said students who are juniors should start looking at jobs and connecting with employers during the Career Fair in the fall, so that way once they graduate the next year, they will hopefully have found a job suitable for them.

This is not a problem just at Park but at every other university around the country.

“Employers can’t just come to Park every year because we might not also have students studying a major an employer has a job opening in,” said Suprenant.

Another problem Park faces with the job industry is the high population of international students who may not have authorization to work in the United States at the time.

But nonetheless, the Career Development Center staff members do what they can for each student who comes in for help in looking for an internship or job.

“I want students to ultimately feel more confident going into their job search and in turn making it a successful search,” said Moore. “This happens by working with us not just a few weeks before they graduate but utilizing us to prepare early on in their education. Some students come in and seem lost or overwhelmed, but like anything else, this can be eased by taking the necessary smaller steps to gain the ultimate goal of finding a job after college.”

Suprenant advised students to start coming in their freshmen year to begin the process of looking for a future job.

“Freshmen should come in and take our personality assessment to see where they are best suited, look at classes to take throughout their college career and to start working on their résumé,” she said..

According to Suprenant, Park as a whole has provided a lot of support to the Career Development Center and its progress with becoming a bigger and stronger part of the school, but there are ideas the center’s staff would like to see implemented by the university when it comes to job-hunting for students.

“I would really like to see a required career skills class for students,” said Suprenant.

Whether a student sets up an appointment with a staff member or simply walks in, the center is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and sometimes until 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m.

“The best advice I can give to any student is to come in early, come in often,” said Suprenant. “Research shows that those who used their career services center more often had higher salaries and had higher job satisfaction. There’s always a reason to come in.”