Description of the video:
SARA HEROLD: Hello everyone. I'm Sara Harold and I'm with the Kelley Office of Development and Engagement. And I would like to welcome and thank you for joining us this evening. And we thank our hosts. We have Rebecca Cook, who's the Executive Director of Undergraduate Career Services at Kelley and our Kelley parent Helene Deutsch will be our moderator this evening. So Helene, would you mind sharing a bit about yourself and then introduce Rebecca? So I will let you both take it from here. Thank you. HELENE DEUTSCH: Thank you so much, Sara. So everyone, My name is Helene Deutsch. I live in New York City, I'm a partner in an executive search firm specializing in legal compliance and Government Affairs. Hence, my involvement with the Career Development Committee of the Dean's Family Council and working closely with Rebecca Cook on that committee, my son is a junior at Kelley. He's majoring in marketing. And I got involved with the Dean's Council three years ago already, it went fast. And yeah, I have really enjoyed it. This is the second time we're doing this large-scale parent webinar on careers, at least that I've been involved in. And so we hope that it'll be informative to you and feel free to reach out to Rebecca or me with questions and we will make sure that you get them answered. That's after the webinar. During the webinar, if you have questions, I will be monitoring the chat. I can't promise that we're going to answer every question because last time there were many more questions than we could accommodate in the time that we had allotted. And also, I would just ask if you could please ask questions that are have more of a general interest as opposed to questions that are unique to your specific student. If you do have specific student questions, again, Rebecca or I can try to either field those questions or direct you to the appropriate person. I'll put my e-mail in the group chat and I know Rebecca will do the same. Thank you so much for joining and Rebecca Cook, take it away. REBECCA COOK: Good evening, everybody. The picture behind me is not what it currently looks like in Bloomington, but it is coming. So it might look what it might be, what it looks like smell. Right now we think it's a rain and probably a little bit of ice. But anyway, excited to talk to you tonight. And I have some prepared comments in that sense of common questions and everything but then really would like to open it up to everyone else. Just for those of you who I haven't met yet, I'm a Kelley MBA alum. My background or my first career, I'd say is Investment Management, so my MBA is in finance and investments and then work on equity research and portfolio management for about 14 years. I came back to Kelley 11 years ago and worked in graduate career services. as the head of coaching and development and then ran the full-time MBA program and now I've been on the undergrad side for a little over two years, or about 2.5 years actually. And it's been an interesting journey. So let's get started. And as we mentioned, please feel free to put questions into the chat session or the Q and A, and we'll be monitoring those throughout. So first thing I wanted to talk about is the state of the hiring market right now. And to be honest, it's great. We have so many opportunities out there for students, both internships and full-time. And really in all different areas, you name it, no matter what your child is majoring in, we have opportunities and we are literally being called every single day by companies. Saying, Hey, we need a couple more people here, a couple more people there. And asking, can we talk to your students? Sure, we'd love to have you talk to our students. So the hiring is really, really good. Also on a positive note that I hope that you appreciate is salaries are going up. So your childhood will be paid more. This is really being led by the Investment Banking space, which is then fed into management. Really all the investment side like corporate finance and consulting, and it's trickling down into the other areas. Last year, our average salaries for the class of 21 that just graduated, their average salary was about $68,000 And this year is going to be over $70k. I don't know what it will be yet obviously because we have lots of lots of time to go, but it's tracking well over that right now. So always looking very positive in that sense. But again, there's really tons and tons of opportunities out there for your students. A lot of questions that we get is, what, what should my student be doing depending on the year of school that they're in? So I'm going to walk through the four years of school and just thinking about what the students should be doing, what is realistic, and then kind of how to help them. So if your student is a first-year student, we usually say, you know, first of all, figure out college. So it's different, it's new, it's exciting and a lot of different things are going. So start figuring out your classes, figuring out or beginning to figure out what you want to do. We have a lot of students who come in and declare a major, but they're not really sure what that is or what do you want to do within that major. So if this is an opportunity for people to be you know again experiencing those classes, joining some clubs, seeing what's out there and testing things And then beginning to say OK I like this or I don't like this. And that'll help again, lead them to a career or are at least thinking about a career that might make more sense for them. In terms of internships between that first-year and sophomore year. Historically endemic, there really weren't that many opportunities for first-year students. Most companies weren't looking that far in advance. Most professional companies weren't looking that far in advance to hire someone. It's just way too long between first-year and sophomore, summer and graduation. So if they love the student, that's great, but they really couldn't lock them in for the next three or four years. Students do get professional internships, but they do tend to happen more through family connections or friends or whatever, you know, finding them on their own. There's a caveat to this now. And what we've seen, because I think of the pandemic and because of the fact that pretty much everybody is understaffed, a lot more companies are willing to look at first-year students. So there are opportunities, more opportunities for first-year students today than historically there have been. What students can do is, we have a tool called Handshake, which is our career tool where students look for opportunities and jobs. They can search by first-year student internships and they're going to see a lot more things there than they historically have. So again, there's more opportunities for professional internships. But one of the key takeaways, especially for the summer, is your child does not have to have a professional internship. It's okay. They can honestly do anything. They can be a life guard, they can be a camp counselor, they can be a golf caddy. That is fine. Employers don't expect students to have professional internships this summer. They're really looking at what are the skills that they've developed. So for example, if someone is a professional or a caddy for the summer, they develop communication skills. They develop skills of dealing with difficult customers. They develop how to influence others without any authority. There's a lot of good skill sets that students develop doing just that, same with life guarding, same with as a camp counselor or a nanny even. They developed a lot of great skill sets from that. And that's what the employer is going to be looking for. It's more what are those soft skills that are relevant? So we have a lot of parents calling or students come and say, I desperately need a professional internship between that first-year and sophomore year. You don't again, just do something. And again then we can work with that student to then help create ways to say what they learned. So that's first-year and sophomore summer. Junior summer, that one begins to be more on that professional level. And there are a lot of companies that have, like they're called early ID or leadership programs or certain kind of early programs where they actually have students come for a couple days to a couple weeks where they're learning about the students and the students are learning about them. There's a lot of opportunities out there in this space. And so that's a way that again, that sophomore to junior year summer could be filled with a couple of those because again, they're shorter. So you could do a couple of different things to test things out. Also, more and more companies are looking to hire sophomores now. Again, that sophomore summer instead of just only juniors. So again, because of the environment, because everybody's understaffed, we are seeing a lot more companies that are open to sophomores now for that summer instead of in the past, again, only being open to juniors. So lots of opportunities there again, utilizing Handshake, looking for different companies or different things. There's a ton out there. The junior to senior year summer is more your primary summer. That's the one you really want to be interning in ideally what you want to do. A lot of companies, your big companies, tend to hire their interns off of that summer. So if you intern at Deloitte or PwC or Goldman Sachs, they will hire from that intern pool. And not completely but majority. And so that's a big thing. Also, you know, a lot of students will come in and say well, I have a choice between maybe a smaller company that I like a bit more, or Deloitte, for example, and I have more of a chance to get hired full-time from Deloitte. But I really like the other company better. Honestly you should go to the other company. And the reason is when you think about it holistically, most companies in the world can't or don't know, a year in advance who they can hire or how many they can hire. It just doesn't work that way. You don't know what's happening in the economy. You don't know what your revenue stream looks like. You don't know what your client base looks like. So the vast majority of companies can't hire you in the August of the year for the following summer. It's more of just again, the big companies know okay we're going to hire ten interns and go from there. So there's tons of opportunities in this space that is more typical summer for hiring interns. And again, some can lead to a full-time opportunity, some don't, but it's not a detriment to a company if they don't hire. The last thing is, you know, senior year looking for full-time opportunities. This is really when you should be spending a lot of time connecting with companies, networking, really just building out those connections and making sure you're heading into something you want to do. Ideally, you did something during the junior year, summer, loved it and you know exactly what you want. Sometimes it happens where you come back and say I hated it. I don't wanna do that. So now you're transitioning and that's where again, we can help with that in my office, really trying to think, okay, how can we take what you've done and help you figure out what you like, what you really want to do versus something that you don't want to do. The key, I think through all four years is networking. And this is where you want your students to be spending time. Learning about companies. Attending different events where they can be exposed to different companies. And our office provides a ton of opportunities like that. We have career fairs. We have four big career fairs in the fall. We just had one, we have one big career fair in the spring. We had a 112 companies with us two weeks ago, virtually. And but all different employers, all different kinds of employers, all majors, are really a ton of opportunities out there, again, for internships and full-time. We also host things called employer networking nights, which tend to be smaller, a little bit more casual engagements. And we've had two. One was yesterday. And we have one more next week coming up on the 10th and a second one coming up on the 24th. The one on the tenth is going to be virtual, the 24th is going to be in person in our career center. So a couple of different opportunities coming up for students to network with companies. Any age student can come, any age student is invited to join. And these again, tend to be a little bit more casual events. The virtual ones are all held on Handshake which I mentioned before, which again is our recruiting tool. And these are where students have to register. And then they, so they register which is the first step. And then they sign up for either group sessions for companies offering it. That's where, group sessions have maybe 30 people or so with one or two of the employers in a Zoom room type of thing. And/or they can sign up for one-on-one sessions of companies. And these one-on-one sessions are 10 minutes long and a great opportunity to start a conversation with a potential new employer. They're not interviews, they are just again, getting to meet somebody, asking some questions. So if somebody is a first-year student or sophomore, it's a great opportunity to start talking about what do they do, what they like about their job? What types of roles are they hiring for? Versus more of a junior, senior, hopefully you've done more homework on those companies and you can begin to talk a little bit more in depth about things they might be offering. Throughout Handshake and actually for all of these different companies is this what they're looking for or what types of roles they are hiring for. And typical majors. Again, just trying to get the basic information. But these one-on-one sessions are a great way to start that conversation. And then the students should ideally be following up with those employers afterwards to set up a further conversation. So again, there are lots of things happening and we have two more networking nights still coming up here. And then we may add some more. Again, like I said at the beginning, we have so many companies coming to us today asking for more students, that we probably will have more of these. Because the companies are really wanting to do so. One thing to note is, I mentioned, a lot of these have been virtual and because of the pandemic, we've had to hold a lot of these still virtual, that's beginning to change. Like I said, we are moving our one at the end of this month in person. Hopefully. The biggest catch right now has been companies non willingness to travel or not ability to travel. A lot of companies either have stayed virtual and not come back to the office. Or some companies are still in situations where they can't be or they're not allowed to be in large groups of people. So it's been more the company side of this point saying, we can't quite do that yet. Versus our decision permanently as a Kelley team. We'd love to have companies there. We actually had two companies in our office interviewing today and it was great. And then another one actually during office hours. So it's fun to begin to see companies move back and I think you'll continue to see that throughout this year and then hopefully next year it'll be a bit more back to normal. And I guess along those lines going forward, I would still expect a lot of interviews to be virtual, just for planning purposes. And that actually was happening even before the pandemic. Some companies had already transitioned to fully virtual first rounds for their interviewing like PwC and a couple others. And then the pandemic happened and obviously everybody switched to virtual. But I do think you'll probably see companies, some companies staying with at least partially virtual interviews and then some coming back to fully in-person. So it's going to be a mix. So I think students need to be comfortable with both virtual and in-person. Let's see here the couple of questions we've also been getting is a lot of students come or parents will call and say okay my students applied to a lot of different opportunities in New York and he didn't get any, what's wrong? And one thing to remember is just applying to jobs is not a career search. They can do it. You can go for hours. You can send out lots of different applications but it doesn't help you much. You're one of many, many people in some cases, thousands of people applying to different jobs. So it doesn't help you stand out there. The real best way to do this job search is to obviously apply, but also to be networking like I mentioned. And a great way to structure this a bit, is have a student come up with 20, 30 companies they're interested in. I don't care how somebody makes that list. They could make it geographically based or interest based or however, industry-based, whatever. But 20 to 30 companies that they're interested in and then look for do they have job postings or not, it's ok if they don't. And then also can I find alums there or connections there. Kind of making a spreadsheet or whatever's the easiest way to do it, but creating a spreadsheet where you are building a plan, essentially. You have certain companies you're looking at, you have do they have postings or not. And then can I find people to talk to, then start reaching out to those people that you found. We can help those students add to that list if they want. But start reaching out to those people, take them in chunks. Take the first five or the first ten, it makes it manageable and it makes it easier for the student to say, okay, today I reached out to five different people, I will follow up with them in a week if I don't hear back. But then maybe in two days I'll reach out to five more. And again, it becomes less overwhelming. I think one of the biggest things we see or hear from students is the job search is overwhelming. There's tons and tons out there, which is good, but it's also bad. And they don't know where to start. And this provides a start for students and it provides a way for them to begin something. Feel that they've accomplished something, but also start having conversations with people. And that's again, the most important thing. Because really if you drill down to it, if you submit a PDF or a piece of paper to somebody, that's all you are. Really when you think about it, they don't know you as a person, you want to become a person to these recruiters. So that's where it's getting phone calls with them or doing sessions with them, seeing them if they come to campus. I mentioned we had coffee chats today, info sessions going on with different companies. There are companies on campus and they want to talk to students. So both virtually and in person. But so really having students reach out to people, and connect with alum or with recruiters at these companies. It's so very important and again, we can help with that. I guess we should talk a little bit more about what we actually have, and what we can offer students. And that is really everything related to the job search. That's where a student can come in and say I had no idea what I want to do. And that is totally okay. To the other end of that spectrum a student can come in and say, I know exactly what I want to do it. Here's where I want to do it. Okay, let's set up a plan for that. And this is really starting from scratch, starting with, okay, what do I think I want to do, what types of companies am I interested in? Is there any specific geography I want to focus on? My major at this point, do I want to have a co-major or a couple or minors or anything. What does that look like? Is it beneficial? We can help with resumes, cover letters, networking opportunities, mock interviews, practicing those interviews. I've mentioned before that we both have in-person and virtual interviewing. So we have obviously in-person practice. You can practice just with us. We can practice virtually through Zoom. And we have tools, one specifically called Stand Out, that is a virtual interview tool. So we recommend students be practicing that a lot. We can talk to students about offers. I just actually right before this call a student emailed me because they did get their internship offer today and let's talk about it. Talk about what the opportunity is. So talk about internship full-time, talk about negotiation. Talk about potentially withstanding an offer in the sense if the company was trying to push them or give them just a short amount of time to decide, we can help with that. Students aren't sure what they want to do or they aren't sure what companies to reach out to, come talk to us. Because like I said, we have companies reaching out to us all the time. So if I have a student come to me and say I'm interested in finance. Okay, what type? If they say corporate finance, great, okay, here's five different companies that I know are recruiting. And we can help connect the student. Again, really all of these different tools and things to help students with. And then when they get that offer and report that offer, we have swag, we have Kelley hire swag, we have T-shirts, hats, mugs, that students love, we take pictures with them and it's kind of fun to celebrate. So lots and lots of different tools for student. I've mentioned the handshake tool, which again is our main priority for recruiting tool, there's also a great website which I can post, but its careers.kelley.iu.edu. Again, It's careers.kelley.iu.edu. And that is our main website for information. So if you go to that website you're going to see lots of information about different majors and different careers. Different careers you can go into. So let's say you're a finance major, it lists all the different types of careers that are possible, hire-to-hiring companies, salary information, sample resumes are out here, we have a guideline for four years of career planning, action words for building your resume. Cover letter examples. There's an interactive tool for looking at different outcomes for a career search. If I want to go to finance in this area, this is the typical salary. This is where people typically go. Well geographically and company wise. There's tons and tons of information here. There's also a lot of programming information, we have specific programming for first years, for sophomores, for our juniors and seniors, international students, we have lots of different programming that we offer for in-person and virtually. So students can find that on the website. Upcoming events, different jobs that we're highlighting. So lots and lots of different things are available here. So I recommend students and you go onto this website. Actually one thing before I forget, I just remembered, I mentioned the upcoming employer networking nights. If you have sophomores or first-year students on this Friday, we have a sophomore leadership development program panel where from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Friday with 18 different companies making this panel to talk about the different programs that they have. So we'll start it off with each company just giving like a two-minute version of what they have in terms of their programming. And then students can be broken up into lots of different breakout rooms with the different companies. All sorts of companies coming, consulting, accounting, finance, you name it. But that's a great thing. If you have a first-year student or sophomore specifically because that is the program. It's not for juniors or seniors. Again, I think lots of opportunities out there. I'm just going to try to wrap up a little bit but lots of companies coming in, lots of events happening. I think if your student is coming to you and say they aren't seeing anything or they're struggling. The best thing you can do is have them reach out to us. That's why we're here. They can go on to Handshake or they can use the careers.kelley website and sign up for an appointment with a coach. We have 10 professional coaches. We have 23 peer coaches who are juniors and seniors who are trained in helping students. So students can come in and sign up again for either one to meet with us. We have drop-in hours every day from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM where they can walk in register and something will see them in the next minute or two. So that opportunity is available. But the biggest thing is have them come talk to us because I can't tell you how many times I'll have a parent call and honestly be angry with me saying you haven't helped my student. And 99% of the time that student has never walked in my office. And we track everything. So we track when they've registered with things, we track when they've gone to career fairs, networking nights, had appointments or coaches, what jobs they apply to, et cetera. It's all through Handshake. So we know how active or not a student has been. And that's usually what's happening. So I'd say the best thing you can do, the best advice you can give your child is to come talk to us. We're more than happy to meet with them. More than happy to help them through this process because that's why we're here. That's what's fun about our jobs is we love celebrating students as they get those offers and we just need to share that excitement with them. You know, I've worked with students for months and then finally they get that opportunity and it's so awesome to see and experience. Again, that's why we're here. So best thing you can do is have them come talk to us, have them start that conversation and that we can be accountability partners with them. We're not their parents. So they might listen to us maybe, and again we're here to help. So I see there's a bunch of questions, so Helene, I will turn it to you to tell me what questions there are. HELENE: Absolutely. So you mentioned a program for first-year students and sophomores, the leadership program on Friday night, there have been a flurry of questions about asking for more detail on how do they register, who are the companies that are going to be coming, anything more that you can share about that particular program that you referenced? REBECCA: Yeah. So the students have to go on Handshake to register. So have the student log into Handshake and there's two steps. They will register for it is the first step. And then I'm trying to pull it up. And then they can then join in. Actually, I think for this one actually, they just have to join, they just have to register. They're not doing one-on-one sessions in this case, they'll do small group sessions with these companies. The 18 companies are Abbott, Excensure, Aldi, the grocery store, Altria, Bank of America, EKB, Lu in-company. Charles River Associates, Crow, O'Connor, EY, Grant Thornton, KPMG, Plant Brand, PWC, RSM, Stryker, and Zimmer. So it's a very wide range of things. Again, consulting, accounting, marketing. Some of this will be, yeah, supply chain in some cases. So most, most majors pretty much are covered in this. And these again, what it is is a two hour length, it's 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Friday. It's all virtual. And the first, roughly, let's say 40 minutes or so will be, each of these companies will give a quick excerpt of what their different programming is for the summer. And then the remainder of the time will be spent where the students can bounce around in different Zoom rooms. HELENE: And if they have class during that two to four period, are they able to come late? REBECCA: As long as they're registered, they can pop in and they would just have missed the beginning where each company talks, again, it's only two minutes, on their program. So they can easily pick that back up. HELENE: Great. And you mentioned a bunch of networking events that are still going on is there going to be another internship or a job fair? REBECCA: Well, let me explain a little bit about it. These are our job fairs. So we're calling them different things. So prior to the pandemic, when we used to get together in really large crowds these were really big career fairs at our convention center here in town. And these were 1000-1200 students at one time, so big events, roughly 100 employers. So those are great, but they're also intimidating. And everybody's walking around in suits. And especially if you first-year students and sophomores, they're like, I don't know what to do. How do I go talk to companies? You have huge lines. And that's what it was. And we then also created something called employer networking nights. These were designed to be smaller. They were held in our building. So it would be 10/20 companies total. And students would be more business casual. And it would be an opportunity for students to come and just talk with those companies in a less intimidating environment and just start making those connections. So that's the difference of the two. They're both career fairs essentially. I mean, they're both situations where companies are hiring. They wouldn't come to these if they weren't. So there are job opportunities out of all of these. So in the spring we have, well we have bigger work career fairs in the fall. In the spring we usually have one big one which we had. And now we're doing or in the middle of doing a bunch of different networking nights, again, smaller events. So the ones upcoming, for the one on the 10th, that's the virtual one. We have 38 companies coming. And that's where students can register through Handshake and then sign up for one-on-one sessions with the companies they are interested in. So that's in the evening, they're usually 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. And so that's on the 10th. And on the 24th, that's the one in-person. And right now we have13 companies coming and that's again, the student would register through Handshake. But then they'll just come into our space from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM timing and walk around and visit companies they're interested in. So it's again, much more casual. But all of these companies are hiring. All of these companies are dying for people. HELENE: So you mentioned Handshake a number of times. Can you be more explicit, please, about how students actually get into Handshake, how they figure out that tool, and what is it specifically are companies looking for Kelley students or those opportunities available to any school that has Handshake? REBECCA: Okay. So Handshake is actually pre-set up for all students. And all they have to do is if they go to the right, the easiest way to get there, I guess, is go to the careers.kelley website that I mentioned before. And in the upper right-hand corner, there's a little button that says Handshake. So you click on that. And if, if your students not already identified to get in, they'll need to do a single sign-on to get in. But they do this all of the time. Once they're in the system, there are a ton of different opportunities and events and things. So it can be overwhelming. What the best way to do it is depending on what they're looking for. So let's just say they're looking for sophomore internships. There's a search button in the left side. Type in sophomore internships and sophomore finance internships or sophomore marketing internships. And what it's going to do is it's going to start pulling up things that are relevant to that. Also, the student, when they first log into Handshake or anytime they log into Handshake, they want to make sure that their profile is complete or as complete as possible. Their name, their year in school, their major. Those things are automatically brought in through IU's data system. But if anything's changed the student can change it right there. But they want to put in any experiences they've had in terms of work experiences, they want to put it in any clubs they're involved in, whether they're Kelley or outside of Kelley. They want to put in any classes that may be relevant to whatever they're interested in doing. If they have any specific geographic areas, they want to go to they can put that in there, but really fill out their profile as much as possible. And I recognize this is going to change as they move in their career within Kelley. Chances are they're going to get involved with more things or do more events or take more classes or join more clubs. So make sure that this is constantly being updated. You also want to make sure that this is set to public. And that's important because the primary or the basic setting is private and if someone's profile is private, a company can't see them. And companies look through Handshake all the time to find candidates. So you want to make sure that it's set to a public setting where companies can actually see their profile. Also with Handshake you can upload resumes. You can upload cover letters or I mean, I guess a transcript if you wanted to, but you can put in documents that you're interested in. The system also can say, okay, it knows because of your profile, it knows or thinks of what you want to do. So it's going to send you more relevant information, it uses artificial intelligence to send specific jobs to specific people depending on what they say. So for example, I have a test account in here. It says, I think I am interested in investment banking. And so it sends me things, it thinks that I'm a student, so it's just to give me information on different opportunities. So it's again, it's big. There's a lot here. So the best way to use this, there's tons of different filters, and that's again, where you can put in your specific major, specific geography or specific year in school. And the more you filter it down, the more you can be helped. HELENE: Great. For first-year or sophomore parents who've never had a student go through the career center, can you just give a quick landscape? So where's your office? Does every student have a career advisor? When they show up to a career fair, are they supposed to be in a suit and tie? Or you mentioned some of them are more casual. What are they supposed to bring, like, what are the basics? REBECCA: Okay. Sure. So you as parents might have been in Hodge Hall, which is the main undergraduate building at Kelley. But your student has definitely been in there because that's where the classes are. We are in a building that's connected the Hodge, but it's behind it. It's technically to the north along Fee Lane. So if they walk on the first floor of Hodge Hall all the way to the far end from the main entrance. So all the way to the far end you're going to find a small flight of stairs. You're going to go down the stairs and we're right there. It's connected. And you'll see that we have a huge atrium area, bright, sunny, usually. Music playing, we have coffee everyday available to students. So it's actually a good place for them to find. We have study tables that students can come and study in our space at anytime you want during the day. But it's a great place where students can come in and just feel comfortable in. Then they can walk in and just start asking them, you know come in and ask questions. So if they want to just meet with a peer coach to start, again, these are juniors and seniors who are trained in resume writing and a lot of the basics in career search. That might be less intimidating than meeting with a professional coach. And so all they really have to do is walk in. They're going to meet Patty who's at our front desk who's awesome. And she will tell them to check in at a computer and then they'll put their name in and they'll sit down and do whatever. Your coaches will get them within a couple minutes and then they'll sit down and have that chat. Otherwise, if they would like to meet with a professional coach through Handshake they can register for appointments, to make an appointment with a coach. So all of our coaches put their availability times out on Handshake. And so for a student, sometimes they might come to us and say I can't find anything available. Usually it's because they're looking for a very specific time-frame. Or let's say they're looking at 20 minute slots and the coach is only in 30 minute slots. So just be pretty wide if impossible to see what's out there for appointments, but then they can make appointments on, we have lots of categories just to give the coach an idea of what they're going to talk about. Could be a resume review. Could be a mock interview, could be career search broadly, could be getting ready for an interview or like getting set for that first interviewer or second interview. Could be offering a negotiation, professional communication, lots of different things that somebody could choose. But then they would sit down with either the peer coach or the professional career coach. and just start talking, you know, have a conversation. It's really just somebody to bounce ideas off of. Somebody who could say, Okay, I can see that you're, you're a little scared about this or you're intimidated by this. Let's talk through that and figure out how we can make this easier for you. My professional coaches are awesome, they're all extremely friendly, engaged, they all come from different corporate backgrounds. So really nice people just to come and talk to you and build that relationship. Tied to the question for the career fair, so if you come to one of the networking nights, if it's virtually, I would say just wear at nice shirt. They can't see you from the bottom obviously. So just wear a nice shirt or a sweater. And that is where if you're intimidated, I'd say start with a group session. You're going to be one of maybe up to 30 people. You don't have to say anything. You can just listen and learn about a company that you might be interested in. If you'd like, you can sign up for one-on-one sessions with those companies. And again, that's more of a just getting to know you personally. You can say I'm a first-year student, I'm still exploring what I want to do, but I think I might want to go into consulting. Could you tell me about opportunities within your firm? Companies aren't expecting you to know everything yet. There's still lots of time left. So it's 10 minutes, it's not a very long time, but it's a way for students to begin to build that relationship or begin the conversation. If you come to the in-person one, that's more business casual and that's khaki pants and a button down shirt, something along those lines. Not a suit, you don't need a suit jacket. And I'd say bring a pad of paper or something just so you can take some notes. A padfolio, if any of your students don't have padfolios, kind of the black, usually black, leather folder type things, we have a ton of them that we are giving away and they all say Kelley so you can just ask at our front desk and we have plenty of them if somebody needs one. So it's a good place to collect business cards or maybe keep a copy of your resume. You're not expected to hand out your resume at these things but in case you wanted it, just to have one. But again, mostly more note-taking. So you can talk to a recruiter and then maybe once you're down, step away and takes notes and remember what their name is or maybe something interesting they told you because then that's a great way to reach back out to them to further the conversation. HELENE: Thank you. And how do students find out about all of these resources? Is there a webinar like this for students or is it just incumbent upon the parents to tell their students where to go and what to do. REBECCA: It's all on that careers.kelley website. There's a ton of information on Handshake for all of these events and fairs. We send out a weekly newsletter on Tuesday mornings that lists all of the stuff and it's kind of an ongoing tips and tricks and how to best do virtual interviews, Handshake, and all those things. So there's also the undergraduate program office sends out a newsletter on Monday mornings. And that lists a lot, if there's upcoming career events, major ones happening, it lists that there as well. But if companies are here doing like coffee chats or anything, that'll all be through Handshake. So the student really needs to be looking at Handshake and looking and say, okay, what are upcoming events? What are upcoming fairs? And then obviously looking for opportunities. But a lot of that will also be on that careers.kelley website. So if you go to the careers.kelley website, on the right hand side, there's a list of upcoming events. HELENE: So a lot of the tools presuppose that the students actually know what they want to major in and know what they want to do with their lives. But how do you recommend students go about trying to figure that out? Is it simply through classes? Are there people in your office that could help guide them to that epiphany? REBECCA: Both, actually, like, I am a finance major, I'm going to pick on finance at the moment. So I'd say probably two-thirds of our students come in and say they're finance majors. And, some really want to be, and some just put it down because they think it sounds interesting. A lot of times students may realize I don't want to do finance. And so as they begin to take classes at Kelley, obviously in first-year classes you're not going to get in-depth on any of these things, but you're going to begin to take accounting, you're going to begin to take some of your computer courses. you're going to begin to be exposed to some of these different things. And so I'd say between classes, thinking about clubs, we have 70 something clubs within Kelley alone that students can join. And those are great ways to begin to expose oneself to a career. All of those clubs bring in companies, all of them are talking about different opportunities. So maybe a student can join a couple different clubs. And then maybe they're going to like one or two of them. Or maybe they're not going to like any of them and then try something else. So lots of opportunities there to be exploring. Also come to talk to us. I mean I think it's fun when students come in and say I don't know what I want to do. Okay, Let's talk about it. And chances are there's something maybe in high school that they really liked. Or sometimes it's more of a conversation about what they don't like. And so since I don't have any idea, like all these things, well let's talk about something that you don't like and by actually picking out the things they don't like you can actually narrow it down a little bit more. But usually after that, what I would do is have students start connecting with people and networking, and literally asking, what do you do? What is your job like? And started to learn and asking those questions. Again, they're empowered. It's the perfect time and it's the perfect excuse for people or a student to ask and people love to give advice. So it's, it's really a chance for students to start exploring and say okay what is this career? It sounds interesting. What is it? Also again on the careers.kelley website, there's lots of information about the different careers, so reading and looking and saying okay this looks interesting to more or this doesn't, but there's lots of time for students to figure this out. They do not need to know exactly what this is first year or even sophomore year for some cases. HELENE: How do the compass classes intersect with the work that your office does? REBECCA: Yeah. So we help build out Compass and so Compass. One is more kind of beginning to figure out who am I and how do I tell that story? And we have our peer coaches in those Compass classes helping with resumes. helping with beginning to tell that story, beginning that information. So we're integrated in the sense of kind of being within the class. We have our professional coaches also going into those classes and start talking about some of these things and how can you take what you're learning in Compass and really have that help you, then begin that job search. You're looking at what are your skills, what are your interests, your values? How does that tie to some careers that I'm potentially interested in? Compass Two, then, really starts more on the networking and interviewing phase. And anybody in Compass Two, their resume is reviewed by one of our professional coaches, we're actually in the middle of that right now. And all students will have a mock interview with one of our professional coaches. So starting next week for two weeks, we will be doing 720 mock interviews for the people in the first eight weeks of this semester's compass class. We'll do another 720-ish in April. So we're integrated in that sense, as well as again, going into those classes, we have professional panels that we put together within Compass Two where students get exposed to usually three or four different employers. Usually younger ones, kind of talking about when they were at Kelley and then how they transitioned into their career. So help with the employer aspect there. A couple different ways often will help. Prior to the pandemic, we held some different networking events, specifically for the Compass classes and we're hoping to get back to that this next fall. Compass Three tends to be a little bit more leadership and teamwork base. So we don't have quite as much integration with that, but actually, Compass Three is being revamped right now, so we probably will have more going forward. HELENE: Great. Thank you. Um, there were a couple of questions about the clubs. Apparently some of the clubs are very competitive and you're denied membership. So how do you help a student figure out which clubs they should participate in that are consistent with the major that they might want to explore and which ones are non-competitive? REBECCA: Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I mean, some are and some aren't. And it's more of thinking through what the student's really interested in, thinking through, okay, again, if they're a finance major, I don't know how many finance clubs, but there are a whole bunch. And so trying to figure out which one makes the most sense for what I might be interested in doing. And usually some of them are not, they're not competitive and they let everybody in, versus some are a little bit more competitive. So if somebody doesn't get into one club it doesn't mean they can't be successful in something else. And again, get very similar skill sets. We have something called a Kelley Women's Initiative, which is, think of it like an umbrella organization over all of our women's orgs, we have eight different women's organizations. Women in Business is probably the most competitive, and they have a limited number of students that they let in each year but the other seven are not. And they can be very focused in sense of women in accounting or women's financial association or women in CO, or global business women. There's lots of different ways where people can get involved and have very rewarding experiences, becoming leaders if they want to, or again, just building up their experience in whatever area. So we're happy to talk to them about that also I really recommend talking to the head of student life in the undergrad program office. They, they are more than happy to help students with this process and help figure out what are great opportunities for each student. HELENE: Great. Can you provide just some general demographics about Kelley students, when they graduate, what part of the country do they end? Midwest, East Coast, West Coast? And what types of companies are the majority of them going to? Financial services, accounting, etc.? REBECCA: Sure, I can do a couple off the top of my head and then I'll pull the website up. So really we go everywhere. So last year we had 97% of our students had full-time offers or grad school at 90 days out, so we look at graduation until like three months out. And so we're very proud of that. Usually about 48% go to Chicago. A lot of people want to end up in Chicago whether they're from there or not and then usually the second highest city is New York. And then the third highest is Indianapolis. So a lot of times people think, Oh, it's Indiana, everybody stays in the state of Indiana. That's so not true, I think we only have usually 12 maybe 14% of our students actually stay in the State. West Coast is growing, usually depends on the year, I'd say 8 to 12% of our students go West Coast, could be higher. But really we have alums everywhere. I mean, literally a student can come into our office and say I want to go to Miami. And we have alums in Miami we can hook them up with. Yeah, we do a lot of students go to Chicago, but again, that's more because they're choosing to. I'd say less than half of those are actually from Chicago. They just want to go to Chicago. Pretty much people can go anywhere. Let me pull up the website real quickly. In terms of careers, just looking at last year's class. The top employers typically are some order of Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG. And that's for two reasons. One is because they hire accounting, but they also hire consulting. So you always will see really big numbers of hires from those four companies just because they're hiring from a variety of different careers. And it actually has changed a bit, it used to be historically a lot of accounting majors would go there and less consulting. And it's actually flipped over the last couple years as consulting has grown and becomes more interesting and exciting to people. So those numbers are going to be always big. The remaining top ten would be Grand Thornton, Bank of America, JPMorgan, RSM, Oracle, Goldman, then you have other mixes of Amazon, Target, Salesforce, Bain, AT&T. It's a really wide mix and it changes a little bit each year. But again, it's a wide base and these companies are based pretty much everywhere. In terms of majors, right? Or where they wanted to go, was the other question? HELENE: Types of institutions. REBECCA: So those are the companies and then in terms of careers itself, let me switch tables here, I'd say finance is going to be your biggest number with a lot of that mix of corporate finance and investment banking and investment management, going to a bit from there to wealth management and things. Accounting is up there. Supply chain and marketing are growing. They've always been there, but they're just not as big of numbers. Again, 2/3 of our majors are accounting and people coming in as finance majors, so marketing and supply chain are definitely growing areas. Business Economics and Public Policy is going to be a smaller number of students but honestly some of the higher salaries in some cases, which is interesting. HELENE: Great. So we have a few questions that pertain to particular class years. So for first-year students, one of the questions is, and I know we only have five minutes, so I'm going to try to get through them quickly, so what are your thoughts on an international opportunity for someone between first-year and sophomore, the summer between first-year and sophomore year? Good, bad, indifferent? A language class, volunteering, something outside of the US? REBECCA: I mean, honestly, I'd say any international opportunities, I would say completely to do. They're great to put on resumes, they're wonderful experiences no matter what that is. Yeah, I would highly, highly recommend it. And whether it doesn't happen between their first year, sophomore year, at some point in time during your experience at Kelley, try to go abroad, whether you want to go for a semester or a week or two, whatever. There's so many different opportunities there. But all of them are fantastic in lots of different ways and really provide the student opportunities to grow and experience new things. If there's language involved that's always a win for a resume. No matter what language it is. So it's always a great talking point and actually can help in terms of hiring. So yea I would definitely go. Yeah. HELENE: Great. REBECCA: I love to travel though too so I'm going to put that caveat in there. HELENE: Yeah. What about the summer after sophomore year? How important is a professional internship? Is it still okay to be a camp counselor, a lifeguard? REBECCA: Yes. But, I would say you would want to start thinking about maybe these leadership programs. So is that require? No, it's not to have a professional internship. But, you want to start thinking about what are really those skills and what can I be doing that might be relevant to what I want to do when I graduate? So what I mean by that, let's say somebody's a camp counselor for that summer, for example. But they want to be a finance person. Is there a way they could help out at the camp in terms of financials or if they could maybe do something a little virtually on the side. Or are there classes that they can take that can help build, virtually, that can help build up some of their knowledge base in certain things. So you can expand on your Excel, you can expand on some accounting classes, these don't have to be physical college classes but it could be just for learning. If you want to go to finance, there's a set of different trainings that you can do that are public. So you can maybe use some of your time to do that. So you want to be thinking about, okay, how can I make whatever I'm doing relevant to what I want to do in the future. It doesn't exactly, again, have to be totally tied, but what are the skill sets that I'm working on or developing that will be helped. My office can help a lot. I'm going to look at what somebody did in a very different way than probably they are. They like, oh, I did something, and I don't know how it connects. And I'm like oh well you can pick out this skill and this skill set and how we did this. So we can help how you frame that in terms of a resume goal. HELENE: So for the junior parents, which are probably in a panic if their students do not have internships, yet, is it too late? A. And B, are the students who have gone abroad the second semester, junior year disadvantaged in terms of their search for an internship? REBECCA: To both is no. Again, the hiring market is awesome right now. I didn't mentioned this before, but prior to the pandemic you really saw a lot, or most hiring, or a significant portion of hiring, happening in the fall and then the spring really tailed off. And that is not happening. It went up but it's pretty stable. So there are so many different opportunities out there for students right now. And again, if they come into our office, we can literally sit down with them and say okay, you should be looking here, here, and here, working with our Employer Relations team as they are fielding calls every single day. So nowhere near too late. There are so many opportunities. Happy to help with that. Going abroad, again, it's a great experience for the students and so I'm thrilled that they are wherever they are. And I know tons of students who are doing interviews abroad. Granted the time zone usually screws you up. But you can still network. You have email, you can do Zoom. So you can definitely continue that job search, I've been actually emailing with a student in Barcelona for the last couple of days. And he actually just got an offer the other day. But he had been going through that process partially while he was abroad. And so you talk to students all the time who are in different places, it doesn't matter. HELENE: So we're out of time. Thank you, Rebecca, would you mind putting your e-mail into the chat? I'm going to do the same. Thank you, Sarah for starting that for me. So I know we didn't get to every single question, but we want to be respectful of Rebecca's time. It's her evening. She worked a long day, I'm sure with all the students so Rebecca, thank you so so much. Very, very illuminating all the time. And for parents who have questions that did not get out, do not hesitate to reach out to me or to Rebecca and we will direct you to the correct person or be able to answer your questions ourselves. Don't hesitate, and we wish your Students great luck and hopefully they're all safe in the ice storm that's coming tomorrow. REBECCA: And I'm having issues typing. So my email is Rebcook as in R-E-B-C-O-O-K, at indiana.edu. Or you can find it on our website. I've listed a whole bunch of places. HELENE: Great. Thank you so much. Have a great evening, everyone. REBECCA: Thank you.
