spectrum: Professional

While typical preparations for a career fair may involve printing resumes, putting on the right professional shoes, and making sure you beat the line to Lerner Hall, the virtual dynamics of impressing your potential employer follow a different set of standards. The Virtual Engineering Career Fair will be held this Friday, September 25th and more “micro” career fairs will be held throughout the year, so it is never too early to start preparing. Begin getting ready with this checklist of everything you need to do beforehand.

If you’re a student, I challenge you to do an exercise. Go to your email inbox from two years ago. Pick one and read it. Are you cringing at the length, content, and word choice used in your email? Doesn’t it seem like a completely different person wrote that lengthy, verbose paragraph apologizing for your late assignment?

We ambitious Columbia and Barnard undergraduates know from experience that planning ahead is always a good thing. With New York being the center of finance, commerce, and multimedia production, it is the perfect place to kickstart your career and build connections. While it’s beneficial to start thinking about job prospects and your career path early in your college journey, be careful not to rush the process and overwhelm yourself with a commitment like an internship during your first year. It might be helpful to ask yourself the following questions when considering internships as an incoming first-year student.

When you are applying for summer internships, it is important to use every resource you have at your disposal. LinkedIn and Handshake are great tools you can use to make connections, find new networking events, and potentially secure internships. However, you may not know how to make the most of each platform. Check out our guide to using LinkedIn and Handshake effectively!

Interviews are undoubtedly an essential part of any application process; and with summer right around the corner, many students are looking for opportunities to work or intern in the city. While bringing up attendance at Columbia or Barnard might be a given in an interview, what exactly sets a student here apart from others at similarly distinguished institutions? What about Columbia is unique to making better future employees? Below are some pointers to help convey exactly that to those interviewers.

Whether you’re an incoming first-year or a rising senior, it’s never too late nor too early to start scouting for job openings during your time at Columbia or Barnard. Not only can it be an enriching experience to prepare you for life after graduation, it can also serve as a good source of financial support.

If you’ve ever applied for an internship, you know how long and frustrating the application process can be. After countless resume workshops, networking sessions, and practice interviews, getting rejected from an internship you spent months preparing for can be quite devastating.

As you progress through the first half of this fall semester, you may have a certain thought lingering at the back of your mind: How can I obtain an internship for the summer? This is something that many students probably worry about, but most don’t know that the Center for Career Education offers internship programs!

Do you need to update your resume? Practice for your upcoming interviews? Want to know all the different resources for getting an internship? Look no further than Beyond Barnard. Although it’s fairly new, the Beyond Barnard Initiative is an amazing resource for students’ professional needs.

You have two first-round interviews next week, have a cover letter due at 11:59 p.m. that you haven’t begun writing, and want to improve your resume but don’t know how to.