The helpful staff and resources at SFBU’s Career Center can assist in your career development while you are a student and after you graduate. Career Center staff members are experienced with high tech industries, non-profit organizations, and more.
Our staff can help you with the following:
- Career planning and readiness
- Career-related articles
- CPT - Curricular Practical Training (internships)
- Networking
- Job skills workshops
- Resume writing
- Interviewing skills
- Job fairs
- Job searches
- Current jobs information
Resumes
Resumes show potential employers how your abilities and experiences are suited for the position you are pursuing. The purpose of a resume is to secure an interview, and, once at the interview, you must be able to showcase your skills verbally. Begin the process of crafting your resume by making an appointment with SFBU’s Career Center for help.
The following links show what a resume looks like:
- https://careers.umbc.edu/students/documents/resumes/
- https://careers.umbc.edu/students/documents/resumes/dos-and-donts/
Strong action verbs such as “oversaw” are more effective in a resume than weak verbs like “was” and “did.” Follow this link for a list of strong action verbs:
https://careers.umbc.edu/students/documents/resumes/action-verbs/Cover Letters
Cover letters are your opportunity to introduce yourself to an employer and allow you to express what makes you the best fit for a particular position. For this reason, sending a cover letter is a good idea even when the employer states that it is not needed. Further advice and exemplar cover letters can be found by following these links:
Searching for a Job
SFBU’s Career Services meets students one-on-one to help them define their goals, make decisions, and begin planning their careers. Afterward, staff offer resources, various job skill trainings, advice about networking, access to jobs and internships, and guidance throughout the process of searching for a job.
Networking
The following are useful pointers to help you create and maintain a network, which is important in finding the ideal job.
Establishing your network: Assess the network that you already have first. You may have more connections than you realize.
- Focus on quality as opposed to quantity
- Practice a 30-second pitch
- Listen actively
- Take notes
- Follow up
- Return favors
Maintaining your network:After developing your network, maintaining it is critical, even after you find work. You may not require help from your network right away, but it could be useful when you don’t expect it. The following tips will help your professional connections stay strong:
Here are some easy steps to keep your professional relationships strong:
- Use social networks actively: share industry-related articles on LinkedIn weekly, if possible. Send information that you think would interest a particular connection straight to that person, along with a short message. Also, post career updates regularly so that your connections are aware of developments in your career.
- Maintain a close small network:determine who your most valuable contacts are, and interact with them via email or phone call a few times each year to ask what is going on with them in their careers and in general. These personal communications are more significant than posts on social media, which is best suited for maintaining contact with more distant connections. If nothing else, you have something important in common with them; you’ve both received a top-notch education from a San Francisco Bay area university. Networking is easier when you focus on points of common interest.
- Help your contacts: whenever you believe that one of your connections may be able to help another, suggest that they connect with each other. This effort will demonstrate to both of your connections that their success is important to you, and they may be more likely to think about you when opportunities arise in the future.
Source: The American Career Guide, https://content.theamericancareerguide.com/
Interviewing
How to Answer the 'Why Do You Want to Work for Us?' Interview Question
One of the more common interview questions these days, especially for entry-level positions, is some form of "Why do you want to work for us?" Other forms of this question include "What attracts you to our firm?" and "What about our firm excites you?" Whatever the exact phrasing you receive, there are a few things you want to get across as clearly and concisely as possible when answering. San Francisco Bay University should help you answer these questions in the following ways:
One of the things this question aims to do is gauge how well you prepare yourself for meetings and work situations. Will you do the prep work? Will you take the time to be extremely knowledgeable before showing up? Note that it's not too difficult and doesn't take too much to do some basic research about a company. All the information you need is a Google search away. So make sure to look at the company's website, look at their products and/or services, read about their leaders and team, make sure you understand their place in the market and their strategy. Also read their press releases and about any awards and honors they've received. And then do some reading outside their site. Check out their Wiki page, read some news articles about them. And while you do your research, take notes of the things that genuinely excite and impress you. Then, when you're done researching (maybe an hour at most is fine), take a look at your notes and choose three things to mention in your interview. Ideally, you'll practice, either aloud or just in your mind, how you might get these three things across clearly and concisely in your interview.
While you answer this question, keep in mind that interviewers are gauging your excitement level of working for them. They want candidates who are extremely enthusiastic, since that enthusiasm for the company and their work will more often than not turn into good work being done if you're hired. If you're not enthusiastic, or don't show that you are, then interviewers will view you as someone who might be a deadbeat, downer type of employee, meaning a low performer. Companies want upbeat, enthusiastic people on their teams. They want people excited about their strategy, mission, products, and services. So when answering this question, make sure your interviewers understand that all of the things you know about their company truly excite you, and that you'd be thrilled to join them and their mission and help them reach their goals.
Speaking of goals, interviewers know that, like companies, individuals also have them. And interviewers are looking for candidates whose goals match up with the company's. They want someone whose career goals will be a good fit for the specific role and for the company as a whole. So, when you're researching the role (you will, of course, know the job description backwards and forwards before you interview) and the company, you want to take note of the things that mesh with your goals. For example, if you want to get involved in a certain sector, and the company is involved in that, then you want to point that out to your interviewer. Or, say, if one of your goals/desires is to manage more and more people and so working for a high growth company whose team is growing is important to you, then get that across. Other things that might mesh with your career goals include working for a certain size of firm (big, small, startup, etc.), working for a firm with a certain geographic reach (international, a specific U.S. region, etc.), working in a certain type of culture (open, transparent, collaborative, etc.). Whatever the case might be, get as specific as possible, and spell out that what you're looking to do and learn at this point in your career is a good fit for the specific role and firm. Of course, be honest. Don't force yourself into a role or company that won't be a good fit for you. Never forget that interviewing is a two-way street: you're interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing you.