Please write a ~500 word piece (or upload a reflection in another medium, such as video) on the second meeting you had with a career advisor this semester.
In my most recent meeting with Holly Robinson, I updated her on my progress on LinkedIn and on reaching out to alumni. Throughout my journey, she has been so helpful in recommending alumni and helping me figure out my career interests. At this point in time, I feel as though my meetings with her have solidified my love for creative careers and I’m extremely interested and excited by jobs to do with social media, marketing, communications and public relations.
With Holly, I reflected on the several career events I attended and what I learnt from them – one that I focused on was the one with Wesleyan alumni who were in the marketing industry. She recommended that I reach out to a student on campus who is interested in marketing and she gave me some names of alumni. Holly also helped me use the search bar under the Wesleyan Alumni LinkedIn that allows you to search for alumni who are in the field you are interested in.
We also talked about potentially making a website as students who are interested in going into fields like marketing or graphic design would normally have one. I found a current student who is interested in graphic design and has a website and Holly gave me her contact to try to reach out to. After our conversation, I looked into creating websites and I think I will attempt to create one over winter break as I think it will be useful to future applications.
We also talked a lot about potential summer internships and ways to go about applying and going through the interview process. I have been looking through Handshake for internships, however, she advised me to look on LinkedIn as well because they offer different ones and open the pool of internships for me. After the meeting, I saved multiple different internships on LinkedIn and will be applying for them soon. Holly also recommended getting LinkedIn premium, at least for the first free month, because I will be able to send inmail and reach out to as many people as possible.
Overall, this call was extremely helpful and I’m very grateful for all of Holly’s great advice over this semester. I’ve learnt a lot from her; I have found it much easier to reach out to alumni and begin making connections which I was so scared to do before. I also managed to understand how to use LinkedIn and build that platform up since I will be using it a lot in the future. Furthermore, I feel much more confident in my ability to apply for internships as my resume has been finalized, I understand how to write cover letters and I look forward to my future career. Instead of fear, I’m excited to continue learning and exploring potential career paths.
