COVID and Careers: Your Guide to Professional Development in Quarantine

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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone in one way or another. For students looking for summer jobs, a required internship, or that first career position after graduation, though, the impact can feel particularly concerning. Hiring freezes, rising unemployment, and general uncertainty about the job market are combining to make career development even more anxiety producing than it usually is. Despite everything, though, the Office of Career Connections is still here to help! Use the resources and advice below to make good use of your time in quarantine, whether you're actively looking for opportunities now, preparing to be the best applicant you can be when you finally do start applying, or still figuring out exactly what you want to do with this great SOU education you're pursuing.

Is it even possible to do professional development right now? Yes! Here's how...

FIND OPEN OPPORTUNITIES

Find Companies That Are Still Hiring

Despite higher unemployment rates, there are industries that are looking to hire due to increased demand of product during this time. These employers might be looking for part-time, temporary, or full-time work. Remember that part-time or temporary work can very well lead to full-time work as the employer gains trust in you and your commitment to the company culture.

You can also use your favorite job search sites to find companies hiring immediately. Whether you're looking for jobs or internships, Indeed classifies some positions as "urgently hiring." Glassdoor identifies similar opportunties using a "hiring surge" category and the Oregon Employment Department job board allows you to search for opportunities using the phrase "immediate need." Don't forget that Handshake is still full of full-time, part-time, and internship opportunities in Oregon and across the country. Try searching other sites, many of which you can find on Career Connections' lists of job boards, using relevant keywords as well.

Consider Working Remotely

Many people are working from home these days, at least part of the time. After COVID-19, the world of work might look very different, with more people requesting flexible work schedules or truly remote work. True remote work involves working all of your hours away from an office setting. Your work is done through your computer and internet connection 100% of the time. There has been a boom in remote work opportunities that many find enticing, particularly if you are geographically bound to one location but are struggling to find available work there.

To get started, check out the remote work resources that Career Connections has pulled together, and take a look at this list of the top 50 companies hiring for remote jobs in 2021. Want to find even more remote opportunties? Search for positions on major job and internship boards by using "remote"in the keyword search.

Explore Micro-Internships

Micro-internships are short-term, professional assignments that college students and recent graduates can complete remotely. For students who have little work experience, micro-internships can give them the learning and confidence that they need to be better positioned for a full-time position. Employers also benefit by testing out the talent pool and discover student competencies that could not be gleaned from a resume. Learn more and apply at Parker Dewey, and check out this short video about micro-internships and some tips for success.

Not sure about a micro-internship? You can also track down virtual or remote internships. Check out Internships.com, and don't forget to try typing "remote internship" or "virtual internship" into the search bars of all your other favorite job boards.

Contact a Staffing Agency

Staffing agencies have relationships with employers all over the valley and are constantly seeking to fill open positions that need to be filled quickly. Even if some of those positions are not permanent jobs, the skills, experiences, and relationships you build can lead to longterm opportunities. If you're interested in learning more, reach out to a local agency to find out what kinds of jobs are available.

Take A Gap Year or Short-Term Position

Some students may decide to take a gap year, which is a constructive time to think more deeply about their interests and goals. Rather than jumping into full-time work or graduate school, many students decide to commit to volunteer and service experience, an abroad experience, post-graduate internship experience. What a person decides to do during a gap year varies based on individual interest and needs. Review Yale’s Gap Year and Short-Term Positions page as well as the University of Iowa's GAP Year Opportunities site where you can peruse possible alternative pathways to longer-term work.

Seek Professional Help

The Oregon Employment Department supports local WorkSource centers all across the state. WorkSource centers offer free job training and career guidance programs to the general public. WorkSource Rogue Valley is Southern Oregon’s center located both in Medford and Grants Pass and can be a great resource to folks looking for work in the Rogue Valley.

Don't forget to use campus resources as well. Ask your faculty if they have any leads on jobs, internships, or fellowships. They often have tremendous professional networks and are motivated to help you be as successful as possible. And the Office of Career Connections is of course always available to you as well. Be sure to explore all the resources on the Students and Alumni Page, and don't hesitate to set up an appointment to review your application materials or prepare for an interview.

BECOME A BETTER APPLICANT

Spruce Up Your Materials

A resume is a document that provides an employer with a snapshot of your experience, skills, and accomplishments. Resumes need to be tailored to the specific job so that within 10 seconds of viewing, the employer decides that it goes in the “yes” pile. You might already have an old resume sitting around somewhere, but now is the perfect time to explore ways to make it even stronger so that it's ready to go when you start applying for jobs or internships again. Career Connections has compiled some great resume guides to help you get started.

Even if you have submitted lots of resumes before, you might not feel very confident writing a cover letter. Cover letters usually accompany a resume and are one of the first pieces of writing an employer will read from you. A cover letter provides a great opportunity to showcase your writing skills by make connections between your qualifications and the job duties, and overall add more dimension to your application. Check out these helpful resources to get you started.

Professionalize Your Social Media Presence

LinkedIn is the world's largest online professional networking community. With nearly 700 million members around the world and millions of job postings, it is an incredibly useful tool for job seekers. While you're stuck at home, consider signing up for an account. If you already have an account, now is the perfect time to tailor it to your professional goals and make it appealing to potential recruiters or folks with whom you want to network. LinkedIn has a plethora of resources to help college students get their profiles in tip top shape, using it to build a network, and searching for opportunities using the platform.

LinkedIn isn't the only social media platform that can help you build professional networks and find jobs, though. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram can all be leveraged to help make you stronger candidate. Check out some of these articles for tips and tricks to leverage your online presence to impress potential employers and connect to the people who can help get your career off to a great start.

Practice Your Interviewing Skills

Social distancing makes interviewing difficult, and in-person interviews have largely been replaced with phone and video interviews. By now you are familiar with the use of Zoom in your classes, so you're already on track to become an expert video interviewer. Zoom, and other similar tools like Skype, Google Hangouts, and BlueJeans, are being used in lieu of face to face interviews. There are a plethora of YouTube videos providing you tips on preparing for a video interview. Practice recording yourself answering questions on your phone or computer. Afterwards, critique yourself and have others review your videos as well. Here are some video interviewing tips from a leading video interviewing company, Big Interview. And don't forget, Career Connections is happy to conduct a mock interview for you. Just set up an appointment!

Show Off Your Skills... and Build New Ones

Employers will ask how you have been staying relevant in your field and leveraging social media. An easy way to do this is to read and stay informed about your industry so you can use this knowledge to guide your job search or highlight your knowledge in interviews. It's also a perfect time to curate examples of your work. Consider putting together a website with samples of artifacts that you've created that might be relevant to your job hunt someday. Want to go into marketing? Gather up examples of social media posts, flyers, and email campaigns that you've created for classes or clubs. Interested in being a coach? Pull together a sample game plan and practice schedule that you could show off in an interview. Destined to become an artist? Build a website to host samples of your paintings, designs, or poetry.

Want to go even further? Use this time to build skills that will make you an even more appealing candidate. There are lots of free ways to learn relevant skills online. Check out these sites to get started:

Line Up Your References and Letters of Recommendation

Many professional opportunities - whether jobs, internships, fellowships, or graduate school applications - will require you to provide a list of references or letters of recommendation. It is important to identify who will speak on behalf of your skills and abilities when the time comes. You don't want to be caught at the last minute without a name or a letter. Why not use this time to identify who will be able to write a note of support for you or volunteer to be listed in a reference section? Check out this great page detailing what sorts of people to ask and how to go about asking. The more effort you put into this now, the better off you'll be later.

DO SOME CAREER EXPLORATION

Assess Your Skills, Interests, and Values

Before launching yourself down a career path, it's wise to spend some time examining what you like doing, what skills you enjoy using, and what you value in a job. There are lots of different ways to do that kind of self-assessment, but one of the easiest ways to get started is by using the tools on the Career Connections page. Perhaps the most robust options are those offered by Oregon CIS. As an SOU student, you have free access and can set up your account by following the instructions on this page. From there, simply click on the Explore Resources tab, then the yellow Occupations button, and then click on any of the tools you want to try - the Interest Profiler, the Skills Sort, the Work Importance Locator, or any of the other helpful options on the page.

Beyond Oregon CIS, Career Connections has curated several other assessment tools on their Exploration page, including (among several others):

Explore Connections Between Majors and Careers

You can go into most professional fields from most majors, and the work that you do outside the classroom through jobs, internships, civic engagement, and clubs and organizations can often do just as much (if not more) to prepare you for your future career than the specific discipline in which you choose to major. However, there are definitely natural career paths that extend from majors that are worth considering if you're trying to figure out what options to start with when you begin exploring what you want to do with your degree after you graduate. These are careers that value the specific skills and experiences that you're likely to gain in particular majors. One great place to begin searching through those options is What Can I Do With This Major? which you can access from the Explore Majors page.

Wnat more information about majors? Most programs at SOU have great content on their individual pages, which you can access from the Academic Programs page. Your faculty and Student Success Coordinators are also tremendous resources when it comes to figuring out what you'll learn in each discipline and what students often do with those degrees. If you have a LinkedIn account, be sure to search for Southern Oregon University in the search field, click on the school, and then click the Alumni tab on the left side of the screen. From there, you'll be able to scroll through the thousands of alumni in LinkedIn and search by major to see what creative things people are doing with their degrees. And while you're exploring options, take a look at the cool Career Guides compiled by University of Michigan.

Build Your Professional Network

One of the best things you can do to learn more about different occupations and set yourself up for success down the road is build your professional network. Your network can play an invaluable role in helping you decide whether or not a job is right for you. We all make certain assumptions about what a job will entail, and if we’ve done our homework, we've even supplemented those assumptions with our own industry research. But short of actually having a job or internship in that field, nothing is quite as informative as talking to people who do the job day in and day out. What's more, your network is a powerful job search tool. Experts estimate that 70 to 80% of all positions are never actually listed anywhere and instead are filled internally or through networks. Referrals only make up about 6% of all applicants, but they account for about 40% of all hires, and if you’re referred to an opportunity, you’re significantly more likely to be hired than candidates who were not referred.

So, how do you build your professional network? Remember that most folks are happy to talk about themselves for a little while. It's nice to feel important and interesting, and most people are happy to be the one to help a new colleague get started in the field. Start with the other networks that you already have and branch out from there.

Talk to faculty and staff at SOU to talk about their experiences in their fields, and to ask them to refer you to other folks.
Ask your friends and peers if they know anyone working in the fields you're interested in.
Check in with everyone in your family.
Look through your email contacts and reach out to everyone there with a letter of inquiry.
Leverage your social media networks to reach out to connections that you might not have already considered.
Find people doing your dream job and follow them on social media.
Put yourself in the path of opportunity by going to events like job fairs, information sessions, networking groups, and so on, even if they're all virtual right now.
And reach out directly to organizations that interest you to see if you can find someone there that’s interested in doing an informational interview. Remember that most folks are happy to talk about themselves for a little while. It's nice to feel important and interesting, and most people are happy to be the one to help a new colleague get started in the field.

Can't find the right person to talk to? Check out Candid Careers. They have thousands of informational interview videos in hundreds of occupations that you can access anytime, anywhere.

Create (and Use) Your LinkedIn Account

LinkedIn has more than half a billion users, and about half of those – 260 million – are active on a monthly basis. It is the world’s largest professional networking community, so literally everyone in the system is there specifically to engage with other folks. It’s a great way to find jobs, learn about companies, brainstorm careers, and, most importantly, build connections with people doing the jobs you want to do someday. As an added bonus, you can look up Southern Oregon University and expore the profiles for more than 20,000 SOU alumni to see what they are doing with their degrees and reach out to them for informational interviews.

If you haven't created an account before, or if you're looking to improve the account that you already have, there is lots of great advice for you to consider:

Consider Graduate School

Do you think you might be interested in attending graduate school someday? Now could be a good time to begin considering whether or not it's the right option for you.

There is a lot to consider. If you're ready to find and compare relevant programs, there are several tools to use. Start with your Oregon CIS account. After you log in, click the Explore Resources tab and then the Education and Training button. You can then use the School List or School Sort buttons to look into particular programs. Here are some other sites that provide similar services:

Start Your List of Potential Employers

Even if you're not ready to begin applying for jobs or internships, it's never too early to start compiling a list of places where you might someday want to apply. It can take a surprisingly long time to put a comprehensive list together, but having one will make a targetted job or internship hunt much more efficient and effective. Plus, knowing where you would eventually like to work gives you the opportunity to learn as much as you can about those employers in advance. You can follow them on social media, keep an eye out for them in the news, seek out folks who work there, and review their current postings so you know the types of skills and experiences they'll be looking for when you're finally ready to apply.

How do you find employers? You can start by scanning job boards and taking note of the ones posting interesting opportunities. Here are some other strategies that might be even more helpful.

Use the Oregon Employment Department Employer Database to find complete lists of employers by industry and location.
Review membership lists for chambers of commerce where you'd like to work. Here are pages for Ashland and Medford as examples.
Explore the employer database in Handshake. Once you're logged in, click the Employers button to find information on more than 500,000 employers nationwide.
As old fashioned as it might seem, search for businesses and organizations using the Yellow Pages. The search field makes it far easier to explore options using keywords than it ever was in the old days.