Feminist Winter Term: Day 3

Recap of Career/Grad School Panel:

Today we met with Will Simpkin, a career specialist at Barnard College, Kara Elverson, a front-line resume reader at Ms. Foundation for Women, and Melissa Gonzalez, a PhD Candidate in Spanish.  They each offered advice on how to choose a career, how to present yourself to employers or grad schools, and what to expect when looking for (or landing!) a job or internship.

Straight from Will Simpkin, the Associate Director of Civic Engagement at Barnard College, came golden advice for making a resume.

Five tips are:

1. Contact information—keep it professional! (You do not want to be pothead09@aol.com.)

2. Educational Information—keep it succinct, with no more than 3-4 relevant courses from your CURRENT institution. High school should no longer be on a resume after graduation. And include your thesis title!

3. Experience: Part 1—Relevant, Part 2—Other

4. Leaderships and Involvement - include your high-profile and relevant ones in "Experience," and use this for anything less relevant.

5. Skills and Interests (interests is mostly filler.) Have no more than 4 interests.  List all software sets known, languages spoken.

Similarly, Kara Elverson of the Ms. Foundation spoke about what employers look for, how they scan resumes and cover letters, and the big no-no's of writing that "interested in" email. Some key hints were to avoid careless mistakes like sending a letter to the wrong addressee. She suggests putting a lot of time into each application, and to work on a different resume for each in order to best highlight experience that is relevant and valuable. She also stressed that academic papers are less helpful to employers as writing samples if you have professional writing available (including reports and blogs).

Also, some good news - the objective statement is dead, and you no longer have to lead with "Hi, my name is ______."

Melissa Gonzalez offered guidance to undergraduates about deciding to go to grad school.  She stressed that students should do thorough research and be well-prepared; send well-written samples, and edit them before sending them. Always have your materials observed and edited by more than your own eyes, and when it's crunch time, some people may or may not choose to live at home (again) while filling out applications.

In the afternoon, students attended personalized mini-internships at: AIR Gallery, Sadie Nash Leadership Institute, Ms. Foundation for Women, Third Wave Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Girls Write Now, Akashic Books, Scenarios USA, The Feminist Press, Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, and Women Make Movies.