Division of Student Affairs
The sections below describe the many ways that the Career Center partners with faculty by providing programmatic support, access to online career resources, and helpful tips as you guide and advise your students. We look forward to working with you!
*Scroll down for more information.
While creating your syllabi, you don’t need to cancel classes to work around your conference schedule. In addition, if your course has career development themes we have many resources in addition to workshops, with many online resources and tools including pre-recorded workshops that can be used any time or for assignments outside of class. The Career Center will cover your class time with a career-related workshop for 30 or 60 minutes. The Career Center staff is available to present on-campus workshops on a variety of topics to your class, group, or club. For more information, or to request a workshop, visit our Workshop Page.
Possible topics include:
Additional tools and resources:
To request a career workshop, please complete this short form with your contact information and some details about your class. We require at least two weeks' notice to schedule a workshop.
Please go to the Request a Workshop page. Questions? Please contact Shelby Lord, Career Advisor at lords@sonoma.edu
The Career Center has several of these workshops prerecorded. You are welcome to use all of the prerecorded workshops in your class. To access prerecorded workshops just fill out the form!
To request a workshop, complete our Workshop Request Form. Workshops must be requested at least 2 weeks prior to your requested date. Classroom presentations are limited to one workshop per unit, per semester.
Any workshop requests (live workshop and/or Live Q&A session) must be requested at least 2-4 weeks prior to your requested date. Classroom presentations are limited to one per class/group per semester.
*All workshops are scheduled for 60 minutes, with the exception of "Introduction to the Career Center" which is scheduled for 5-10 minutes. If you have a 50-minute class, we can adjust our workshop, but we ask that you let us know in advance. Thank you!
Career readiness is more than a college degree or doing well in one’s major. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) defines career readiness as “the attainment and demonstration of requisite competencies that broadly prepare college graduates for a successful transition into the workplace.” In other words, soft skills matter. Much has been written over the last few years about the fact that employers think students lack some of these important skills when they get to the workplace. NACE has identified eight competencies that students should be developing and the Career Center is dedicated to helping students continue to build these competencies so as to be more fully prepared when they leave Sonoma State as graduates and young alumni. As faculty, you most certainly foster these competencies with students throughout their time as a student.
Here are a few suggestions for helping students more intentionally focus on competencies:
Make explicit which class sessions/assignments/projects link to building particular competencies. Discuss it during class and include them on your syllabus with definitions and further resources.
The Career Center offers numerous resources for finding jobs and internships, including tools just for SSU students, field-specific career sites, and much more. In addition, we meet with students in 1-on-1 appointments to discuss resumes and cover letters, internship and job search strategies, and more. Handshake is our online, mobile-friendly platform that connects students and early alumni to employers for jobs, internships, and career events. Students can find postings for thousands of external jobs and internships, on-campus student employment, career resources, virtual and in-person career events, and announcements.
Additional information about Handshake and other job search resources can be found on our website on the Finding a Job page.
Career fairs and events are significant opportunities for students to meet and network with employers and professional connections. These events are meant for students of all years and majors. With the open career mindset approach, we also encourage you to share with students how these events are chances to practice their skills, build their professional network, and gain access to jobs and internships now and in the future. Often students don’t think career events are for them until the Senior year when it can, unfortunately, be too late leaving them without options or a job well into their post-graduation years. As a community of staff and faculty, we need to prepare our students for that eventuality early and often, from prospective student to orientation, through each year of the curriculum, and through to their alumni status. In addition, career engagement is proven to support students to persist and graduate when they aren’t sure what they want to do or what major they wish to choose.
Here are some of our annual events to promote and integrate into your curriculum:
In addition to these annual events, we host many events throughout the year such as alumni panels during Social Justice Week or Women’s History Month, we participate and table in student activities and engagement events throughout the year, and we will co-sponsor or partner with departments for special events. See our website events page or Handshake for up-to-date event information.
How you can help your students:
How you can partner with the Career Center for events and employer outreach:
Encourage students to join The Sonoma State Network and utilize SSU alumni connections on LinkedIn. By joining the Network (our student-alumni networking and mentoring platform) and utilizing LinkedIn, students will be able to find alumni and request informational interviews from individuals whose career paths interest them along with flash networking Q+A and more formal mentoring programs. Helpful tips for creating a Network or LinkedIn profile and composing questions for informational interviews, as well as more general networking info, are available via the Network or our website career.sonoma.edu.
Remind students to attend career events scheduled throughout the academic year. Students will find many networking opportunities with professionals and employers listed on Handshake under Events, or on our website. Encourage them to include in their calendars conversations and presentations with these connections that are provided.
Share personal networking stories with your students. Networking can be an intimidating process, especially for novices, and your success stories — or even times when things didn’t go as planned — will help demystify the process for students. Have you ever found a job lead through a connection? Received great career advice from a conversation with someone? These are examples of networking in action.
References and recommendations are an essential aspect of students taking their first steps as professionals. A great reference can make or break getting a good job and impact their career trajectory and earning capacity for their entire lifetime. This is especially critical for women, people of color, and any underrepresented groups. As faculty, you become some of the best references and recommendation writers. A reference typically means agreeing to share your contact information and be called or emailed with a reference request that you can respond to in a timely manner - responding right away is key in the job search process.
A letter of recommendation is “expert testimony” to a student’s ability to perform a task: contributing to a team project, succeeding in graduate school, or learning from a particular experience (such as foreign study/travel). You need to be confident of the applicant’s ability to be able to write convincingly. You could put your professional credibility at risk if you consistently write letters for applicants who are not qualified.
Recommendation Letters for Graduate School Applicants
For graduate school, there is a kind of “code” for levels of confidence. Letter writers use these phrases at the beginning or end of the letter to express their professional evaluation. Generally speaking, there are four levels of confidence as suggested by graduate school forms themselves:
Tips for Successful Recommendation Letters
A letter of recommendation succeeds on the same merits as any form of persuasive writing: good vocabulary, solid essay structure, appropriate content, and relevant details.
Format of Recommendation Letters
These are official documents and should be written using the following professional/business format:
If you’d like to invite a guest speaker to your classroom to speak on a specific topic, the Career Center can train you in the use of The Network, Sonoma State LinkedIn Groups, including using LinkedIn and campus resources to find potential alumni speakers. If you’d like to invite an employer presenter to a class or event please search through Handshake, LinkedIn, or ask us for recommendations. We have many employer partners and recommended speakers that recruit and hire many of our graduates. If you’d like to host an alumni panel discussion, the Career Center can help you think through your plan and advertise the event. Typical steps to planning a panel discussion:
SSU faculty & Staff seeking career center services must be alumni within 1 year of graduation or a current student.
