My main function is running an alumni mentoring program where I connect current students and young alumni with alumni mentors for career advice and guidance. I also do general career counseling, resume reviews, networking events, workshops and more.

EDUCATION | Undergraduate Degree in Psychology from the State University of New York College at Oswego Master's Degree in Elementary Education I have also taken graduate courses in higher education since I've been at SU.

HOW TO GET STARTED | If someone would like to do this kind of job, I would try to get an education background and skills in several areas including: counseling, marketing, organizational development, program development. You use all kinds of different skills. What I do in my job now, I couldn't have gone to college for. I draw from all the different jobs and educations I've had over the years; psychology is pretty important.

MUST HAVE TRAITS | Enjoy being in an educational setting Outgoing, enjoy help people Energetic Flexibility Love of working with and collaborating with groups of people on projects Positive attitude - absolutely essential in this line of work

how I got started | I kind of fell into it; five years ago I was working for a large corporation, Anheuser Busch, as an executive assistant in community relations and event planning. I decided that I wanted to go back to school for my master's degree in education to become a teacher, so I did that. Then I substitute taught for 2 years before deciding that teaching in elementary school wasn't for me. I still wanted to utilize my education and be connected with students. I really enjoyed academic settings, and being in Syracuse, SU was the place to do it. I was able to get a position pretty quickly as an assistant to a Vice President in student affairs. One of her direct reports was director of the career services center. I started talking to him and actually getting career counseling from him. There are so many opportunities here at the university I didn't know which direction I wanted to go in. This job turned up. I'd already been working on a project with the person in this job previously. All of a sudden she was leaving this job and she thought I was really perfect for it. The job sounded really interesting to me. I never realized or imagined there was such a job like this. I've had the opportunities to learn a lot of things, meet tons of people, and expand into different areas I hadn't been in before. Social networking is a good example. I use it every day to connect my students with people who aren't necessarily in my database of mentors.

why this job?| Because of the connections I get to create between people; the relationship building. It's almost like being a matchmaker. I get to meet people who want to make connections with other people, and then I find those people and bring them together. I'm a very social person anyway so doing this and helping people build relationships is very important to me and I get to do that every day with this job.

why I love this job!| (1) I love meeting people: students and alumni mentors (in my office, phone, email) and hearing their stories. Students come into my office and tell me their hopes and dreams for the future. Then I figure out how I'm going to help them move one step closer to those dreams. (2) I love the fact that I can create this job to be what I want. I have a director who is very hands off and allows me to be creative, innovative, and present ideas of things I want to do. I find it very fulfilling that I have a supportive person who allows me to be creative. (3) And I love the fact that I work at a university. I really enjoy being in the academic/intellectual community. There are always opportunities to learn new things and be exposed to different ideas. There is a real open exchange of ideas allowed in this environment. It is a very diverse environment. There are almost too many things to choose from (lectures, exhibitions, etc.) that I could be involved with at a university like this. I like the stimulation and challenge. I also like that we're kind of halfway between academic and corporate. We do a lot of outreach with employers for campus recruiting.

my typical day| In this office, we strive to serve as many students as we can so I spend a lot of my day in appointments with students. The appointments mainly involve orienting them to the mentor program. I also rack my brain about who they can connect with. I also might do drop-in appointments. These are office hours when students can come in for anything they want. We'll see them for 15 minutes each. Lately students have come in with a lot of resume questions and also asking how to find internships. Whatever they need to talk about, I can help them for a short amount of time and then tell them how to make a follow-up appointment. I also attend scheduled meetings with our staff and also at all the career services centers on campus (we’re the main center but all the schools and colleges may have a small one of their own that we collaborate with). I spend time writing newsletter articles for my own newsletter or various campus newsletters. I work on setting up programs where we bring in alumni speakers, I hold workshops on my own and I frequently go into classrooms and talk about my program to make students aware of what is available.

what they are | One challenge is the lack of funding to do some of the things I'd like to do (alumni I'd love to bring to campus to do programs but we can't afford it, promotional pieces, etc.). Another challenge is learning to work with a large group of people. In my previous jobs I've been on my own. Now I'm in a center with 20 other people. It's finding a balance between making sure that I get out and mingle with everybody instead of being holed up in my office all the time when I'm not meeting with students. All the other challenges are really related to various situations and interactions with different students and alumni.

all about growth | Right now, career services in general is in high demand because people don't know what to do. They've lost their jobs and are looking for any help they can get. There has been a huge increase in the number of alumni looking for jobs as opposed to students. Even as things get more technical and online related, people are still going to need to know how to access and utilize these types of career resources. The career ladder for me here (at SU) is wide open. Depending on my interest I could rise up here at this center through the ranks or I could move into an academic career center at any one of our schools here. I could go into development (where my predecessor went). There are tons of administrative positions at universities. They like to hire people with institutional knowledge versus hiring people from the outside. That's a benefit of being here. My master's degree is key to being able to obtain the kinds of positions that I will be looking at in the future.

my website| http://www.syr.edu