The Activate Your Career Plan program is a six-session career development experience where students explore careers related to their major, create a plan toward their career goals, and grow their social capital through networking with employers and alums.
Why should students join?
- Understand the relevance of creating a SMART career development goal in college
- Connect with other first-generation students
- Connect with first generation alums and employers
- Learn and build social capital
- Learn how to build relationships with industry experts
- Learn how to move from goals to actions
You will get a LinkedIn recommendation upon successful completion of the program – this includes attending and actively participating in five of the six sessions.
Our Learning Outcomes
All participants in the program will have the opportunity to:
- Set a career goal and develop a plan to achieve it.
- Craft a resume and cover letter in excellence.
- Learn how to communicate your professional brand.
- Create a LinkedIn profile that tells your unique story and prepares you to build connections.
- Prepare your bio and headshot to be used in a professional environment.
- Develop a professional network and learn how to make the most of it.
Who is a first-gen student?
- Check out the Center for First-Generation Student Success (NASPA) definition of a first-gen student.
- Suffolk University is a first-gen forward school – about one third of the undergraduate population
- Features/suffolk-university-magazine-fall-2022/first-generation-voices
- Suffolk-welcomes-new-director-of-first-generation-student-initiatives
- First-generation-college-student-scholarship
Resources
A highlight of our program is the ways students build social capital. Students connect with folks who work in their areas of interests. They use resources like LinkedIn, professors, alums, career center staff, family, friends, etc. to build these connections and relationships. At the start of the program, students begin to envision what they would need to achieve their career goals. At the end of the program, they put that vision to the test. While this is different for all students, common career goals include finding jobs/internships, learning more about areas of career interests, building connections, and giving back.
