Week 3

On the 28th of January my fellow Hixson peer mentors and I went to the Iowa State Leadership Experience at the Memorial Union. I attended two sessions, and the one I found most beneficial was The Art of Interviewing, presented by Mike Gaul, the College of Ag and Life Sciences Director for Career Placement. It was your typical lecture over interviewing, what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, how to maximize your potential for getting the desired position as a result of your interview performance. I’m not going to blog verbatim about what advice he gave, but I thought he did a really nice job with his 50 minute lecture, and it made me a little more comfortable and knowledgeable about the interviewing process. If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to a similar lecture about interviews, resumes, and cover letters I would highly recommend it to any student at Iowa State. Mike Gaul works with the College of Ag and Life Sciences, but every college at Iowa State has a professional in a similar position. So go ahead and talk to these professionals and have them look over your resume periodically, set up a mock interview, and grasp where in the jobs market Iowa State graduates are being placed, and with what typical starting salaries and benefits.
            It might be discouraging for some students initially to start doing some of these things because individuals might feel that they don’t have anything to separate themselves from their colleagues, or don’t want to accept the fact they they’re one step away from the real world. The truth is that all Iowa State students enter the job market as a valuable commodity, no matter which of the 8 colleges you graduate from at Iowa State. The top employers hire Iowa State graduates for many reasons, but notably because of the hands on experience that Iowa State captivates by using “Science with Practice”. This comes from university applied research, and internships with some of the biggest blue chip companies in the nation.
            That’s why I think it’s important to instill in the minds of our students from day one on campus that by choosing this university they have entered the professional realm, and the time to set yourself up for a successful career starts at day one, boots on the ground at Iowa State University.