Success Stories: Sydney

How have you benefited from using the Career Center services?

Using the Career Center services helped me greatly in my internship search. I came into my first meeting not knowing what kind of help I needed, only simply that I was completely lost and needed guidance on next steps. I was given resources to look for jobs as they opened, assistance with networking and making connections with potential employers, and multiple interview prep meetings as I went into the busy interview season for marketing.

How did working with the Career Center impact your internship/job search?

Ultimately, I don’t think I would have been nearly as prepared for my interviews and application processes if I hadn’t used the Career Center. Not only were the resources and guidance helpful, but I didn’t feel like one of many students working to get a summer job. The Career Consultant I worked with was phenomenal and established a real relationship with me, kept in touch as deadlines and interviews occurred to see how they went and celebrated my acceptance of my job!

What was the most helpful advice given to you by the Career Center?

Interviews were something I thought I was good at coming into the Career Center. I quickly learned that I needed to improve that skill set a lot, and Kelsey worked with me extensively in mock interviews to make sure I was ready for the real thing. She gave me lots of tips on how to prep, which was exactly the guidance I needed!

What challenges were you facing and how did the Career Center help you solve them or motivate you to solve them?

My first meeting with the Career Center was when I first started looking for internships, so I really had the whole process ahead of me. My main issue was that I truly had no idea what to do to get the kind of corporate internship I was looking for; being a marketing and graphic design double major gives me a lot of flexibility in the kinds of jobs I might want, but the flexibility was overwhelming me to the point where I didn’t know where to start. I was given a list of companies that were coming out with applications as well as other companies that had TCU connections. After getting the initial push in the right direction, I started feeling a lot more confident in my abilities to find the right summer internship!

What advice would you give others facing the same challenges you did?

The marketing internship application process occurs so much later than all the other business internships that it can be quite unsettling – in your Junior year, accounting and finance majors will be getting offers for post-graduation jobs before any marketing summer internship positions even begin to open. My biggest advice is to not get freaked out! Just because people around you are getting jobs doesn’t mean that you won’t get one, because their timelines are so different from marketing’s. Also, because marketing is diverse by nature, the kinds of positions will vary a lot more than other business majors’, which simply gives you the opportunity to tailor your summer to exactly what you want it to look like. Patience is the biggest factor during this process!

Where there any specific events you went to that were beneficial? If so which one and why was it helpful?

I went to the Career & Intern Expo in the fall of my junior year, which actually ended up facilitating the connection to the start of my current summer internship. I highly recommend taking advantage of this event, because even though it is months before marketing positions open, it helps to give you the connections you might need when those applications do open!