1. Take courses in your area of interest
Hone your skills and acquire knowledge in your academic area of expertise by taking foundation courses that will have marginally marginal relevance to your future career. Many foundation courses are also infamous "weeder classes," which are vicious gatekeepers to your dream career. If you successfully navigate through these classes, you are rewarded with the opportunity to indulge in more specialized elective courses that will have marginal relevance to your future career. You can also write a senior thesis if you would like to pad your resume more than SIBC did. I will also mention study abroad opportunities since what other way is more effective in broadening your academic pursuits with a global perspective than drinking Guinness and posting about it on Instagram?2. Spruce up your LinkedIn
Immerse yourself in the marketplace of professionals and professional bot accounts. Engage with people of interest by sliding into their DMs under the guise of a nifty “connect” button. Curate an immaculate digital image of yourself by catfishing the internet with posts about how excited you are to join (consulting firm of your choice). Feign interest in the budding careers of your acquaintances by tossing over the business professional equivalent of “slayyy”: “Wow, great work, Jonah. Well deserved!” Is LinkedIn materially different from Tinder, or any dating app for that matter? I don’t know; I would have to pay a consultant to get to the bottom of this!3. Go to the career fair to network with recruiters
Throw on your three-piece high school prom suit (the dress code is business casual). Flock to the Duncan Student Center en masse with resumes and notebooks in hand. Stand in line for Deloitte. It is that simple! You may feel nervous, unprepared and inexperienced among the hundreds of other students itching to work for a Big Four Firm, but trust me, the recruiter will know you are the one.4. Secure an unpaid internship
After the successful networking, you are afforded the opportunity to work a full-time internship, preferably unpaid to demonstrate your utmost piety to the company. An internship is a fantastic way to get hands-on insight into how exciting or miserable your future will be. Fear not. Upon completing an internship with which you were not entirely satisfied, you can repeat steps one through three, with a higher probability of success. However, if you outperformed yourself and had enough coffee chats with your supervisor, you might, just might, receive a post-grad job offer.5. Work in a cubicle for the remainder of your human existence
Steps one through four must be completed successfully before one can consider step five. Numbers may dictate your work on the Excel document. A number may determine how much resources you have to budget for yourself and your family. But the two numbers nine to five will be the ultimatum that governs the remainder of your days in the workforce. You could invest in a retirement plan so that you can finally begin to enjoy your life while on your deathbed. You will spend limited time with your children and will inevitably persuade them to take the same course of action that you did years ago. This may seem like a grim “life,” but at least you get happy hours with the team and 11 days of Paid Time Off.The Dome’s Career Fair was last week. I imagine your email inbox was flooded with enticements to attend the Career Fair. You may have actually gone there to test your luck with the recruiters. Perhaps you enjoyed your time, and the experience was fruitful. Or maybe you thought it was a waste of time; I am not here to judge.
I am here to assess how the Dome treats career development and discernment. As for the former, the Dome offers resources via the Center for Career Development, where one can learn about, you guessed it, careers. There are links and documents to detail all parts of the job process. Everything is centralized on the online website or on the fifth floor of Duncan. I commend the volume and quality of information offered to students. As for the efficacy of the interview preparation exercises or resume proofreading, I cannot speak.
As for the latter, there are comparatively fewer resources. I can scarcely call a week of Moreau class dedicated to career discernment legitimate career discernment. The Center for Career Development offers a measly tab filled with links to random pages: outsourced surveys, a form to sign up for a meeting with a counselor or a request for your social security number, to name a few. The disparity in resources and attention allocated for career development and discernment tells you where the Dome places her priorities.
Career discernment must take precedence over career development. Why should you develop something that you do not really care about? Consider the following: Mentorship is a powerful tool one can leverage to reflect on themselves with incredible honesty. Intentional personal reflection via journaling can also help in one’s self-assessment. You ought to understand yourself before you endeavor to understand the ins and outs of some company. Take a step back to analyze your situation from a bird’s eye view. Avoid following along with the crowd out of complacency or cowardice. Be a consultant because you firmly believe that your calling is there.
I remind you that there is a human behind every job and that human is you. Take care that you are attentive to your humanity at all moments along your professional journey. To think that you need to have everything or a majority of things figured out is ridiculous. What matters is momentum. You do not have to be pinpoint accurate in every career decision, but as long as you maintain momentum, you can reexamine your choice and pivot. Don’t get fooled or discouraged by all the noise. You should move at your own pace.
Jonah Tran is a sophomore at Notre Dame double majoring in finance and classics with a minor in constitutional studies. He prides himself on sarcasm and his home — the free state of Florida. You can contact Jonah by email at jtran5@nd.edu.
Jonah Tran
Jonah Tran is a sophomore at Notre Dame studying finance, classics and constitutional studies. He prides himself on sarcasm and his home — the free state of Florida. You can contact Jonah at jtran5@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
