Nichols offers a four-year Professional Development Seminar to help prepare yourself for life after college. At first when I heard about this class I didn’t think it was very necessary. When told about it freshman year it was all about time management and how to properly adjust to college. To my surprise, without this class I would have been completely lost. It provided me with all the skills to do well with all the classes I would be taking, along with a few pointers on how to start preparing for the real world.

Sophomore PDS is where I learned how to create a portfolio along with the proper way to compose a resume. This was very essential to me because sophomore year is when I was looking to find an internship.

I would have been so lost if I didn’t learn how to properly write a resume and cover letter. Friends of mine that go to different schools were completely embarrassed when seeing how well prepared I was and that they still had no idea what to do or even what a cover letter was.

For junior year, we are being introduced to a new type of portfolio that is done completely online. In my opinion this is one of the best tools the PDS program has come up with. Having it completely online, in my opinion, is a lot easier then carrying around the binder. Knowing I will have something completely different from the others applying for the internship will help the nerves a little bit.

In a PDS class, the topic of the importance of portfolios came up and if all the time and effort we put into them is worth it. With the examples my professor gave, I feel they are absolutely important; We need something to help us stand out from the others!  When my professor brought up that at her company a Nichols student was hired for a dream internship just because she brought her portfolio with her, a lot of students including myself quickly changed our negative opinions on this.

I can’t wait to see what else we will be learning about in the upcoming weeks!

In preparation for the upcoming career fair, this week we were asked to present our elevator speeches. For those of you that are not familiar with an elevator speech, it is a pitch you would give to a potential employer to market yourself for a job. At first when hearing about the task and what I had to do, I was very nervous. Standing in front of a group of people and talking about myself is not something that I am very comfortable with. Thinking about what I would say in my pitch was the hardest part.  I want to say something that makes me stand out from the other candidates. As an athlete, the first words that came to mind were leadership and good communication skills. Obviously, these are very common adjectives to describe yourself with, but with the pointers my professor was able to give, we were all able to come up with ways to help our speeches stand out.  In my speech, I talked about my previous and current experiences that will help me in my future and my passion for marketing.

After giving my elevator speech I feel more confident for the career fair and how I will be presenting myself. I think learning how to develop an elevator speech is very useful, and I am excited PDS has taught me how to prepare for future jobs. Most importantly, the career and internship fair.

There was a lot of preparation going into the career and internship fair. For the past two weeks my PDS class has been reviewing all the ways to be successful during the fair. Mainly my professor focused on how to present yourself and what to say to the recruiter to make yourself look good. What you had to wear was the most important in my opinion. The first impression is always the lasting one, so if I was not dressed in business attire I feel that it would have changed the outcome completely.

The career fair was very nerve racking at first but after I introduced myself to the first company the nerves started to go away. There were a lot of businesses that I found to be very interesting and by being a marketing major I could relate to most of them there. The companies that I mainly wanted to focus on were the sports companies like the New England Revolution and the United States Tennis Association.

I was able to have a great conversation with the recruiter from the New England Revolution where I was able to give my resume to him. Unfortunately, there were no open positions for an internship but the recruiter said that he would hold my resume for future reference. I did have better luck with the United States Tennis Association, where the recruiter said that there was an opening in the marketing department. I am excited to learn about whether the opportunity is still available. After sending out a follow up email, the recruiter said that she would be keeping in touch.

PDS helped me prepare for the fair so much and allowed me to be ready for the questions I would be asked along with allowing me to get rid of the nerves. I was able to go up to them and start a conversation about their business and about myself without a problem. Overall, it was a very successful event, and I was happy with the turnout of companies and the number of students that decided to attend.