IS Career Development

Career development is one of the most important programming areas your chapter can offer. After all, one of the reasons for going to college is to gain skills you can use in a career! AIS student chapters can prepare their members to have a leg up on the competition. We believe it’s so important, it is part of the AIS student chapter annual awards program.

   

Career Development Program Ideas

  • Practice interviews
  • Career Fair preparation
  • Resume writing and review workshop
  • Alumni career panel
  • Understanding your job offer (Temple University)
  • Effective networking, business card etiquette, 30-second elevator pitches (Temple University)
Rider University Student Chapter
Examples from AIS Chapters

Speaker/Recruiting Presentations

In order to provide an additional method of exposure to IS topics, we presented a series of speaking events featuring industry representatives. These events allowed members the opportunity to gain an understanding of these topics from a different perspective and it also provided a great opportunity to connect with companies of interest for interviewing purposes and building a professional network. These presentations develop a mutually beneficial relationship between firms and our students by providing recruiters and professionals from the firm with informal access to highly motivated and engaged students. Companies presented information about their firms and the positions they are trying to fill. Following the presentations, recruiters and professionals networked. 

Technical Development Application Program (T-­DAP)

Alumni and students taught the workshops covering the following: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, the Bootstrap framework, and WordPress. Members used what they learned to create websites and web-­applications, ranging from E-­portfolios to E-­commerce sites. 

AIS Member Resume Book

Each semester a resume book is created that contains every AIS member’s resume; there is 100% participation by chapter members. During the on-campus career fair physical copies of the resume book are made and distributed to companies in attendance. A link to the electronic version of the resume book that is maintained by AIS members is provided to company recruiters that are unable to attend The Career Fair.

Facility/Business Tours

Our chapter participated in a two company tours. The first was a tour of Plantronics main headquarters in Santa Cruz. The second was a tour of Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale, CA. At both, members were exposed to the inner workings of the companies and how they operate. They also had the opportunity to speak with their management to gain insight on how to secure internship and job opportunities at each of the respective companies, receiving valuable advice on what they can do to expand their network and skill set and tailor it towards their desired career path. 

Articles

Use the articles and websites below to gather some ideas or resources for a chapter program. 

Resume and Cover letter advice (Minnesota State University-Mankato)

Preparing Video Resumes (Purdue University)

Navigating the College Career Fair (article)