{"id":314,"date":"2009-05-14T15:30:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T15:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2009\/05\/14\/a-chance-for-many-of-us-to-give-to-students\/"},"modified":"2009-05-14T15:30:51","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T15:30:51","slug":"a-chance-for-many-of-us-to-give-to-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2009\/05\/14\/a-chance-for-many-of-us-to-give-to-students\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chance for Many of Us to Give to Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Howard W. Hewitt <\/em>– Thursday’s Career Center Job\/Internship Bootcamp was an opportunity for several alumni to return to campus and "give something back."<\/p>\n

That’s often a common reason when we query returning alumni about giving of their time to help Wabash students. Everyone has a different gift to share whether its expertise, a monetary gift, or simply life experience.<\/p>\n

The centerpiece of the Bootcamp is a networking lunch and one-on-one mock interviews. The people behind the interviewer’s desk are alumni and a good number of Wabash College staff.<\/p>\n

The alums come from a variety of backgrounds – entrepreneurs, financial advisors, and alums from large corporations. While staff members have equally varied backgrounds many of them come from interesting backgrounds beneficial to the process.<\/p>\n

\"\"There was Director of Alumni Affairs Tom Runge, a leader of men, Air Force Colonel, putting the young men through their paces. <\/p>\n

Sports Information Director Brent Harris hires 15-20 students to work for his office each fall and interviews twice that number to fill the positions. But he also has worked as a Production Manager in the newspaper industry and had to hire and supervise a workforce in the ‘real world.’<\/p>\n

"I was impressed with the skills the students possessed during our  sessions," Harris said. "Each person I talked with during the speed networking  session came with a plan for their short-term summer employment and  their long-term career goals. The two mock interview candidates were well prepared. Both provided a professional  demeanor, answered questions well, and conducted themselves as great  job candidates. I would have hired both of them for a position if  I were running a real job search."<\/p>\n

I enjoy hearing myself talk about years in the newspaper business hiring nearly 40-50 young people into their first job. I also interviewed hundreds of candidates over a 20-year career in the newspaper business, many of those with the Nixon Newspaper chain. I was the designated "job fair" guy for Nixon for awhile.<\/p>\n

\"\"I’m amazed at just how good these young men handle themselves. Sure, they make a few mistakes. I had one young man today misspeak and utter a profanity – none of the big ones. I smiled and stopped him mid-sentence. He didn’t even realize he had said it. But we laughed and proceeded with the ‘mock interview.’<\/p>\n

What did impress me was how both of the Wabash guys I spent time with used specific life examples to back up their answers. Even though our students are 18-22 years old, many have had valuable jobs, internships, and work experiences that reach back into high school. The lessons learned there are valuable in the job search.<\/p>\n

I posted a story about the Bootcamp on the website homepages, linked here<\/a><\/strong>. Andrew Schelton ’03 said, "I wish there was something like this when I was here."<\/p>\n

I’m much older than Andrew and it was a different college but I was thinking the same thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard W. Hewitt – Thursday’s Career Center Job\/Internship Bootcamp was an opportunity for several alumni to return to campus and "give something back." That’s often a common reason when we query returning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}