My final week at my internship was filled with a mix of emotions. I was excited to being one step closer to completing my degree. I was proud to have accomplished so much this past semester. I was sad to be leaving the Programming and Events office again, where I was not only leaving a fun environment and job, but also friends. The first two days of this week I spent wrapping up my projects and discussing it all with Sherry. She wanted to make sure she knew where I had left off with planning anything for the spring semester and also if I had any recommendations for events that I had previously worked on. We mostly discussed the C.A.R.E. Fair since that had been my main project, but I knew she had many previously successful spring C.A.R.E. Fairs, so she didn't need much input.
On Wednesday I spent the morning working on some invoices for Fall Career Days. It was utterly surprising to me that people still had yet to pay for their booths that they used three months ago. So I worked on calling the companies to figure out what was going on. Some were just honest mistakes since payment is dealt with in a different office than recruiting, which was understandable. I sent out many of the invoices again so that someone could process them before the winter holiday closures. It was very interesting to speak to some of these recruiters and learn a little bit more about how a corporation runs and what each staff knows and handles. Other than that, I started to clean up my workspace in the office and on the computers. I knew other interns would soon use it, so I wanted to make it nice and spiffy for their first day! Thursday was a sad day as it was my final internship shift. It started with returning the materials we rented for the suit donation. We wanted to make sure that was taken care of before we closed for the holidays. Thankfully we were able to make our own coat racks to store the suits while the office was closed. I was very impressed with the amount of donations that were received this year and I think the students will be very appreciative and excited! Once that was taken care of I started to say my good byes and happy holidays to all the Career Services staff. They had all helped me so much throughout this past semester that I wanted to make sure I had time with everyone before I left. The last people I said goodbye to were of course those in the Programming and Events office. They thanked me for all my hard work and wished me the best of luck in my future endeavors and told me that I was always welcomed to come back for another internship if I pursued another degree in the future!
0 Comments
This was also a short week for me at my internship since I had to leave for Philadelphia Wednesday morning for a Open House Event for World Campus. So I made the most of my week!
On Monday I worked with one of the Career Services staff on a presentation that she was preparing to share with a Career Services office at a university in North Carolina. She wanted to incorporate some of the ideas that we share with our students at Penn State to show the different ways and styles of presenting this information. I helped her a bit by pulling up old presentations and sharing what I thought, as a recent undergraduate student, was most useful and how I interpreted it. I helped her with the flow of the presentation so that it could be easily followed the group that she was presenting to and possibly students in the future. This took up most of my Monday morning, so on Tuesday I continued with benchmarking some more Career Services websites for our Assistant Director since she found other universities to compare us with. I also worked on wrapping some of my projects up and preparing myself to leave this internship. I wanted to ensure that whoever took over for me next semester was well prepared and the documents I used were helpful to them! This week was filled with some more wrap up work for everyone in the office, which was nice to slow it down after all the fairs!
On Monday I helped a few others to set up a suit donation spot in the Career Services building. We had been contacted by some student groups to hold this donation to help students who cannot afford business attire. Last year the student demand was very high, but unfortunately not many donations were received. This year we marketed the donation a little earlier and put up signs all around the building where staff frequently walked by. I helped pick up the coat racks that we could set up in the lobby of the building to display the donations. This took up most of my time, but I was really excited to help with this opportunity for the students! Tuesday and Wednesday I worked on a website benchmarking project with the undergraduate programming intern. The Assistant Director of the Events and Programming Office had tasked the entire Career Services staff with looking for places for improvement on their own website. They realized with more and more services and events that are being offered through Career Services, their website was starting to overflow with information. It need some organization and that wanted it to make sense to everyone. While that was going on, the undergraduate intern and I were tasked with looking at the websites for Career Services offices at other Big Ten schools and any other schools of our size that she deemed competitors. The two major things we were looking for was to see if they used the same CRM as we did and if their websites were compatible for mobile devices. The other intern and I split up the list of schools in half so that we could each work on our schools without affecting the other. It was very interesting to review all of these websites to figure out why some of them we liked immediately and others not so much. There were some schools that had a separate website for each Career Services office for each of their academic colleges, which made it difficult to find all the information we needed and to navigate in general. Others had one central site with the same theme throughout and easy to navigate, and those were the ones we were most interested in. We made sure to highlight those in our file to make sure the Assistant Director notice those to be sure to use some of their best features in our future website. Overall it was a very interesting project that was very helpful to the Career Services staff. Thursday I wasn't able to be in the Career Services office due to an event at World Campus. However with duties and events winding down, I was assured I wasn't missing anything. This week marked the final event for the Fall Semester in the Events and Programming Office - Online Career Days. It was a great achievement to gain enough interest from students and employers to hold this event. While I was unfortunately not going to be able to help out during the actual event, I did want to help with anything I could during my shift. We sent out final reminder emails to all the attendees, both recruiters and students, to ensure that everyone had the link for later in the day. The committee also set out a plan to decide who would be monitoring the fair each day for what time. We wanted to make sure at least 2 staff members were helping with the fair in case recruiters and/or students had questions or problems. Otherwise for the rest of my time at my internship this week I spent catching up on work that needed to be done for the office and for my class. This included organizing supplies, updating materials for next year's C.A.R.E. Fair, and writing logs for my time in the office. In the end, the three fairs were a huge hit and did much better than previous years! Overall we had 232 employers attend to help recruit the 339 students attending. A majority of these students were current students or alumni residing somewhere in Pennsylvania. The surveys were going to be sent next week, but we had a feeling that everyone was happy with this year's Online Career Days!
This week I had to travel to Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday, so I wanted to make sure I got everything done for the week in the two days I was at my internship!
Monday morning started with picking an official day and time for the fall C.A.R.E. Fair debrief meeting. Unfortunately the time that worked best for everyone was during my work hours at World Campus, so I knew I wouldn't be able to participate. I talked to Sherry a bit before officially scheduling the meeting just to make sure she was alright with it. She was sad to hear that it was not during a time I was free because she wanted me to be able to experience the full event planning process, including wrapping things up, but she understood. After that I sent out the meeting invitation to all the committee members. I also started working on planning a meeting for January for the committee to discuss the spring C.A.R.E. Fair. I sent out another Doodle Poll for this meeting to all the committee members to see when they were free after the winter holidays. After that I helped out with some other jobs throughout the office, like cleaning up any leftover event materials and organizing our supply closet. On Tuesday I decided it was a good time to pull the survey results from both the employer and student surveys that were sent a few weeks ago. Sherry wanted to have the final report ready for the committee meeting, so I wanted to give myself plenty of time to prepare it. I needed to prepare the report of the survey results but also from the event numbers as well to report how successful it was with attendees and in the opinions of those attendees. Compiling the numbers for the final report was relatively easy. I had to break them up by college, gender, race, and other characteristics for us to track. This helps us to determine what population this event is popular with so that we may adjust our marketing if needed. Working through the surveys was a little more difficult since there were open ended questions for them to answer. I have to admit, I was a little nervous to read their opinions. This was my first real fair that I organized myself, so I figured there was room for improvement. As I was going through all the written responses, they actually weren't that bad! Many people were upset with things like no lunch, recruiters not showing up, and others that were a little out of my control. So overall, in their eyes, the event was a hit - so I felt great! It took most of the day to compile all this information into graphs and into the report. Once it was complete, I sent it off to Sherry to use at the committee meeting. These reports can be found under My Education Work, HI ED 595 - Internship, C.A.R.E. Fair. Check them out! With all the fairs done for the semester, we finally had an opportunity to take a breath and wrap up our events. I spent a good bit of Monday morning preparing the budget information for the C.A.R.E. Fair. I needed to find all the organizations that sponsored the fair to determine how much money we brought in. Then I had to use all my receipts to determine how much we spent for the fair, including the food we provided, the recruiter parking passes, and even printing for the directories. This is helpful information for the committee for future C.A.R.E. Fairs to determine if they need to push for more sponsors or possibly could provide more food for the representatives. Once that5 was finished I worked on setting up a debrief meeting about the fall event with the committee. While I wanted to be at the meeting, I selected both times during my internship hours and during the rest of the day since it was more important that the meeting happen. Sherry was with me all day and throughout the entire planning process, so she would be able to answer any questions the committee had. Once I had dates sent, I created a Doodle Poll and sent it out to the committee members.
Both Tuesday and Wednesday were more catch up days, but I also spent those mornings answering a lot of phone calls and voicemails. Employers started calling about events in the spring, so we wanted to make sure to help them plan as far in advance as they wanted. Emails had also started to be sent about Spring Career Days, so people were mostly interested in that event. Otherwise I spent those two days working with some of the staff in the office to update my resume with information about this internship as well as other things I have done throughout this semester. We spent a lot of time, between phone calls, discussing how to properly word all the aspects of planning an event as well as pulling numbers for the events I assisted with. I was so grateful to have them to brainstorm with and to help me with professional documents that they are the experts on. Thursday exhaustion caught up with me and I took a sick day from the internship. Much of the Events and Programming office also took the day off as a way of rewarding ourselves for a semester well done! This week was the start of another 3 day fair, but for those who are interested in getting a higher degree after graduating instead of necessarily finding a job. Each day is a different type of school in hopes of attracting all different schools and students. Tuesday is Law School Day for anyone interested in any type of law degree, whether it is a joint degree with another concentration or a specific type of law. Wednesday is Medical School Day, which attracts students looking at becoming doctors, nurses, and hospital administration staff members. So on Monday I helped with final prep for the event. We had a few issues with last minute cancellations and moved some booths around to keep the fair rooms looking full. With that change, we also made signs to display since the directory would now be incorrect. During this week there is also a Kinesiology Fair on Wednesday night, so I helped make up signs and other materials for that event. After everything was prepared, we packed it all up to be sent over to the HUB tomorrow morning! Tuesday morning I met the event coordinator, Deena, at the Career Services building so that I could assist with packing up the truck with all the materials. We decided to pack everything for all three days, that way we didn't have to borrow a truck again. Once everything arrived at the HUB, we started to set up the room for the school representatives. For this day we just had the fair in one room with almost 100 schools with law related programs attending, so still a lot of table cloths for four of us to set up! Once the tables were set, I went around to drop off directories for any schools that had purchased an ad space so that they could see how it turned out. I also dropped off any boxes that the schools had sent to us before the fair containing their materials to give out. While this was happening, Deena and the others were setting up the school representative and student registration. School representatives started showing up shortly afterwards and worked on getting their tables ready. There were some slight issues with school representatives who didn't have a table close to the entrance and felt that they should have. This year tables were assigned based on registration, similar to how they were assigned for the C.A.R.E. Fair. So the schools who registered late, were placed closer to the back, but they didn't appreciate that. Deena did the best she could to ease their concerns and handled their complaints as best she could. Recruiter and representative complaints were not a new thing for Deena! By the time my internship shift was over, the fair was about to open up to the students and looked like everything was ready to go. Wednesday morning set up was relatively easy since we were using the same space and layout as the day before. I just did a quick sweep through the room to pick up any trash or papers left behind by the school representatives from the day before. Once the room looked nice and tidy, I delivered the boxes for today's representatives so that they would have their materials when setting up. After that, we just waited for this round of school representatives to arrive! Some of them had also been there for Law School Day, so they knew exactly what they needed and others were new so we explained the whole day for them. Towards the end of the registration for Tuesday, I had one school representative come up to me with some requests for the following day. She had traveled all the way from California for this fair and unfortunately couldn't stay for Graduate School day, but her school had already purchased a table. This happens with a lot of representatives, so we are happy to put out any materials on the table for the schools with business cards so the students have a contact if they are interested in attending that school. Once that was all taken care of, I headed out for the day. Thursday was the biggest day of the fair since it was just about graduate school in general for all fields. For this day we had two event halls in which the schools were located in, so there was a lot of set up to do. I started with cleaning up the main room that we had been using for the previous two days and delivering any boxes to those tables. We also added a few tables to that room to accommodate for more schools, so I got to work setting those up with tablecloths and boxes as well. Thankfully we had almost the entire Events and Programming Office come over to help setup for this day because our other event hall needed to tablecloths to be put on all the tables, boxes delivered, as well as registration set up. All of this took a majority of the morning and we had just finished set up by the time the first school representatives started to show up. I helped with registration but also assisted with directing them between the two event halls in case they wanted to network with other school representatives. Once most of the schools had registered, including Penn State World Campus, it was time for me to head out.
All the fairs were a huge success and using the two rooms definitely came in handy for Thursday. The students seemed to really appreciate to opportunity to learn more about continuing their education and what kinds of programs there are! This week I wasn't able to start working on too much for the C.A.R.E. Fair because we had to prep for another fair. This week was the Fall Education Career Day. During this fair, school districts from across the East Coast, and even one from Alaska, travel to talk to education majors about potential positions in their chosen subject. This is a smaller fair hosted at the Penn Stater Conference Center, that is hosted in conjunction with Lock Haven University. Students from Penn State, Lock Haven, and even Bloomsburg travel to attend this fair. On Monday I helped prepare any final materials for the event. First I helped to make the directional signs that were needed along with creating additional paper signs to be hung on the walls and doors of all the entrances. Otherwise the materials for this fair were well prepared so, I just helped pack everything up so that it could be transported to the Penn Stater Conference Center the next day. Tuesday morning I arrived early at the fair to help with set up. Teachers and school district representatives are typically on time, so we wanted to make sure we were prepared for them right away! I started with hanging all the signs I had made the previous day. The Penn Stater Conference Center is a large facility, so we wanted to make sure we covered all the floors and entrances. Once the signs were hung, I placed banners outside to direct traffic to the parking lots and the entrance of the fair. When all the directional signs were hanging, I then assisted with recruiter check-in and helping school representatives to move their materials into the fair. Since there were only 50 or so schools attending the fair, it was a fairly easy registration. During registration, we made sure all the representatives had their tickets for their meals and still wanted their interview tables for later in the day. Since this is a one day fair, the recruiters are allowed to interview students right there at their table or in a private room, for a fee, so that neither the student or school representative have to travel again. Students started to line up to enter the fair about 30 minutes before it started and were dressed in their teacher best. Once all the recruiters were settled, we opened the doors to the students. The rest of the Education Career Day went successfully, partially due to the fact that the school representatives who attend this fair have been attending for years. They know where everything is and how it all goes, so it's relatively easy for us! I was not able to take the whole day off of work for this fair, so I left once I was re-assured that there was nothing else I could do.
I started off Wednesday by working on the survey that was going to be sent to both employers and students who attended the C.A.R.E. Fair. I struggle a bit with a creating surveys due to the lack of experience with them. I was able to find the survey that was sent out to those who attended the Spring event, so that helped greatly. I modified it to ask questions about their opinion of having the event in the fall since this is the first time we ever did. I also included questions about what time or day they would prefer and what location since we have changed that as well. Once the survey was created, I scheduled it to be sent to the employers and students every few weeks for about a month so that I could gather as many results as possible. The second half of my day was filled with a Online Career Days Committee Meeting. As we are getting closer to the event dates, the big question was whether or not we were going to hold the event. As of today there were 15 companies registered for each day, and some of them were Fall Career Days attendees (meaning the advertised bundle worked a little bit). The website has been updated with all the correct information and is ready to go live next Monday. It was decided that if, by Monday, not all the recruiters have paid their registration fees then the website launch date would be pushed back. The last thing that we want is to advertise this event, gain student interest in it and then have to cancel due low recruiter interest. Invitations to recruiters were being emailed every week, but some suggested that invitations go to other companies, such as those who attended the C.A.R.E. Fair. Invitations were already being sent to basically everyone in our system who had ever attended a fair, so that was taken care of. We ended the meeting with hoping everyone paid their registration fees and we could hold the event! Thursday I started to get ready for the next fair for students pursuing graduate studies. I worked on the velcro signs so that we could use those in the HUB next week. This fair had two locations, so I needed a few extra signs to make sure people could get back and forth between them without getting lost. While working on those, I was also printing the directories for each of the fair days. We had the most up to date information at that point, so it was safe to print them. At this time I was the only one in the office, so I was also handling all the phone calls that were coming in. One of those calls happened to be from an upset recruiter who kept receiving emails for the Online Career Days. He wanted to speak to a full time staff member on the committee, however since they were all in a meeting, I offered to take down his concerns. He was upset that about a lot of the wording in the emails regarding this event. First this event was about recruiting Penn State students, but was coming from our Alumni Office. We discussed that we also do invite alumni to attend our career fairs, but I understood that using the word students in the emails is misleading in that situation. We also discussed how the event actually works in the online environment and as we were talking, it became clearer that this just wasn't the right event for the recruitment needs of his company. He appreciated me listening to his frustrations and would continue to look for fairs that did work for him. After that phone call, I decided to call it a day! Both Monday and Tuesday of this week were filled with preparation for the C.A.R.E. Fair. I had some more work to do on the seating arrangement due to some organizations cancelling their registration. I tried to move people around so that tables were filled towards the front. Sherry was also worried about employers using a whole table if we didn't assign them a partner, which would not be fair to those who paid for a full table. As soon as was finalized, we were able to print the student directories. These booklets would have a list of all the organizations, where they were located, advertisements for those who sponsored the fair, and information about upcoming Career Services events. We decided to print about 400 booklets based on the number of students who attended in previous years. This is always a risky decision because you never know what the attendance rate will be! Once the directories were printed, it was clear to me that the printer was back in order and could handle the materials I tried to print last week. The first thing to print were extra parking passes for any recruiter who was not able to print or download the pass from my emails. Next I printed the Employer Welcome Sheets that I had designed. These had a map of the event on one side along with all the important information they needed to know on the other side. This was always a key thing to have to avoid too many questions from recruiters during registration. Once I had everything printed, I gathered all my supplies, including the signs and materials I gathered last week, into a pile so that on Wednesday morning I could grab it all and head to the HUB. Wednesday started off good! We were able to request a truck to transport everything in one big trip from Career Services to the HUB. When we walked into the HUB, the registration tables looked great with working computers and everything we had requested. We dropped everything off at those tables and then headed into the event hall to see the tables. This is when my anxiety level heightened a bit. We had reserved a large event hall to ensure that there was enough room for everyone to set up at their table and for students to explore. However it was almost too much space. The tables that were set off in the far right were very isolated and we know representatives weren't going to like that. So we got to work. We pushed all the tables closer so that there was enough room for people to walk and no one felt isolated with a risk of being ignored by students. Once that was done, I got to work setting up all the table cloths with the help of another intern while Sherry set up the registration table. Although we were pretty sure that organizations wouldn't start showing up for another hour or so, we didn't want to risk being unprepared in the eyes of the recruiters. Once tables were setup with table cloths, water, and granola, all that was left to do was wait. The registration table was prepared for both students and employers. We had the welcome sheets ready and the student directories set up. We also brought over some re-usable bags that were donated by employers. Recruiters started to show up about an hour before the event and were so far in good spirits and excited about the event. A few did not know about sharing a table with others, so that caused a little distress but we were able to make it work for their materials. Even students started showing up, some were even dressed up in professional attire even though we marketed this as a causal event. Just the fact that we had at least one student waiting for the fair to start helped me to feel relieved about the event. As soon as the recruiters were settled, we opened the doors to the students! The first hour of the event seemed to have line of students waiting to register for the event. With only Sherry, another intern, and myself working the event, we felt it was very busy! After that there was still a steady flow of students, some who had planned to attend and others who had just been walking through. The event hall looked full all day long and the conversations all seemed to have a good vibe. Overall the event was a great success in my eyes! We had over 60 organizations and over 360 students attend the event. Many comments that I received from students and recruiters, were positive and filled with gratitude for the opportunity to attend. A few students were upset with the companies that did not show up to the event, however they understood that that was something out of our control. The most rewarding parts of this fair was the opportunity to provide students with a chance to gain experience or a job and the fact that Sherry and my other colleagues from Career Services were proud of all that I had achieved for this event. Once the event was over, we packed up all the materials that belonged to Career Services and cleaned up any trash that had been left. We headed back to the Career Services building where I unpacked all our supplies and put them in their rightful place. Once that was done, I was told to go home and celebrate my success!
Thursday was mostly used for wrapping up things for the event. I spent a good portion of the day in a meeting with Sherry learning about what the next steps were when an event has finished. She talked about creating a survey for both the organizations and the students, compiling a report for the fair committee showing the results of the event and surveys, and also starting to plan for next year. It was one week until the C.A.R.E. Fair, so almost all of my time this week was going to be devoted towards finalizing and gathering materials for the event. First thing Monday morning I sent all the final instructions to the employers who were attending the C.A.R.E. Fair. The email including the logistics of time and place, along with a parking pass and any important information that I wanted to remind them of, such as the fact that electricity will not be provided. Once all those were sent, I finished up the signs that were going to be displayed in the HUB. The great part about the signs was that they were pretty much all already made from Fall Career Days. I just had to make a few adjustments and add the C.A.R.E. Fair logo. These signs were really just going to point all traffic towards the event hall that the fair would be taking place in. Much simpler since the event was only in one location. For the last bit of the day I worked a bit on assigning booths to the attendees. For this fair, each organization had to share a 6 foot table to help reduce costs. Only the organizations that chose to be a sponsor were awarded a full table to themselves. On Tuesday I worked a bit more on finalizing the booth assignments. I decided to work in order of the date that the organizations registered for the event. So those who registered early, received a table towards the front of the event hall. I had a few tables leftover in the back, which I decided to keep in case anyone decided to register late. I also knew that these seats would not be set in stone as some organizations would cancel their registration or others would want to move to a different location. Once that was settled, I prepared the flyers and bag of supplies that was going to be sent to the HUB for our Information Table. I had reserved the table for the Tuesday and Wednesday of the week before during the lunch hours, which is when the HUB is busiest. Unfortunately since I had to be at my full time job for these hours, I asked other interns to sit at the table for me to promote the event. Once I had those materials gathered, I took a quick break to work on the Online Career Days websites. We were having issues saving all the edits in the program, so I was triple checking to make sure that the event titles, dates, times, and descriptions were right. We were hoping to have the website live at the end of this week, so this was the best time to work on it. Wednesday was the first day of Sophomore Success, an event for second year students that, like previous events for specific class levels, focused on getting experience and discovering what to do with their major. The biggest difference was that this was a 2 day event, so we just had to plan for half of the events. The set up was very similar to the past events, so we all had an idea of what we needed to get done before the event started. We re-arranged some furniture again and put out freebies for the sophomores to pick up as they walked around. Once everything was set up, I took the opportunity to gather some materials for the C.A.R.E. Fair while we had our supply rooms open. I needed to get some table cloths, office supplies for the organizations, and prepare bins for anything we needed at registration.
Thursday started out with a trip to the local Wal-Mart to pick up the granola bars and water bottles that will be provided to the representatives attending the C.A.R.E. Fair. It was a very quick trip but wanted to make sure I had a variety of granola bar flavors to in case of any preferences or allergies. After that I returned to the office for a short amount of time to start printing the handouts that I needed for the fair. In an unfortunate turn of events, the printer was not working properly and therefore my handouts were not printing right. Since I didn't not have time to wait for the mechanic to figure out the printer issue, I decided to use the rest of my time to travel to the HUB to drop off the event banner that was to be displayed in the HUB during the week of the fair. At this point I was starting to get very nervous about the C.A.R.E. Fair. I felt a lot of pressure to prove myself to my peers in the Career Services office as a way of thanking them for trusting me with an entire fair and for allowing me to intern with them for the semester. |
Megan Foster
Penn State Undergraduate Alumni, Penn State World Campus Admissions Counselor, Penn State Master of Education in Higher Education student. WE ARE!! CategoriesArchives
January 2016
|