Strategies for Career Success in your Junior Year
Overview
Junior year is when most students really begin to get serious about pursuing their career goals. It's important to start planning for a summer internship or other experiential learning opportunity early on in your junior year. Follow the steps in this guide to get a head start on the competition and achieve career success!
Step 1: The Basics
- Start Early! — Companies start recruiting for summer interns 10-16 months in advance. This is especially true of large companies with very competitive internships.
- Schedule a job search strategy appointment with a Career Coach — Our team of career coaches will help you develop an internship and job search strategy.
Which career coach should you meet with?- Vania Tong — Undergraduate STEM students
- Noel Kreidler — Undergraduate business students
- Shauna Strauss — Undergraduate arts and humanities students
- Update your profile in Handshake — Handshake is your one-stop-shop for all of your career needs. Claim your free Handshake account to complete your profile, select career interest areas, register for upcoming events, and apply for jobs and internships.
- Update your resume — Use Jobscan, our free A.I. resume optimization tool, to start building your college-level resume based on job descriptions that interest you. Watch these tutorials and access Jobscan to get started. Once your resume is finished, upload it to Handshake to start applying to jobs and internships.
- Practice your interviewing skills — Use Big Interview to practice your interviewing skills. Record your answers and watch the recording by yourself or with a trusted friend or advisor. How can you improve?
- Dive deep into the Job Prep Toolkit — A comprehensive collection of resources to help you explore careers, develop your resume, practice your interviewing skills, build your network, and more.
Step 2: Know Yourself
- Complete a self-assessment on Focus2 — Log into Focus2 to complete a variety of career self-assessments.
- Work Interest Assessment
- Values Assessment
- Personality Assessment
- Skills Assessment
- Leisure Assessment
- Academic Strengths Assessment
- Career Readiness Assessment
- Major and Career Exploration
- Values Inventory - Learn how to identify current values and reflect on how they might influence your career decisions. Check out our video and leverage the following tools to capture what you currently value:
- Share your results — We recommend sharing your assessment and values inventory results with your career coach, academic advisor and faculty advisor, all of whom can help you identify next steps based on your results.
Step 3: Discover the Possibilities
- Job Boards and Resources Directory — Find niche job boards that are directly related to your major and career goals. Handshake, LinkedIn and Indeed are all great job boards, but there are a lot of hidden gems, too!
- Start building your professional network — Use the LinkedIn Alumni Tool and Bronco Exchange to find alumni who have the types of careers you would like to have, or who are working at the types of companies you would like to work at. Reach out to request a career conversation with them—alumni love to hear from students!
- Explore potential majors and career paths — Use What Can I Do With This Major? to find out what kinds of jobs you can do with different majors.
- Attend as many career and employer events as possible — Bookmark the Career Center Events page as well as the Handshake Events page to stay up to date on upcoming career development and recruitment events. (View the university calendar to see all career and employer-related events across campus.)
- Join a student organization — Get involved with student organizations on campus. Junior year is a great time to assume a leadership role.
Step 4: Participate in Experiential Learning Activities
- Launch your summer internship search — If you want to participate in an internship during your junior year or the summer after, you need to start your internship search early. Some companies open their internship applications as early as one year in advance.
- View thousands of internships on Handshake, Indeed.com, LinkedIn, and many other job boards.
- Attend the many career fairs , industry meet-ups, and employer coffee chats hosted throughout the year.
- Fellowships and internship opportunities — Junior year is the perfect time to explore and apply for some of the many fellowship and internship opportunities hosted or facilitated by various SCU departments, including the Ignatian Center, Ciocca Center, Markkula Center, Miller Center, and more.
- Micro-internships — The Career Center has has partnered with Parker Dewey to provide micro-internships: opportunities to build skills and experience working with local and national companies on exciting short-term projects. Most micro-internships are paid.
- Work Simulations The Career Center has partnered with Forage to provide work simulations: short, real-world, online projects hosted by companies ranging from JPMorgan Chase and Red Bull to Lyft and Lululemon and hundreds more.
Step 5: Explore the Santa Clara Network
- Bronco Exchange is an exclusive and easy-to-use platform that connects Santa Clara University students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends in a global, virtual community. Whatever your goals, there’s a Bronco in your corner ready to help.
Prepare for Your Senior Year
Have you completed all of the recommended steps for juniors? Look ahead to senior year.
