USC Career Center: Headshots to Handshakes
One factor that college applicants are increasingly considering is a school’s career preparation and professional offerings. After all, perhaps the main goal after graduating is to get a job (unless you’re looking at graduate school.) In addition to individual career resources provided by each academic department, USC has a central career center, the USC Career Center, which has amazing offerings for all undergraduate students.
USC brings over 750 employers to campus to recruit students for jobs and internships each year. In addition to hosting huge Career Fairs, the USC Career Center provides individual drop-in and by-appointment meetings to talk about possible careers, go over resumes, complete mock interviews and so much more. Check out their super-handy at-a-glance with quick snapshot of their different offerings, including Etiquette Dinners, Trojan Talks and a long list of other programs.
A couple of weeks ago, the USC Office of Admission’s Communications Team was treated to a simulation of one of the USC Career Center’s newest offerings: Headshots to Handshakes. This one-hour “journey” is an invaluable resource (amongst many awesome resources) to current USC students. And, like everything else at the USC Career Center, it’s completely free to students.
For the first part of our visit, we received a 30-minute workshop about creating an impactful LinkedIn profile. We were led by current USC Annenberg student Alex Flores, who was an intern at LinkedIn and really understood the platform’s best practices. We learned how to maximize our digital presence, expand our network, use messaging effectively and search for jobs. (Not that we’re looking for new ones! We were just pretending to be students!) We also learned how to search for fellow Trojans working for certain companies or in certain industries. That Trojan Network is truly there to support you personally AND professionally during your time as a USC student and beyond.
Next, we each got to take free, high-quality headshots in a state-of-the-art Iris Photo Booth. It had awesome lighting and we got to retake photos as needed, crop pictures and even apply filters. It felt like having a professional photography studio at our disposal. The photos are intended to be used for LinkedIn, social media profiles, job applications and anywhere else where students need a polished headshot.
Finally, we created free USC-branded smart business cards (by Mobilo). We could upload our headshots and add our contact information, social media links and other professional information. No need for students to create paper business cards to hand out at USC Career Fairs anymore! To use it, you just tap it on someone’s phone and your information appears instantly. It also allows the person receiving your information to share their information with you. It’s super sleek, eco-friendly and easy to use!
We all walked away super impressed with just one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of resources provided by the USC Career Center. And, again, it was completely free! We’re spreading the word now so that future Trojans are sure to take advantage of this awesome offering!
Written by: Anne Aubert-Santelli, Associate Director - USC Office of Admission