Career Guide for First-Year Students

Overview

We recommend visiting the Career Center early and often, because it's never too early to start thinking about your career goals. Follow the steps in this guide to build your confidence, increase your productivity, and achieve career success!

Step 1: The Basics

• Log into 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.
  
  
• Schedule a 20-minute "Career Center Basics" appointment — Our Peer Career Advisors will teach you more about the Career Center and how to use our many resources, including Handshake.
  
  
• Meet your Career Coach — Each Career Coach supports a specific student population based on their field of study.
  
  Which career coach should you meet with?
  • Vania Tong — Undergraduate STEM students
  • Noel Kreidler — Undergraduate business students
  • Shauna Strauss — Undergraduate arts and humanities students

• Explore 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.
  
  
• Start building a college-level 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.

• Complete a self-assessment on Focus2 — Log into Focus2 to complete a variety of career self-assessments.
  
  All incoming Class of 2028 students will be invited to complete the work interest assessment as part of New Student Orientation and Welcome Weekend.
  
  Platform access available beginning Winter 2024 to currently enrolled students
   
  • 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:

• • Values Card Sort
  • Values List
  • Work Values Matcher

• 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

• 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 at least 2-3 events — 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.
  
  
• Join a student organization — Get involved with student organizations on campus. It's a great way to meet people, make friends, and build your resume.
  
  
• Explore on-campus jobs and volunteer opportunities — Working on-campus and volunteering locally are great ways to meet members of the Santa Clara community while also building your resume.
  • Apply for on-campus jobs through Workday.
  • Find local volunteer opportunities through Santa Clara's Community Action Program or on websites like Handshake and VolunteerMatch.

Step 4: 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 Sophomore Year

Have you completed all of the recommended steps for first-year students? Look ahead to sophomore year.