Listen to Alicia talk about the summer internship process for first years and sophomores.

Transcript:

Stephanie: You're listening to Gear Up Season 2, where we bring you the Duke Career Center's own career advisers to talk about a variety of summer internship experiences. My name's Stephanie. And today, we're talking to Alicia, who works at first years and sophomores in the Career Center.

Alicia: Sure. Hi. My name is Alicia Rhodes and I am a career adviser on the undergraduate team at the Career Center and my portfolio area is first years and sophomores.

Stephanie: So kind of like just diving into that. So generally speaking, for first years and sophomores, how early do you kind of advise students to start looking for opportunities for the upcoming summer?

Alicia: Sure. So what we advise students to become engaged with the career center as early as possible. So that could be within their first semester of their second semester. Um just because we want them to know all of the opportunities that are available to them and know how the Career Center may be of service to them. As far as first year's looking for summer opportunities, we tend to kind of frame it as a summer experience. And we talk to them about all the things that they could do throughout the summer, from taking summer courses to working a summer job, to possibly an internship or any of the additional summer programs that Duke may hold.

Stephanie: Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction because I mean, I remember during my first year and even my second year, I did not have it really figured out and then didn't specify yet kind of what I wanted out of my summer.

Stephanie: So for students that are kind of in that position and don't really know all the different opportunities, whether that be an internship or working as a camp counselor or whatever it is. Where do you usually point them as a good resources for seeing all of the opportunities that are available?

Alicia: Sure.

Alicia: So I would typically, if they come in for an appointment or now if they do Zoom appointment with one of us, or attend drop ins, also via Zoom, then we would probably suggest that they take a look at some of the summer programs that Duke typically offers. We also have CareerConnections with it, which is the Career Center's online portal and it houses the jobs the internship database. So we would suggest taking a look at there also taking a look into Duke list.

Alicia: And then to be honest, we really, we really promote reaching out to alums as well, because those could be really good connections that they can start establishing and building those relationships. But also, it helps with the exploration of just trying to figure out what they may like or what they may not like and explore in different industries. I would also suggest joining or attending some of our employer events.

Alicia: So we have an event specifically for first year called first contact and is help through I guess a webinar. And even before everything went to remote access that was being held through webinar so students can attend and they can listen to employers talk about what they do, how they got to where they are. And it's a really good way for students as explore. We also have something similar to that called sophomore conversations for sophomores. And it's more designed to be a more, I guess, intimate session because it's usually capped off or like maybe four or five students.

Stephanie: Wow, yeah.

Stephanie: So, you know, kind of like, let's say, students identify things that they may be interested in for the summer. And a lot of those, you know, whether it be an internship or a summer job or even DukeEngage something like that, require an interview process. And, so specifically for first and second year students who might not have a lot of experience under their belt, you know, maybe they did things in high school, but they haven't really had the chance to do things in college that