The Native & Indigenous Affinity Community was created to provide career development resources tailored to the Native & Indigenous community at UConn. These resources, up to this point, have largely been focused on Native & Indigenous peoples in the United States of America, but indigeneity extends beyond the United States. With this in mind, we have gathered information on resources and professional organizations dedicated to the career development and growth of Native & Indigenous peoples from Canada and Mexico and posted these new resources to our Native & Indigenous Com ..read more

Navigating through the obstacles as an undocumented individual seeking employment and income generation in the United States is not an easy task. Luckily, entrepreneurship offers great opportunities for people to legally make a living and support themselves. The freedom and flexibility in entrepreneurship allow individuals to start their businesses in virtually any industry. The first blog in this series discussed opportunities and resources available for individuals interested in starting their business in the construction industry. This blog explores some of the fastest growing service indus ..read more

One of the first assignments of my FYE (first-year experience) was to create and fill out a LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn is an online résumé that establishes your virtual reputation and professional social network. On LinkedIn, you can make connections, generate job leads, improve personal brand awareness, foster professional relationships, share knowledgeable content, and drive traffic to your profile.   College students may experience a higher chance of finding job opportunities that match their interests and values by leveraging information from Instagram, TikTok, and X. Most large ..read more

Erica Day is a senior at UConn Hartford, who has come a long way, discovering what she wants in her career, and how UConn has helped her become successful.   Erica did not know the direction her career would take in her first two years at UConn until she chose Marketing management. A friend of hers referred her to the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), and she found her place. Erica participated in decision-making and critical thinking skills in USG which she can utilize in her business career.    Erica is employed through UConn as a UConn Hartford Office of Stude ..read more

During their high school, college, and early job years, the Millennial generation regularly found themselves the recipients of disregard and contempt, often by Gen X and Boomers, as well as some late-night hosts! Then Gen Z arrived and as they entered school and the workforce, some of the frustrations aimed at Millennials were redirected to this group of individuals.   In prior decades, it was more common to have a top-down organizational structure where younger individuals had entry-level jobs, and their supervisors or those in organizational leadership positions were typically more ..read more

Have you ever felt the pressure of pursuing a career field you are not interested in? As an Asian American student, you may not be aware of a range of career paths that are available to you. Many Asian American students have chosen their careers due to pressure from family and parents, most of which are in a STEM-related field (Poon). Asian and Asian American professionals are overrepresented in computer and math-related fields, making up 23.3%, while being underrepresented in fields such as arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media (USAFacts). However, do not feel intimidated if you want ..read more

The Spring 2024 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Career Night was a hit among students. On Monday February 26, 2024, University of Connecticut CLAS alumni Jonathan Costa, Alyssa Varesio, and Annika Redgate, gathered in UConn’s Alumni Foundation Board room and discussed their careers and the paths they took to them.   The variation of alumni helped to give students different points of views of what work out of college can look like and emphasize how everyone has a different journey. Costa (’04, BA in English) works as a Senior Editor at ESPN with a focus on audience engagement, Va ..read more

Early last week at the Annual Global Career Services Summit 2024, the UConn Center for Career Development team was recognized for excellence in faculty engagement through the Career Champions program. This award, sponsored by Ernst & Young, acknowledges a global best practice designed to promote career development and career readiness among academic departments and/or individual faculty members. The Global Career Services Summit represents a community of global career services thought leaders who develop, implement, and supervise career services at higher education institutions around ..read more

When you are a neurodiverse employee, it can feel like you are fighting an uphill battle at times. Your co-workers might not exactly understand what you are going through because they may not have the same needs and abilities as you, and it can be hard to advocate for accommodations from your supervisors because they may also have trouble understanding too. But despite the challenges, neurodiverse employees have plenty of strengths, such as being able to think outside the box and paying attention to details, among others. There are plenty of resources available for neurodiverse employees to he ..read more

References and letters of recommendation are often the last thing that job candidates think about when assembling their application materials. Yet these supporting documents and contacts need to be cultivated throughout one’s graduate program. Not everyone has the same extent of social capital to cultivate, which often means that extra attention must be given to developing this component of one’s job application. Read more here for tips and strategies to ensure you are not scrambling at the last minute to have people support you as a qualified candidate for a job. “Cultivating References Over ..read more