Office of Career and Professional Development

Career counselors are people whose profession it is to give career advice. They are specially trained to keep up with the trends in education, in the labor market, and in hiring practices. They are not only on top of the vast amounts of data about the professions which are in demand, companies that hire regularly, or laws that regulate relationships between employers and workers. What they are also great at are the countless informal, unspoken, and unwritten rules of professional interaction, career-minded behavior, and career steering.

At John Jay, you can meet a career counselor at our excellent Office of Career and Professional Development. This is not only a place where you can get your resume critiqued and your job application letters reviewed, but also a place that organizes a constant stream of events and workshops that help students better to understand how to present themselves as job candidates for professional positions. They will cover all points relevant to career building. For example, they can

  • advise you on how to learn to speak of your accomplishments and goals in a professional register
  • how to follow the norms of professional attire 
  • how to learn from the experiences their guest speakers bring to their informational roundtables and presentations.

This office also organizes annual Career and Job Fairs, at which you get an opportunity to look at the variety of employers seeking to hire new graduates, consider their requirements and terms of employment, but also introduce yourself to the employer representative, share with them your current resume and try to leave a good impression. You can later use this experience to become a more comfortable job seeker and networker, but also to remind your contact person that you have formally met and that you are ready to submit your application for a particular job at their organization.

Read on about advising by faculty mentors

Read on about advice from peers and other informal sources