1. Have your resume reviewed by a Career Center staff member – You’ve probably heard many people talk about making sure you update your resume, but updating isn’t enough. You need that second set of eyes to make your sure your contact information, web address, degree and graduation year, and much more are present and free of misspellings and formatting issues. Make an appointment in Handshake to have your resume reviewed virtually.  
2. Add your reviewed resume to Handshake and Portfolium – Did you know employers can search through Handshake and Portfolium?  Even though some companies are not hiring right now, they are still looking at candidates for roles they know they will be hiring for in the future. If they find you on any platform and want to review your work history or websites and that information is missing, they are moving on to the next person who came up in their search. Please make sure your most current projects and contact information are updated on both platforms as well as LinkedIn.  
3. Connect with Career Center advisors and portfolio specialists. The Career Center staff collectively has hundreds of connections with recruiters across the country. We receive calls from employers often who ask us to help them find students or recent grads to fill a particular position.  If we don’t know who those students are, we consult with faculty or go through Handshake, both of which are time consuming and not always effective if your profiles are incomplete. 
4. Connect with Recruiters on LinkedIn – During this time, many recruiters are working from home and spending more time looking at talent, even if they are not hiring at this exact moment. If there’s a company you are interested in working for, you can find the recruiter on LinkedIn by typing talent + company name, or recruiter + company name. Once you find the recruiter, connect by typing a note. You only have 300 characters when you are sending the invite so start by saying Hello. An example might be: Hello Sara! Hope you’re staying safe. I’m graduating this May and am interested in a ______role at (companyname). I understand you may not be hiring at this moment but I wanted to express my interest in contributing my (design, coding, choreography, writing) skills to (companyname) May we connect?  You can make it more personable if you know of the company from someone who did an internship there or through an article you read, something that shows your authentic interest.   You can expand on your skills or provide additional information once you’ve connected.  
5. Add additional skills over the summer – Sites like General Assembly are offering free classes on Fridays in the areas of Data, Marketing, Business, Career Development, Coding, and UX Design.  Additional free courses are available at Edx.org, the Muse, or Coursera.   
6. Find a short-term or project based assignment that can further enhance or illustrate your capabilities. These are great opportunities to develop a solution for a client or company that you can add to your resume. You can find freelance opportunities on Parker Dewey or other sites such as Upwork, Freelancer, Aquent, The Creative Group, Remote.co, Flexjobs, or LinkedIn Profinder. You can also list yourself as a freelancer here.  

If you are looking for additional resources, please visit our Resource page on the Career Center website.   

The Career Center will be serving current students, December ’19 and May ’20 graduates all summer through virtual appointment and events, all available on Handshake.   

Please follow @columcareer on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and the Career Center blog for up-to-date information!