UMass Lowell Helps Students Get Ready for Professional Success
05/20/2020
Contacts for media: Nancy Cicco, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu and Christine Gillette, 978-758-4664, Christine_Gillette@uml.edu
LOWELL, Mass. – UMass Lowell’s Spring Career Fair moved online this semester, seamlessly helping students land full-time jobs, internships and co-op positions that make the most of their education as the campus works to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Through an online video platform, recruiters from employers including Boston Children’s Hospital, Kronos, Pfizer and Northwestern Mutual met with more than 300 students to discuss their qualifications and share their goals for their professional lives.
“Moving to a video-based event offered our students a great chance to see and interact with employers, as opposed to just texting through chat platforms,” said Gregory Denon, UMass Lowell’s associate dean of student affairs for career development. “Despite distancing measures, we’re continuing to provide structure to students’ job searches.”
Modupe Ajala of Alexandria, Va., is graduating from UMass Lowell this month with her master’s degree in business analytics. She said she found the virtual career fair productive.
“I could easily hop in a session and within minutes, identify if the position and company were a good fit for me,” she said.
Julia McGuire of Tyngsboro, a junior majoring in psychology who is interested in positions at Kronos next summer, got even more out of the event than she expected.
“It was a great opportunity to network with employers. I went in looking for internships and came out with knowledge regarding co-ops, as well as full-time employment opportunities for after graduation,” McGuire said.
In the video chat room for Intralox, a New Orleans-based company that manufactures conveyor belts, UMass Lowell plastics engineering graduate Alisha Welch was recruiting students for co-op positions in the fall.
Welch, who landed a process engineering job at Intralox in 2018, was looking to continue the pipeline of UMass Lowell-educated talent from the university to the company. Fifteen UMass Lowell plastics and mechanical engineering majors have landed co-ops at Intralox over the past two years, with five of them becoming full-time hires so far.
That type of success is borne out by other statistics, as Denon noted 94 percent of UMass Lowell bachelor’s degree recipients are either employed full time or pursuing a graduate degree less than a year after earning their diplomas. UMass Lowell alumni earn the top starting and mid-career salaries – an average of $58,800 and $109,300, respectively – among graduates of all New England public research universities and are in the top 30 in the nation in both categories, according to PayScale.com.
The career fair is just one way the UMass Lowell Career and Co-op Center helps students prepare for the professional world. Other offerings include workshops in business etiquette, networking, resume-writing and interviewing techniques, along with ProPath, a career-development program that begins when students are freshmen to help them identify their strengths and interests, then build their skill sets as they work toward graduation.
New to these services are career-related events held remotely – just some of the more than 1,300 online programs and meetings presented by the university in the past few months. Denon expects to arrange more virtual career opportunities, as they are a great way to engage professionals and alumni volunteers who live across the country, he said.
One recent online session connected more than 50 students to employers in a variety of fields to discuss everything from interviewing tips and salary negotiations to LinkedIn profiles. During the event, Liberty Mutual recruiter Alyssa Nogueira advised students that before interviewing via teleconference, job candidates should test the technology to make sure it works. She also offered a more tried-and-true suggestion: “Dress for success, as if you were going into an office.”
UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 18,000 students bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. www.uml.edu