Students looking to find jobs after graduation can utilize free services like ePack and career counseling offered by the Career Development Center on campus. 

The Career Development Center, located in Pullen Hall, helps students prepare their career path during college and find a job after college. Current students and alumni who graduated from NC State during the past year are eligible for their services. 

Lindsay Veros, a career counselor for the College of Sciences, meets with students one-on-one to create resumes and cover letters, prepare for interviews and assist in searching for jobs. According to Veros, students should begin utilizing the Career Development Center as a freshman, and should be meeting with their career counselor at least twice a semester as a senior. 

“In an ideal world, we would hope that a student would begin using our services their first year at NC State, right?” Veros said. “You are preparing for your future career from the very start of your time in college. Of course, that doesn’t always happen. But I would say that at the very least, that students really start focusing on their graduation and their future career after graduation, for the entirety of their senior year. So applying for jobs can be a very lengthy process, you need to make sure that your resume is as good as it possibly can be.”

According to D.R. Ingram, associate director of the Career Development Center, one of the best places for students to look online for job and internship opportunities is on ePack, NC State’s online recruiting system. 

“Within ePack, there are job postings, internship postings, opportunities that employers will use,” Ingram said. “They’ll post information opportunities about their positions, and every student has the ePack account, has the opportunity to go in, upload their resume and be able to be proactive in looking for various positions that they might have an interest in. They have an opportunity to possibly have interviews with employers.”

According to Ingram, while ePack shouldn’t be the only resource students use, it should be a primary resource as it puts them in a special pool of applicants by being an NC State-specific platform. Job listings on ePack include opportunities across the nation, as well as in North Carolina and the surrounding area.  

Veros said when searching for opportunities, she suggests graduating students utilize ePack and CareerShift, both of which can be logged into using NC State credentials. 

“Being in the Career Development Center, we push ePack really hard,” Veros said. “It is very helpful. In ePack, you can find internships, part time jobs, co-op positions, but there’s also full time job opportunities there as well. And then beyond ePack, we have CareerShift, which we actually run through ePack — it’s a partnership. … CareerShift is great because it pulls together every single job posting that has been posted online in the past three days into one platform.”

According to Ingram, it’s very important for students to seek internship opportunities before graduating. Having experience in a selected field gives students better credentials and is more appealing to employers, giving them a better chance to get selected for their desired jobs.

“I just think that having an internship makes you more competitive and makes you know, as far as your marketability, it certainly gives you great credentials that you can present to employers,” Ingram said. “It’s just become more and more important for students to gain that type of experience before they graduate. Once they graduate now, they can now say to employers in an interview with a level of confidence, ‘This is what I bring to the table, because of my experience with my internship or my experience with my co-op or, or the research that I’ve done.’”

Ingram said students should get involved with extracurriculars and student organizations around campus in order to develop interpersonal communication and leadership skills.

“Even prior to internships, I just think their involvement in those types of activities are very helpful in honing their skills,” Ingram said. “I will also say, students are in their classes, anytime they might have an assignment or project, don’t just look at it as another assignment. Especially if it’s a team project, I mean, really immerse themselves into that assignment, that experience, and identify what role they play within that project in that team, because a lot of times it’s going to be in an interview, you’re going to refer to your experiences from being in a student group or a project that you’ve done.”

More information about the Career Development Center can be found here.