Megan Riksen:

Hello and welcome to the Work Like a Laker podcast. I'm your host, Megan Riksen and joining me today is my co-host Grace Pushman. And we have a special bonus episode coming to your ears today because we wanna talk to you about our career communities. Grace, could you kick us off just by telling us what in the world is a career community?

Grace Pushman:

Yeah, so we know that the world of work is not always a direct connection from your major to a specific job and career communities are a great way to connect with resources, events, and communication directly related to the industries you are interested in. For example, a psychology major might be interested in healthcare. So they join the healthcare community, or they might wanna work in human resources. So they join the business and entrepreneurship community. Communities can be a variety of things for students that are again separate from just your major.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly. And it's a way for us as a career center to collect resources in a way that hopefully makes sense for students eventually entering the world of work. Yeah. Right. So it's like, yes, we, we have career guides, for example, on our website that are major based yes. Where you can learn specific things about what you might wanna do with a particular major. This we're trying to even like blow that up even further and say, we know as with your psychology example, we know that a psychology major, not everybody is just going to go and be a psychologist. Right. Right. Career paths are not linear. So you want to make some further decisions, do some further exploration, and we're hoping that these career communities, our way to do that, so we can gather a lot of this stuff in one place for all of you.

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. And it's exploring at different steps in the process, right? Yes. So like, yes, even if you're completely unsure about what, even if you don't have a major yet, right. You can still join a career community or multiple communities based on your interest. So if you're like, you know, you do. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're hoping for, because we want you to kind of explore within communities. So let's say you're like, you know, I have no idea what I wanna do, but I know I wanna work with people mm-hmm <affirmative> so maybe you'll join the healthcare community and the human and public service community. Yeah. Or the education community. Yep. You can join multiple. Any of that really tickle your fancier. That exactly seem exciting to you. And then, you know, what, if you, and you join one and you don't like it, you can drop it right away. So totally it's meant to kind of help you in the exploration process, even from that early

Megan Riksen:

Stage. Yes. And it can be fluid. Yes. You can join multiple. You can get rid of some, you can totally change gears and join something completely new down the road once you've made some more decisions, perhaps. So,

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. And once you're at that stage where you're like, okay, I know what my major is. I maybe even know what job I want you, that community will still be helpful because there's a lot of resources provided through that. Megan, do you wanna share some of those?

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. So the way we're kind of providing those resources, capturing them under these career communities, I would say a really good place to start is just on our website. We have a career community landing page gvsu.edu/careers/career communities. <Laugh> kind of a mouthful. And through that, you'll see, first of all, just the quick link where you can literally fill out your email and pick which community or communities you want to join, and we will join them for you. It's a, it's a filter through Handshake we'll be joining you through. And you'll also be able to see the individual community websites where we have a great feature of, you can see alums who were a part of this career community based on what they ended up going into. You can see a list of jobs and internships from handshake feeding right into that. You can see events that are relevant to the community. So that's a really good kind of, you know, spot to come back to. But another great feature is we also will be sending out monthly newsletters as well.

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. For each community

Megan Riksen:

For each.

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. And we try to keep it, we know that everyone's email inboxes. Yes. Get so swamped. Yes. So we try to keep it short and very very like tangible yes. You know, resources that you can use right away, like, like specific jobs you might apply for yep. Or events that you can attend

Megan Riksen:

Or a podcast perhaps that we think is particularly relevant. Yes. we also do like really short little mini world of work features. So you can kind of get a sense for what's happening in that industry, out in the real world. Yeah. So yeah, lots of just really great info, I think.

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. And actually too, something we didn't mention was there's an advisor for each that's right. As well, at least one advisor, some have to, but a dedicated advisor for your community where if you wanted to either explore maybe careers within that community, or even do more nitty gritty, like have someone look over your resume for a job. Our advisors are here for that as well within each community. And you can find those through Handshake.

Megan Riksen:

Definitely. Another great starting point is just to pop into our career lab. Yeah. As well. Anybody who is in there can totally help you kind of sift through these communities and figure out which one might be right for you.

Grace Pushman:

And if you come into CareerLab, we have some awesome stickers.

Megan Riksen:

Uh yes we do

Grace Pushman:

For each community. Yes. So you can grab the one or two or three that work for you.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely. And they're we made them like the nice vinyl ones that can go on your laptop. And they're really cute. One of our interns made it, I think, a year, about a year ago. Yeah. And they're a very cute design.

Megan Riksen:

They're great. You want one.

Grace Pushman:

Come in, see us. Yes.

Megan Riksen:

Either location DeVos or student services. All right. So do you think we should just do a quick like primer on each of the career communities? Grace? Yes. Okay. So we have six of them and I'm just gonna, you know, do a nice little list here, business and entrepreneurship communication and the arts education, healthcare, human, and public service and stem. So as we've said, you can join any of them regardless of your major. If you are an engineering major and everything is telling you, you should join stem, but you know, you wanna work for a hospital system. Let's say, maybe you join the healthcare one or maybe you join both. Right. So think broadly in that way. So we're gonna give some short descriptions. Grace, do you wanna kick us off? Yes.

Grace Pushman:

One. So the first one is business and entrepreneurship. So if you're interested in working in leadership, if you enjoy working with and developing relationships with people, if you're skilled in critical thinking analytics or project management, this community is a great way to explore a wide range of jobs that complement those interests. And so many others, examples of jobs that you might learn about in this community include social media, marketers, human resource, generalist, accountant, financial analyst, sales representative, and much more.

Megan Riksen:

All right, next up, we have the communication and the arts community. So this is a space where you can gain information about a lot of things kind of in the more creative space, potentially communication. Hmm. Yeah. Communication focused professions just as is in the title. As well as things that are more in the creative arts side. So do you enjoy being artistic? Are you a strong writer? Are you a great active listener? Those are good questions. If you find yourself answering yes to those that this might be the community for you and these interest areas and more applied to various opportunities that you'll learn about in this community. So examples of these jobs you might learn about would be digital marketers, journalists, musicians, graphic designers, just to name a few.

Grace Pushman:

Great. And then the next one is education community, which involves teaching others or assisting and teaching others in a number of ways, but it's not just teaching. Right. So education covers a lot. So, you know, even thinking about in our office, we have an intern, a graduate assistant this year who is getting her master's degree in social work. So typically a social work major might more generally fall in human and public services, but in her case she would maybe wanna go in the education community to learn about working with a master's degree in social work, in the higher ed, you know field. Yeah. So it can really cover a variety of things, including school, social workers counselors, librarians, special education teachers. And so really this is a great one to check out if you have a passion for helping others.

Megan Riksen:

Right. And you know, even the nonteaching side that you might, might wanna be an administrator exactly. Of some sort, but you wanna work in the industry of education. Yes, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay. The healthcare community is next, which revolves around professions that directly impact others. And this could be both clinically or non clinically. So some good questions to ask yourself, do you enjoy serving others? Can you handle high stress situations? Are you interested in assisting in making the world a better place? So, you know, having a passion for this area, I think goes a long way, but it can look so it can look so different depending on kind of what, which way you go with it. So you might be kind of what you would traditionally think of in healthcare, a nurse, a doctor, a dentist, a physician assistant. But you know, maybe you're thinking about mental health. Maybe you want to work more on the administrative, on the business side of things and be a health recruiter. There are a ton of people that work in the healthcare industry that aren't necessarily direct practitioners.

Grace Pushman:

Yeah. And I will say we meet a lot with students who maybe initially thought they wanted to work directly with patients. Yeah. But then they realize, you know what, my passion is more on the macro side and I would rather do something else in healthcare. And what is there, what can I do? And so this, this community would be helpful for students like

Megan Riksen:

That, for sure. But definitely also for, I mean, I feel like we always have to explain the nonclinical, but definitely the clinical stuff too, is probably the bread and butter of this community.

Grace Pushman:

Totally. Yeah. The next one is one you've heard me mentioned a couple of times already. It's the human and public service community. This one, I feel like unlike some of the others is maybe a little bit less explanatory based on the title. With this one, you know, if you have an interest in advocating for change, if you wanna work for the government for nonprofits, if you enjoy communicating ideas and presenting on them, these are just some of the, the areas that if you're interested in them, you might wanna be involved in this community. Some of the jobs that could like could be represented in this community would be attorney city planner, lobbyist, nonprofit administrator, forensic technician, even, and detective. And I wanna highlight forensic technician because that's an example where someone's major might be like biology or chemistry because you need that hard science to be a forensic technician, but it really still falls under that human and public service because that actual job you're typically working for, you know, the, the police force or something kind of government agency mm-hmm

Megan Riksen:

Yep, yep. Good point. All right. And the last one is our stem community. So this is a great place for students to really kind of get in the head space of, I wanna innovate, I want to invent, I wanna research analyze I'm a critical thinker. I wanna find solutions. So, you know, it's like problem solving. Maybe you love technology, you wanna learn new software perhaps you wanna conduct in depth research. So yeah, again, pretty wide ranging. Some sample job titles would be electrical engineer, software engineer, programmer, data scientist, civil engineer you know, maybe you wanna work in a lab, right. You're a biologist or, you know, something along those lines. But yeah, a lot can fit in that community as well.

Grace Pushman:

Megan, I'm curious, just based off these brief descriptions. Yeah. What one, like if you were a student today yeah. Just out these descriptions, which one would you be drawn to? Do you think?

Megan Riksen:

Yeah, I think I think I would be drawn now to the communication in the arts community.

Grace Pushman:

I think, I think so too. Like when I was younger it would definitely have probably been education or human in public service. Same. But now I definitely, yeah. I think because we get to do this podcast and exactly Megan now is head of our marketing. So she does a lot of that in her role. You know, your interests shift as you go through life. Exactly.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah, yeah. Just as they do while you're a student, you might find yourself shifting. Yeah. Kind of, you know, maybe you have an experience with a student org or something and you're like, oh, all these students are really fired up about this part of this. And I am not. Yeah. I might need to explore something else.

Grace Pushman:

And that's exactly why we created these. Yeah. Because we wanted to allow more flexibility for students. So they didn't feel like they were pushed into a corner with their major maybe or with a specific career path they think they have to follow.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely. Okay. So I think that pretty much sums it up with our brief little description here again, please check out our website where you can sign up for these career communities. We would love to have you. And thanks so much to everyone for listening. We hope you tune in to a future episode soon.