Reflect on informational interviews

This week in your discussion, you will talk a bit about how your informational interviews went – or what you are hoping to achieve if you haven't had your interview yet.

Your TA may gather students up into small groups to discuss the informational interview assignment, ensuring that each small group has at least one student who had finished the assignment by then (if possible).
The students would first talk about how they found their interiewee – what kind of techniques and social networks they used, and which ones didn’t work well
Then the students who completed their interviews would talk about one surprising thing they learned.
Bringing it back to the whole group, your TA may ask the students who completed their interviews to give some advice to students who hadn’t done them yet – “what’s one thing you realize know that someone doing this for the first time should know?” Or “what questions worked best?”

Reflect on resumes

For resume peer reviews, your TA will likely have you bring your peer reviews and your resumes to class. Your TA may ask you to gather in your peer review groups to talk through your reactions to each other’s resumes. Bringing the discussion back to the whole class, your TA may ask the class to talk about what changes they will be making in their resumes going forward.

All for one and one for all. Your TA may choose one sample job posting for everyone to analyze. Here's how that would go:

Open your personal electronic devices and navigate to the posting
Take 3 minutes to silently read the job posting and consider how qualified you are for it (and how so)
Pair up with someone else (max one trio) and, for each of you, identify transferrable skills.
- Point to a job duty or qualification that you do not have
- Think of a substitute, something you do have that the employer would probably see as the same
- Discuss it with your partner – keep each other from getting delusional AND from getting discouraged

Ask me anything. Your TA has experience articulating their transferrable skills – showing that they can do what potential employers want them to be able to do. Your TA can demonstrate how to do this by simulating a (very unorthodox) group interview with the class. They might choose one job posting, share it out with everyone, and role-play an applicant for that position – as if the students were the hiring manager. You can ask the TA to explain how they meet any given requirement, or you can ask the TA common interview questions like "Tell me about yourself" and "Why does this role interest you?"

Pay attention to how your TA sells their experiences as valuable, including their education
Notice what your TA does when the answer is "no" – when they don't have exactly what the employer is looking for

The back of the envelope. This activity takes your resume and prepares you for writing a cover letter. Here are the steps:

Look up a specific job posting on LinkedIn
- One that you'd want to apply for at the end of this semester
- One that you'd want to apply for after you graduate, if it were still available
Trifold a piece of paper into three columns (vertical creases)
- Label the first column "Required"
- Label the second column "Fit"
- (Don't label the third column – it's just part of the "Fit" column, too)
Fill out the columns
- "Required" = a list of skills and knowledge required
- "Fit" = why you're a good fit for that requirement on that row
Congratulations – if you rearrange what you wrote, you have an outline for your cover letter!

Prepare for cover letters

The next assignment will be writing a cover letter, but class next week will be a guest presenter (rather than time to discuss your cover letter submissions). So your TA may take some time today to talk about cover letters.

Linking resumes to cover letters. This exercise illustrates an easy method to get started on an outline for a cover letter:

Trifold a piece of paper into three columns
Look up a job on LinkedIn – write it at the top of the page
Find particular skills and experiences required - write each of them down in a list in the first column
Write some answers to "why you are a good fit for those skills and experiences" – matching to each one, across the second and third columns
That is an outline for your cover letter!

Applying for a student job. Your TA may also just use one sample job ad from the student job center and talk through it with the class, in terms of identifying the skills and experiences asked for, and connecting that to skills and experiences on your resume.