A workshop on advising a career-anxious student body (#1349)

Topics/tags: Grinnell, Teaching

Last week, I attended a workshop entitled Advising a Career-Anxious Student Body. As I’ve said in the past, I love attending Grinnell workshops. They provide a time for faculty, staff, and the occasional administrator to discuss topics of value to us. I always learn something new and important from my colleagues. I hope they also learn something from me. Now that we’ve been better at expanding the workshops to include staff, it’s also been an opportunity to enhance my connections with those valued colleagues.

One of our individual tasks was to brainstorm about actions, activities, and tools to address career-related concerns and enhance career readiness, building upon what we learned this week. I think I heard a suggestion that we should focus on tools, but I may have been imagining that. The worksheet has columns labeled Advising Moment, Student Assumptions, and Strategy. On the other hand, the list of questions we have Are there any new tools you might develop to help your advisees in this moment?

I had an easy answer to the question about what tools to develop as I already have two tools in place: I run an occasional Learning from CS Alumni course with a focus on exploring more broadly what kinds of things you can do with a CS degree. The last time I ran the class, I also explored skill building for technical interviews—those are an aspect of the CS job search that doesn’t appear (at least not in the same form) in many other types of job searches [1]. In addition to that class, I have this ’blog. I could put together a set of musings that help provide advice. Other faculty might consider those Handouts. It seems a bit strange to write about such topics—they aren’t necessarily in my areas of expertise—but students must understand the same restriction when they talk to me. At least, I hope they do. But let’s be safe.

Warning! I’m not an expert in any of this stuff. [2]

These kinds of musings can also provide links to the tools and pages that Grinnell’s Office of Careers, Life, and Service (CLS) provides for our students.

What kinds of things should I write about? What kinds of things should I add to the course? Or both? Perhaps What else did I learn?

The most frequent career-related questions I get from students are How do I get a job/internship? (a bit broad), What are the best microcredentials or trainings I should take? (beyond my knowledge, but I’ve learned a bit about it), Given that you’ve convinced me to do informational interviews, who should I contact?, and How do I get started with open source? Those are a good starting point. Well, maybe not who should I contact? Perhaps How do I find people to contact? I can also point people to Philip Kiely’s Life Changing Email for Students and the CLS’s page on informational interviews.

I tend to dismiss microcredentials (particularly badges because I don’t like extrinsic motivation [3]). However, the workshop suggested to me that students do benefit from microcredentials. I might muse about that. I suppose I should conduct some research first, such as finding out what types of microcredentials benefit students the most. I know Grinnell offers microcredentials through LinkedIn Learning. We may offer others. Perhaps all that matters is that you’ve earned some microcredentials; after all, they offer an indirect sign that you are someone who takes initiative, and employers value those who take initiative and show a good work ethic.

I realize that CLS tries to teach students about professionalism. But students don’t always listen. Or they don’t even know to ask. Here are some excerpts from a letter I recently received from an alum I’ve relied upon for years to give students helpful advice.

After careful consideration, I’ve decided that I am no longer willing to connect with Grinnellians. I wanted to inform you directly, as I believe your blog or network may have been directing Grinnellians to me for these conversations. Unfortunately, I will no longer be able to participate.

This decision comes after observing a consistent pattern of unprofessional or disrespectful behavior – ranging from excessive rescheduling and lateness to being unprepared or neglecting to familiarize themselves with my background and areas of expertise, as outlined on LinkedIn. While I’m certain there are many talented and respectful Grinnellians, I’m no longer willing to take the risk. Of the 19 Grinnellians I’ve met since 2019, only 3 meetings were a good use of my time.

As an example of the recurring issues, here is an excerpt from a LinkedIn message I recently sent to a graduate: “While I appreciate the informal camaraderie implied by ‘bud,’ I find it more appropriate to maintain a certain level of formality in professional exchanges.”

Sad, isn’t it? Anyway, I could attempt to write something about professionalism. Arguably, Don’t openly criticize everything around you is one such recommendation, so I already fail to model appropriate behavior. What’s that they say? Those who can’t do, muse?

I expect that a musing about professionalism—and perhaps all of the musings about work preparation—will begin with my thoughts and I will then refine or rewrite the musing as I receive comments from my assorted readers [4,5,6]. It’s also something to talk to students in Learning from CS Alumni about.

Finally, we spent a decent amount of time hearing and talking about the value of students writing their story; how their courses and other forms of learning fit together and how they meet employers’ desired characteristics. Once again, this is a topic that I need to think more about. Thinking is good, right?

That’s a large enough set of topics to start with. Perhaps I’ll also be inspired by other questions my advisees ask me or send me. For the time being, I need to find time to write musings and reflect on the structure of Learning from CS Alumni.

Speaking of Learning from CS Alumni, I started that course to help better answer questions about the kinds of careers students might pursue beyond Code Monkey [7] and Program Manager [8], to help students think about résumé building as undergrads (perhaps not so surprisingly, students better listen to alums about things like personal projects than they do to me), to remind students that our alums are approachable [9], and other things I’ve now forgotten. For the Learning from CS Alumni Course, I’ll need to reflect on what I might add. I might also reflect on whether it should move from a one-credit course to a two-credit course, whether I should add a second one-credit course, or something else. On the other hand, we already have the College-wide Learning from Alumni course as well as the new Wilson Career Catalyst course [10]. Those may serve similar purposes. Oh well, I won’t teach Learning from CS Alumni before Fall 2026, and we won’t put our 2026–27 schedule together until January 2026, so I have time to reflect.

There’s also another issue to consider. One of the more important conversations we had was about the time and effort a modern job search requires. As I understand it, a good job search should occupy ten to twenty hours per week for a full semester. I feel less bad about telling my students that it’s okay to take 14 credits (or even 12) during one of their two senior-year semesters. However, not all students can cut the number of credits they take in a semester. How do we support such students? As I’ve said before, I worry about the demands on our students. A student taking four courses should spend about 48 hours per week on their classwork (e.g., four hours in class and eight hours out of class for each class). A student on a team spends at least twenty hours per week on team activities during the season. Many students need to work. Let’s say that’s ten hours per week, even though many work more. And then ten hours per week on a job search. Thats, um, 88 hours per week, or a bit more than twelve hours per day. Also about twice the normal forty-hour work week [n].

[n] My children regularly tell me that neither I nor their mother modeled a forty-hour work week. We made sixty- or seventy-hour work weeks seem common, perhaps even light.

That makes me wonder whether we should find a way to award some type of course credit for the time devoted to job searches. Of course, I’ve also regularly wondered about how we can provide students time for personal projects [11].

In any case, I hope I can find ways to better support my students, whether they are advisees or not.

[1] I’d also taken some training in helping students prepare for technical interviews.

[2] I may not be an expert in anything.

[3] See, for example, Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards.

[4] Most of the time, I don’t think much about who reads my musings. However, from time to time, I learn about my readership. I don’t expect so many students to read what I write. I certainly don’t expect parents to read it (except when I point them toward it). Hence, from time to time, I’m surprised when someone talks to me about a recent musing.

[5] In any case, I don’t necessarily get comments from my readers.

[6] I’m temporarily back on Grinnell Plans; that’s a good place to get advice, both before and after I muse.

[7] SWE

[8] PM, but not Osera.

[9] Have I written about the value of informational interviews? If not, I should.

[10] Unfortunately, that class is now full. Or perhaps that’s fortunate; it’s a good sign.

[11] Sam: You look for personal projects when you’re hiring, right?

Industry person: Yes. They are very important; they help us identify outstanding candidates.

Sam: And you care about hiring a diverse group of students?

Industry person: Yes.

Sam: My first-generation and low-income students generally have to work as much as twenty hours per week outside of class. Sometimes more. How do you expect them to have time to do personal projects?

Industry person: Um. You could assign them in class.

Sam: Sigh.

Version 1.0 of 2025-06-04.