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Career Services offers free, tailored presentations and workshops for undergraduate students, graduate students and postdocs to support their career development. For all presentations, we request a minimum attendance of eight participants.
Once you have browsed our presentation options below, please submit your request using the form at the bottom of this page. Career Services staff members can adapt presentations to meet the needs of your group. Please contact our outreach team with any questions or concerns.
Undergraduate students
Career Services is a welcoming place with an array of services. We assist students with discovering and manifesting their personal and professional developmental goals. In order to maximize their career readiness, students should engage with Career Services early and often.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify how Career Services can help individuals through the various channels of engagement.
- Recognize their autonomy in the career development process.
- Articulate the value of engaging with Career Services.
We can customize any presentation content to:
- Tailor for specific audiences (engineering, first-generation, international, graduate, alumni).
- Adjust to showcase to non-student audiences such as families, staff, faculty and administrators.
Does it feel like everyone else has their major or career path figured out? It’s OK not to know. The process of making these big decisions is not easy. In this workshop, students will learn specific strategies to gain a better understanding of self so that they can narrow down their options. Students will gain confidence as they take the next small step in exploring. After all, careers unfold, they don’t just exist.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand the value of the exploration process when deciding on a major or career.
- Develop a plan that includes at least two specific strategies.
- Increase hope for their future and confidence to take the next step.
Your application materials are living documents that are critical to succeeding as a qualified candidate. This includes a resume, cover letter and, in some industries, an online portfolio.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify experiences they’ve had that they can include on a resume.
- Describe the content included in an effective resume, cover letter and online portfolio.
- Formulate action-oriented bullet points that include workplace skills.
- Confidently construct tailored application materials.
Additional topics that can be included for intermediate and advanced sessions:
- Modification for technical resumes.
- Writing a curriculum vitae as an undergraduate student.
- Creative careers that require a different format and flow (e.g. graphic design, performing arts).
If networking works so well, why is it so intimidating? Through hands-on practice, students can gain the confidence to build professional relationships in a way that is uniquely effective for them. In this session, students will learn strategies that will help them build connections to progress their job or internship search.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Recognize opportunities for networking, apply basic starting points and modify their approach to meet individual goals.
- Choose a networking strategy to try that will widen their professional network and introduce them to opportunities in their field of interest.
- Conduct an informational interview with someone working in a job or field they are interested in learning more about.
Ready to stand out to recruiters and land a job? The search entails more than just looking at online job boards. In this workshop, students will learn a multipronged approach to identify their personal filters and goals, while gaining knowledge of best practices. They will learn how to apply this information to navigate the hidden job market and learn effective strategies to use Handshake. Students will gain the confidence to customize and conduct an effective job and internship search.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify resources for possible careers and connections.
- Understand the steps and resources needed for their job and internship search.
- Locate and identify positions they are qualified for in relation to their field of interest.
- Express confidence in their job search and know when they might need to seek help with the process.
Landing an interview is a cornerstone of the job search process. During this session, students will gain knowledge of the interview process, practice responding to common questions and leave feeling more confident to implement successful and tailored strategies.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe the purpose of the interview and the employer’s perspective.
- Articulate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ when preparing for the interview.
- Implement techniques to reduce anxiety and increase confidence.
Additional topics that can be included for intermediate and advanced sessions:
- Tailored to support underserved populations.
- Include relevant and updated information to actively engage students who identify as LGBTQ; topics such as advocacy, dress and non-verbals.
- Support and practice for technical interviews.
- How to recognize the skills you have, and determine what to build at CU
In this 30-minute presentation, students will learn the top 10 skills all employers in all industries are hiring for. In small groups, they’ll learn how to identify the skills they are building at CU and beyond. We’ll show them how to request a skills report for their target industry or role so they know which skills to focus on, then direct them toward resources created to help them build and expand on their skills during their tenure at CU. It’s a MySkills crash course, designed to help them get a feel for skills and how they relate to their own career journey.
- How to articulate the skills you already have and take your next step
This 50-minute presentation breaks down the mystery of hiring materials by teaching students the top 10 skills employers in all industries are hiring for. By implementing tools that help students track their experiences and articulate their results, they’ll get their hiring materials to the top of the stack. We highlight the importance of intentionally building career-readiness skills while attending CU Boulder, and the impact it can make on their future job prospects. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the skills they have already built, which skills count by examining their previous experiences, and the skills valued by employers. They will also learn how to request skills reports for their desired industry and role and learn how and where to build skills at CU.
This session will focus on the topic of company culture and evaluation of one’s fit within an organization. Participants will learn about innovative techniques and resources to use for evaluating company culture. They will have the opportunity to try out many of these methods and will be provided the resources needed to engage in these investigations outside this session. We will explain methods for assessing culture and fit that include: identifying your values, environmental scans, cyber-scans, conversational scans, and reflection and decision-making.
As a result of attending this interactive workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify various methods of assessing company culture and organizational fit.
- Understand how company culture and organizational fit relate to job satisfaction and persistence.
- Recognize the value of this topic for marginalized groups, understanding the impact that evaluating possible employers may have on feelings of safety and potential imposter syndrome in the workplace.
- Leave equipped with all the knowledge, understanding and resources needed to effectively start effectively investigating company culture.
- Define what environmental scans, cyber scans and conversational scans are, and be able to confidently engage in the scanning process across a variety of media.
Graduate students and postdocs
In this interactive workshop, students will develop a strategy for deciding what type of work they’d like to pursue outside of the academic career path. They will learn about tools to aid in their decision making and places to find the information they need to be confident in their next steps.
This 60-minute session will help students format their document, help them decide what to include and emphasize and offer some suggestions for writing about experiences in ways that show their qualifications and skills to best effect. We will go over the eight headings that start a CV, explore edge cases and discuss how to tailor a CV to a given posting.
Students will learn about the differences between academic CVs and industry resumes, and the proper uses of each. We’ll discuss specific ways they can format their document and describe their experience to make their resume stand out to employers in the non-academic job search.
This 90-minute session will help guide students through writing the academic job packet, including the cover or job letter, research, teaching and diversity statements. They will receive general advice about formatting and drafting these documents, and learn how to tailor them to a specific institution or posting. We will also cover the postdoc application, including how to frame research experience for a specific post-doc project, what to leave out of the job letter, and how to present themselves as a qualified candidat.
This 60-minute, hands-on workshop will explain what an elevator pitch is and how to use it in networking and job search efforts. We will guide students through a series of exercises that will allow them to develop a focused professional introductory statement.
If networking works so well, why is it so intimidating? Through hands-on practice, students can gain the confidence to build professional relationships in a way that is uniquely effective for them. In this session, students will learn strategies that will help them build connections to progress their job or internship search.
In this interactive workshop, graduate students and postdocs will be introduced to interviewing theory and techniques that will help them feel prepared and confident for industry interviews. They will learn how to provide information for the three basic questions all hiring managers need to answer. They will also learn how to ask questions that help present them as professionals and to get the information they need to know.
Faculty and staff
According to the 2021 CU Boulder Senior Exit Survey, 76% of students will begin their career journey immediately after graduation. 48% plan to begin working and 27% will seek employment. Within this same cohort of students, 58% indicated they felt prepared for graduate/professional school and 44% felt prepared for post-graduate employment. This data highlights an opportunity to actively support the career development of your students this year and may help them feel more prepared for life after their time at CU Boulder.
Career Services wants to save you time and energy when creating and updating course material. Together, we can help your students prepare for their next step after college. The Career Readiness Canvas course provides foundational information that students need as they consider what job or career to pursue, how to build experiences and skills during their time at CU Boulder and how to successfully job search. A career advisor can facilitate in-class activities to augment student learning, boost their confidence and offer an in-class professional to field related questions that you may not feel comfortable answering.
This workshop provides an overview of the Canvas modules and in-class presentations.