Parents and Families: Your Role Regarding Professional Development Guidance
Welcome Parents and Family!!
As we move forward during this time, we want to offer some suggestions about what you can do to help your student with planning for a profession:
- Listen and be open to ideas and help your student find information
- Encourage your student to utilize the Professional Engagement and External Partnerships portal
- Reassure them that meeting with a Professional Coaching and Development Advisor can take place at any point—and should take place frequently—throughout their academic journey at CCA.
- Advise your student to write a resume:
- Writing a resume can be a "reality test" and can help a student identify areas that require improvement.
- Suggest that your student visit our Resumes & Cover Letters information page to review sample resumes. You can review resume drafts for grammar, spelling, and content, but recommend that the final product be critiqued by a writing coach from our Learning and Resource Center (The LRC Center) or with a Professional Coaching and Development Advisor.
- Challenge your student to become "occupationally Literate." Ask: "Do you have any ideas about what you might want to do when you graduate?" If your student seems unsure, you can talk about personal qualities you see as talents and strengths.
- A decision for what profession your student may want to explore should be a process and not a one-time, last-minute event.
- Emphasize that there are part-time, full-time, and internship opportunities
- Direct them to our Job Boards page
- The Professional Engagement and External Partnerships office will not "place" your student in a job at graduation.
- Colleges grant degrees, but not job guarantees, so having relevant experience in this competitive job market is critical.
- Encourage your student to network ONLINE
- Suggest reaching out to professionals and their networks via LINKEDIN to find out more information about their field of interest.
- Encourage them to sign up for training webinars etc.
- Also, if you are an employer - support our efforts by opening your job opportunities to our students at CCA.
- Connect with us at CCApro@cca.edu if you have a summer, part-time, or full-time job opening or an internship opportunity
- If your company offers internship opportunities, please join our job board posting site and list your internships at cca.joinhandshake.com
