On February 11, CUNY LEADS and the Center for Career and Professional Development gave students seeking internships a guide to improving skills and presenting themselves confidently in an internship setting.

The event, held virtually on Zoom and in person in the Center for the Arts, examined resources from which students can benefit like the Student Accessibility Office and the Center for Career and Professional Development. The ever-changing environments of college can be hard to keep up with and events like this one can help students have an easier time adjusting to different career paths.

One of the newer resources mentioned by Senior Career Specialist John Kesaris is Handshake, a job and internship-searching platform where students can find entry-level positions, along with opportunities to sign-up for meetings and organizational events also made available to students through the platform. Lissette Munoz, an Academic Counselor at CSI who also was a key speaker at the meeting, discussed the job-searching platform and the important skills needed for an internship.

Sharon Liu, who is currently interning through her master’s program at Hunter College and was an undergraduate student at CSI studying psychology, was familiar with the resources provided by the Accessibility Office. At Hunter, Liu is a counselor who focuses on mental health issues, rehabilitation, and school counseling. She mentioned how her time and connections that she made were valuable as she started her internship.

“Because I was an undergraduate at CSI, I knew about the Accessibility Office,” she said. “Being a student that was part of the office for four years, I had connections [within the office].”

Interim Assistant Director Bethany LaLonde spoke to Communications students about getting internships, as well as the services provided for students at the Accessibility Office. Though COM students need to find internships themselves, Communications majors are actually among the highest in demand when seeking internships. In LaLonde’s experience, she has also had a few Computer Science majors ask about opportunities.

“Computer Science can be such a demanding program,” she said. “I don’t think most students are thinking about internships until the end of their college career, leaving them with regret for not looking for experience in the field earlier.”

Compared to majors like Communications, Nursing and Social Work take a lot of the guess-work out of the internship process. Since these types of fields are provided internships through their department’s faculty, students like Eden Bardic, an undergraduate student who is a Social Work major, was placed in an internship role at the Student Accessibility Office.

Bardic’s viewpoint of the efficiency displayed in the internship search process allows him to also recognize the huge amount of options associated with this specific major, but no matter what his focus is, he prepares with confidence for his master’s program.

“As undergraduate students, we get asked what population do you prefer working with, and for the master’s programs, it’s the complete opposite, since you’ve gathered all the experience needed through your social work classes,” he said.

Learning the steps of preparation for an internship are similar to experiencing some of the interpersonal skills throughout a college career. These key speakers and student interns from the Student Accessibility Office and the Center for Career and Professional Development presented students with different scenarios and valuable information so they can stay prepared for the next step in their career path.

By Kyle Cicero