Sharing your Experiences

Full time workers usually work more than 35 hours per week in a career field of interest. This opportunity allows students to develop key workplace competencies within your industry.

Dedicating 10-20 hours on or off campus allows students to gain valuable work experience while filling needed positions for your organization. As an employer, by providing part time opportunities to our students you are contributing to students developing transferrable skills, demonstrating work competencies, gaining references and building winning content for their resumes. You are also making numerous connections that will help you in building awareness about your company and recruiting brand in order to maintain quality future hires.

Both paid and unpaid internships allow students to apply what they are learning in the classroom to the workplace and usually lasts for one semester. Consider these hands-on experiences as a means to cultivate and develop talent that further promotes your brand on UF’s campus.

Co-op programs are designed to provide alternating semesters of academic classes and paid full time work within a company. Co-ops offer the unique benefit of a student staying with one company to obtain in depth and increasingly more robust work experience and developing meaningful relationships with potential future coworkers.

Rotational programs offer students a way to see many parts of the organization.  As an employer, this is a great way to evaluate talent to see where they excel and give them a holistic view of many parts of your organization.  These programs attract students with many different skill sets and can be beneficial for training in order to create future leaders in your company.

There are three main ways that and employer can provide a service experience. Volunteering involves a humanitarian effort to benefit an organization. It is typically done with a nonprofit or community focused organization but this is not a requirement. Some volunteer programs may require training, paperwork or a certain amount of hours to maintain consistency with the organization.

Although similar to volunteering, community service addresses a specific community need.  The time allotted and desired activity can be yours to create. The primary focus is on the needs of the community and any necessary training can be gained on the job.

Lastly service learning is an organized academic experience that focuses on meeting the needs of a community. The primary goal of service learning is the learning through hands on experience.  This can be a great way to connect with campus partners to build a project that corresponds with an academic focus in order to bring student into the community to see a hands on look at what they are learning in their classes.

Offer professional development opportunities for students in order to help them build their skills and tell their story.  There are many ways you can connect with the Career Connections Center to participate in existing programs, such as:

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships combine classroom instruction with work experience to create a career path where employers can develop their future workforce.  See information from the US Department of Labor on creating and credentialing your apprenticeships program: https://www.apprenticeship.gov/employers

Mentoring

Mentorship involves guidance and interactions with students to provide insight into industry or academics, while promoting personal and professional growth. Mentorship practices vary, but the most important facet is the relationship created between mentor and mentee. Mentorship can be short term or long term, through a formal setting (i.e. coordinated through a program) or informal conversations. Mentorship relationships focus on the sharing of information, knowledge, wisdom, advice and/or feedback that enhances professional growth and goals.

Research

UF currently has more than 11,000 active research projects across myriad disciplines – spawning new products, making breakthrough discoveries, and bettering the world. Finding a ways to connect with students and researchers to offer an opportunity that is related to your unique interests are endless.

Job Shadowing

Shadowing and externships allow for more in depth and personal engagement with potential candidates.  This is also a great way to share your organization’s brand with students during a hands on experience right at your location.  A huge benefit is that the experience ranges from one hour to a few days.

Brand Ambassadors

Stay connected with past employees who are still students on campus.  Allow them to gain experience and spread your organizations brand by holding informal events on campus to talk about their experience at your company to help in recruiting future gator talent.

One of the C3’s signature workshops, Adulting 101 is designed to educate students and hear from industry leaders on career and professional development hot topics.

For a more personal approach to recruiting, host a career trek for students. This allows you to provide insight into your organization, details on available opportunities and establish a strong recruiting brand.

The UF Gator Career Consultant program is an opportunity for employers and other interested members of the Gator Nation to volunteer their time and expertise to bolster the career development of current students and alumni.

An Industry Institute is a great opportunity to learn from employers about their area of expertise within a specific field. Industry Institutes are an informal way for students from any major to learn from a small group of diverse employers about the career options available to students interested in a specific field. This experience might involve short skills labs, panels, Q&As, and/or networking sessions and is meant to facilitate exploration into the different types of professional roles or positions that exist within one career field. Some past industry institutes featured employers from manufacturing, human resources, environment and sustainability, and education.
Some notable employers that participated in Industry Institutes include Teach for America, Halo Potato Donuts, Florida Conservation Corps, Child Advocacy Center, and Exactech.

Assist with our express drop-in service, which provides resume feedback to students, during the week before Career Showcase. Employers engage with students by helping them prepare for the career fair by providing industry insight.

A skills lab is a hands-on opportunity for an employer to teach students a skill related to their organization or broader career field. Bring your skillset to life by providing students with a tactical learning experience specific to their organization or industry to help students explore more career paths in an engaging and hands-on manner.
This is designed to be an interactive event and allows students to walk away with a skill while gaining an understanding of what a day in the life in that company or in that profession might look like.
Some past skills labs included: suture clinic, high-impact networking, and advocacy writing.
Some notable employers that have facilitated skills labs include Army Medical, Infinite Energy, Brooks Rehabilitation, and Environment Florida.