Career Services Talk with Charlottesville Professionals

PVCC has taken their usual career chats online this year, speaking to multiple different Charlottesville professionals about their experience in their fields. As part of PVCC’s Wednesday career panels, February 24’s Education Employer talk was centered around finding employment and networking, particularly in the world of teaching.

Gigi Davis, who is the job and internship coordinator for PVCC, began the meeting by introducing herself and her guest, Assistant Director of HR for Charlottesville city schools Mitsuko Clemmons-Nazeer. They began the talk centered around teaching as a profession and how they each found their way to career services. Nazeer spoke frequently about how her early indecisiveness had a lot to do with her career choice and need for help from career services after graduating from Virginia Tech. 

Nazeer highlighted the issues most students face when it comes to finding a career path and knowing what to do with your skills and education. When asked about what she as an employer looks for in hiring, she said, “I pay particular interest in and focus on the activity section because I think the activity section can lend to an understanding of one’s interest, their pride, and their passion towards specific interest groups or bodies of work…So I think that it’s important that you are able to kind of create as much of a holistic picture of a person and in the form of a candidate.” She went on to explain that employers only see so much, and you want to make sure what they see is good.

Nazeer had other suggestions, about how to prepare for and make yourself attractive for an interview and how you can always learn more about your career path. She suggested finding connections in any way you can and even participating in similar fields as your experience and skills can transfer over. Experience and networking were key for the talk. Nazeer pointed to opportunities like internships and volunteering as ways to solidify and exemplify your interest in a certain field and make connections, saying it is less about the degrees you earn “as it is about the learning and experiences you’ve gotten.” 

Nazeer put special emphasis on the idea that learning is “lifelong” and that using resources like career services and similar opportunities give you an advantage in knowing what you want to do. Defining yourself as a professional in your area takes real interest and credentials, but they can come from unexpected places. 

As Nazeer said near the end of the meeting, “There’s no one way to pursue a career of your dreams, and there’re so many different ways to reach your goals…I am still learning what I want to be when I grow up.”