What Annie Chartrand is doing to help SUNY Jamestown Community College students get a leg up on their career prospects is being recognized on a national scale.
Chartrand, JCC’s Career Services coordinator, delivered a presentation on “Best Practices for Student Engagement in Career Exploration” at the League for Innovation in Community Colleges 2023 conference in Tempe, Arizona in March. She also recently served as an interviewee for a webinar titled, “Community Colleges and the Open, Curated Network.”
The webinar was hosted by Handshake, the most popular college-to-career network used by U.S. colleges and employers. As Handshake has tried to grow its community college user base, the platform has zeroed in on JCC and Chartrand “for good examples of best practices in Career Services at community colleges,” she said.
Community Colleges 2023 conference in Tempe, Arizona in March.
Chartrand’s presentation in Arizona, which included a relationship manager from Handshake, focused on building collaboration within the college and external partners and engaging students in career exploration.
“The secret to doing big things on a tiny budget or with a small team or some combination of both is to collaborate as much as possible with fellow departments and partners outside the college,” Chartrand said. “We’re trying to make our office into a place that provides resources for faculty and staff and to equip the whole campus to support students with their career navigation, and to make sure that it doesn’t just live and die in our office.”
In the presentation, Chartrand also shared that she and Career Services Project Manager Julie Page have enlisted the help of students by creating a student ambassador program. They currently employ two students, with another coming on board this summer.
“We train them to not only help with events and planning and recruiting the student body to get involved, but also to be mini career mentors,” Chartrand said. “They will be able to meet with students, look at their resumes, and give them foundational advice to help us and to help with their own professional development and the development of their peers.”
JCC students can find on- and off-campus jobs using Handshake, which is similar to career websites like Indeed and LinkedIn, but made for students and alumni and also offers career workshops and resources.
During the Handshake webinar geared toward career service staff at other community colleges, Chartrand chatted with Handshake’s executive director of employer engagement about how JCC helps students navigate the chaos of searching and applying for jobs.
“Employers can reach out directly to students on Handshake,” said Chartrand, who also presented at a national career readiness conference last spring. “We’re teaching students the skill of passive job searching, teaching them how to make their profiles searchable and competitive so recruiters reach out directly. We’ve had a couple of students get hired that way.”
Handshake recommended Chartrand for the League for Innovation in Community Colleges conference and also invited her to participate in a recent stakeholder workshop alongside career services representatives from Cornell, Duke, Emory, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and NYU, among others.
“Not only was JCC one of the only public institutions that were there, it was the only community college that was invited,” Chartrand said. “And it was certainly the only school that came from a smaller rural area with a smaller student population.”
During the workshop, participants were asked to give feedback on Handshake and how they use the network.
“It was fascinating to see what other schools are doing and how they meet their students’ needs,” Chartrand said. “It was great to lend perspective and talk about the unique challenges of a community college.
“At the end of the day, they’re just different experiences,” she added of bigger colleges compared to JCC. “They’re not more or better. They offer more programs and have brand name recognition, but the key word in community college is community. It really made me feel a sense of pride of how much we put into knowing and serving our community and how important community colleges are.”