This is the second installment of a four part series entitle the Career Development plan for College Students.

To read the freshman year plan click here,

The second edition of the Career Development plan is the sophomore year.

For your sophomore year I recommend continuing some of the freshman year plan but then stepping it up a notch with a few new ideas.

• Continue to meet with your career services advisor. As I said in my first post they are a wealth of resources. Besides, what else are they going to do all day if they don’t meet with you? Their full time job is to meet with students and advise them on career decisions.

• Continue to visit local companies. This process should continue all four years. If you work on this all four years think how many companies you could visit. Even if you only visited two per semester over the course of four years that would be 16 companies in four years. How many of your friends could say they have visited 16 companies over the course of four years? 16 companies in four year = chick magnet, right? Wouldn’t you agree? ☺

• Continue your job shadowing experiences. Again try and do at least one per semester at different types of companies in different industries. These types of experiences can hopefully be arranged via your professors or your career services office. Again, they are waiting for you to come in and talk with them about things like this.

• Tweak your resume. Since this is your second year of school you will have more to put on it. Your first year of school should have provided some great experiences like job shadows and internships. Make sure those are now on your resume. I highly recommend you work with a professional on making your resume as sharp as possible. If you are like me editing your resume is not an easy process. I often over look the smallest of errors that professionals will not miss.

• Continue to do your company research. Find out as much as possible about local companies that could be potential employers. Once you have done a fair bit of research on a few of them continue to try and make some in-roads within these organizations to see what it would be like to work there. A company tour, a job shadow, and internship, or even an information interview could be a great way to take your research to the next step.

• That leads me to my next point. Informational interviewing is a great way to get very valuable experience. Let’s face it; most college students don’t know that much about working in the real world. A great way to learn what it would be like is to sit down with professionals and talk about their job and their day-to-day lives. If you were considering a job in broadcasting, it would be a great idea to call a local radio station to try and interview the local talk show host or popular DJ. Find some time to schedule a visit with them during their workday. Call them and ask them for 30 minutes of their time to find out more about their day-to-day tasks. Tell them you are interested in learning more about what it would be like to work in their field. Most people will not refuse you. Once you have the meeting set, work with your parents, career services professional, or professor to come up with a list of questions to ask them. Hopefully the conversation will take care of itself but it would be a good idea to have some conversations starters ready to go.

• Consider finding a school year internship. At the end of your freshman year I suggested it might be a good idea to find a summer internship. Now I am suggesting the possibility of finding an internship during your spring semester. Shortly after you return from summer break start to look for a spring internship. Try and secure it before the end of the fall semester so you can create your spring schedule around this position. I know during my senior year I worked at an internship during the fall and the spring. I was able to take mostly night classes that made it work. Not every school offers that type flexibility but maybe you could take all morning classes and then work in the afternoon. Do what you can with the resources you have.

• Attend a job fair. I should have mentioned this in the freshman year post but I forgot. I would recommend attending job fairs all four years. They are a great way to improve your networking abilities. You never know whom you are going to meet at these events. I would also recommend making business cards to take to a job fair. Check out Vistaprint.com for very inexpensive cards. You will knock’em dead if you show up to the job fair with business cards. Very few students do this.

• Attend a local professional networking event. Most local communities have a chamber of commerce or a trade association. I know here in the Pittsburgh area we are spoiled with a number of professional networking events available to us. Talk with career services or your professor about local professional events that are related to your major. Nearly every profession has a trade association or networking group that is related to your field of study. These types of events can be a great resource when it comes to finding a job after school. Remember, nearly 80% of the people working found that job through networking.

Again, this is not a complete list but it a group of suggestions. If you have other suggestions please feel free to drop me an email.

Stay tuned for tomorrow and the Junior Year Plan.