To compliment a quality education, I would expect a solid source of guidance when preparing for the future.

As seniors, we are anxiously planning for our futures and hope to come out with great job prospects and skills.

While the Career Development Center (CDC) has helped people, there are many instances where students find themselves worse off than when they first sought out help.

Problems students have complained about include poorly done resumes, lack of organization and misinformation.

Resumes are not well done.

We have both used the resume templates provided outside of the Career Development offices.

When Vaccaro heard back from one of the academic counselors, she received a sloppy, bulleted list format with very little detail included.
Cagle’s experience was slightly different. She used the resume format provided by the CDC for classes and had professors review them. The response was always the same: the resume was not in an acceptable format.

The problems don’t end here though, and we aren’t alone.

Sophomore Zainab Javed considered transferring simply because of the support she was not receiving.

“I considered transferring because I was using resources from other universities for my career search,” she said. “Most universities assist students in placements at Capitol Hill — we don’t have a program.”

If it wasn’t for a professor’s guidance, she would still be lost.

Junior Emma Capps didn’t receive help when finding an internship, stating that they constantly forgot to get paperwork and then would force her to go find it.

Capps’ roommate and junior Chelsea Zakostelecky had similar problems.
Those in Career Development left out crucial information about her internship, including that she had to pay to do the internship. Additionally, much of her internship paperwork was forgotten by the office.

Zakostelecky found that there were “more excuses than answers” when it came to asking for help.

Many students end up expressing the same sentiment, Career Development doesn’t care if you are not intel or hospitality.

Friends, acquaintances and both of us have found that we have been better off helping ourselves than receiving help from the CDC.

We all used to seek career assistance, but now we rely on our own hard work, professors and our family to acheive our goals.

Hopefully the department can clean up their act so future Mercyhurst graduates are able to receive quality assistance.