Career Exploration
Overview
Don't wait until one month before graduation to plan for your career! The earlier you start, the more likely you will be successful in attaining your goals by graduation.
Looking for more resources to use outside of PLACE's regular business hours? Check out our comprehensive Career Planning Guide and Roanoke Ready Lookbook below:
What can I do with my major?
Whether you’re exploring majors or searching for information about your chosen field, this website will help you connect majors to careers. Learn about typical career areas and types of employers that hire people with each major, as well as strategies to make you a more marketable candidate. Continue your research through the websites provided.
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What are your Strengths?
CliftonStrengths is an assessment tool that helps individuals identify their natural talents so they can build on them and develop them into strengths. One of Roanoke College’s core values is the success of our students. CliftonStrengths is a powerful tool to help individuals find their own path to personal success.
Students can find the link to the assessment and instructions here. Students will have assorted opportunities to share and apply their results. Students are encouraged to bring their reports to their appointments with PLACE to learn how their strengths apply to career exploration, the job search, and interview process.
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What are your Interests?
My Next Move, part of the O*Net online system, is a free resource that will help individuals explore career options based on their interests, learn about career opportunities, and explore jobs connected to these opportunities.
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Maroon Mentors
For many years, Roanoke College has had active Alumni and Family Networks to assist students and recent graduates in many aspects of their career development. These networks have now become one and are known as MAROON MENTORS. A large number of RC alumni and parents/other family members all around the country have volunteered to assist in our whole person development of students.
The program has various aspects of assistance provided, depending on the needs of the individual student, or of students at certain Class year levels. We may reach out to alumni to help students with leads for internships and/or job connections in their respective organizations. Mentors may participate in networking programs hosted for students, both on campus and in our alumni chapter city areas. These would include "What Can I Do With a Major in ....?" alumni career panels held mostly on campus during the regular semesters, and our Career Night series held during Fall and Semester Breaks, in our alumni chapter cities.
A large focus of Maroon Mentors is our formal mentor/student pairing program that occurs in the fall and spring semesters, as well as in summers. Focused mainly on the sophomore Class year - a time to EXPLORE - students may sign up to be matched with mentors whose experience and background are similar in nature to the students' respective career interests. Together, they plan informational interviews and job shadowing periods spent at the mentors' employment site, sometimes shadowing others on staff as well as the mentor. These opportunities can lead to contacts for internships and others as the student progresses through the rest of their college career.
Students interested in being assigned a Maroon Mentor should begin by completing this short Maroon Mentor Interest Form.