Eagles At Work, a new Career Services website, is hoping to prepare students for the working world by connecting students to employers and supporting them in all the steps necessary to gain a job or internship.
Oklahoma Christian University Director of Career Services Candace Owens began her second year at the helm by presenting Eagles At Work to the student body and companies in the Edmond area looking to hire.
“[Our goal is] to help students become successful in reaching their career goals,” Owens said. “Whether that includes mock interviews, help preparing for dress, resumes, connecting you to career opportunities, finding employers within companies that you have gotten in touch with – it’s all-encompassing.”
Students can access the site from the services category on MyOC while employers, alumni and faculty can find it through the Career Services page.
For first-time login, students must enter their student ID as the username then select “forgot your password” so the system may generate a password and email it to them. Students can customize the password at a later time.
The next step is to create a profile, which Owens said is a crucial step students often overlook.
“I have had students that will skip over entering their GPA,” Owens said. “So for a particular job or internship, [the company is] requiring a certain GPA and the system thinks you don’t qualify because you didn’t put in that information, so it won’t allow you to apply.”
Once the profile is completed students may look up the employer directory, begin job searching, schedule on-campus interviews or find upcoming career events and workshops.
A personal calendar and resource library are also available, as well as links to create a resume or report if they have been hired through the site.
Through the job search tab, students may see all available internships, part-time and full-time jobs in or near the Edmond and Oklahoma City area. Results can be narrowed through keyword and position type searches and students can also access links to other potential job sites.
Junior Brandon Lucas said he found a part-time job through Eagles At Work within the first month of the website going live.
“I was checking my email one day and saw I had received an email from OC,” Lucas said. “I was conveniently looking for work at the time and saw there was a posting of jobs in the area. I saw [a company] had a management position open, and I ended up getting it.”
Lucas said he wouldn’t recommend the program to students for all types of job searches, though.
“If they’re needing part-time or just interested in stuff then I’d suggest Eagles At Work,” Lucas said. “If they’re needing something more stable or permanent besides just part-time work then I wouldn’t suggest it.”
Owens said students need to report a hire through the website so she can collect statistics of the program. The statistics gathered would be used to inform employers and future students how many jobs have been successfully found and established over time through the site.
First-year student Molly McQuirk said she hadn’t heard of Eagles At Work and didn’t think many others in her class knew of it either.
“I think if freshmen knew about this, it would be huge,” McQuirk said. “Most of the freshmen right now are thinking about jobs on campus and they’re not thinking that OC can help them with jobs outside of campus.”
McQuirk suggested tweaking the Career Service’s marketing approach from the current emails labeled Eagles At Work and word-of-mouth to something to better encapsulate the interest of more students.
“The big part is when I see an email and the bold part says, ‘student announcements,’ I don’t want to read it, but when I see a person’s name I’m interested,” McQuirk said. “The head of career services can say ‘Hi, I’m [Candace Owens], and even though you’re freshmen there’s this Career Services that can help you get jobs outside of campus through OC.’”
Owens said the biggest factor for the program’s success is time.
“Within the system I can check and see how many students have logged in and it’s steadily growing,” Owens said. “Of course I would love for every student to be logged in and know about it but that’s also going to take time.”
To access Eagles At Work and start the process, click here.
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