FirstGen Ahead May/June, 2020

Founder’s Message These are especially challenging times. We are all encountering obstacles in the COVID-19 era, but our first-generation students are disproportionately impacted by family job loss, health issues, limited internet access, and other challenges. Within the first week that students were sent home from college, one of our students had each of the three members in her household lose their jobs; to date, no one has received unemployment. Another student’s father contracted COVID-19. Several of our students have had difficulty with shifting to online education and sometimes lacked internet connections. First-gen students are more likely to have responsibilities that go beyond doing well in school; they often need to contribute to the family and care for younger siblings.  With resiliency and determination, the students in our pilot cohort are finishing their spring semesters remotely and will be entering into their final year of undergraduate studies in the fall. Three of our ten students have secured summer internships, which is no small feat considering unemployment has skyrocketed from 3.5% pre-COVID-19 to 14.7% earlier this month. For the remaining students, we are creating a FirstGen Ahead Stipend Fund in partnership with the Steppingstone Foundation. The fund is designed to support them with paid summer opportunities that build their skills, networks and knowledge. I will be reaching out to many of our newsletter recipients with a request to help support our FirstGen student success by contributing to the fund.  This will be a busy summer. We have begun working with the Steppingstone Foundation in recruiting our second cohort of students for the upcoming academic year. I am also leading a group of five students in original research documenting the career trajectories of students who graduated during the 2009 Great Recession, which will generate useful lessons learned and be a great networking opportunity. There will be one newsletter over the summer, and I look forward to communicating with you again in July/August to provide updates and share what we have learned. Susan Gershenfeld, PhD

“ Patience and fortitude conquer all things.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Introducing FirstGen Ahead Stipend Fund Since September, we’ve been working with students in increasing self-awareness, expanding networks and opportunities, and building skills that will lead to the all-important summer internship. Then, COVID-19 hit. Several internship programs have been cancelled. Work is being done remotely. Students need to be more creative than ever. That is why we set up the FirstGen Ahead Stipend Fund in partnership with the Stepping. Consistent with FirstGen Ahead’s mission, the Stipend Fund is designed to support our students who don’t have a paid summer internship but have created an opportunity in which they will benefit from other career-building experiences this summer. This could be an unpaid internship at a not-for-profit organization or career-relevant volunteer work. For students in the first cohort, here is a link to the application. The deadline to submit an application is June 15. Award decisions will be made by representatives of FirstGen Ahead and the Steppingstone Foundation with a June 30 announcement date. Any questions about the Fund or the application process can be sent to susan@firstgenahead.org .

Networking During the Pandemic How do college students network when social distancing? Here are a few ideas to expand your network during the pandemic: 1)     Reach out to alumni from your university . Perhaps you are studying what they studied. Perhaps they are in a career you are interested in pursuing. Perhaps they work for a company that is where you ultimately want to work. LinkedIn is a great source to search for alumni at your university (by year, by title, by company, etc.). 2)     Search out professional groups to join on Facebook or LinkedIn . For example, if you are interested in marketing and enter “marketing group” in LinkedIn’s search bar, over 1500 professional groups will appear. Join a group, engage in conversation through posting and commenting, and make yourself visible. Recognize, however, that not all people welcome networking in this way – so there will be hits and misses. 3)     Gather intelligence on organizations of interest . If you know a few organizations that you might want to work for after you graduate, do some targeted research on them. Who is in leadership positions? What can you learn about them online? Who is in a role that is of interest to you? Reach out to them and conduct an informational interview. Get on their radar. It’s important to understand your goal in networking. What’s the network that can help you solve a problem? How will you communicate in a way that is going to be genuine and engaging? Take the time to think strategically and remember that networking is all about building and maintaining relationships. You can do this at home with a phone or computer.  Image Source: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/the-virtual-handshake-3-executive-netw orki ng-tips

Securing My Summer Internship By Katie Yao During the first two years of college, I had a difficult time finding a suitable internship for my interests in business and law. I felt that I was being pushed to pursue biological research whenever I talked to recruiters because that is where I had experiences as an undergraduate. I was not considered for non-research positions even if those were the roles I was most interested in. However, during sophomore year, my friends told me about Health Career Connections (HCC), a national non-profit that connects students to organizations in health sectors.                My junior year was very different because I decided to drop the premedical track and pursue a minor in business administration and management. I also began considering attending law school after joining the mock mediation team. I was finally able to attain the basic skills needed to be considered for business positions. Although the large investment banks and firms did not result in an internship offer the recruiting process helped me regain confidence that I was hirable. So, I applied for everything that I was interested in and “qualified” for because I thought that my skills were transferrable across sectors. HCC notified me in mid-January that I was selected to participate in the first round of interviews. After that, they sent students’ information to organizations to review and thus, start the on-site interviews in February. I thought I articulated what I could offer and what I wanted well but, I was not considered for any on-site interviews. I was quite discouraged at that point. In mid-March, I received a call that I could choose to interview with one out of two consulting firms, and I ultimately decided to choose Public Consulting Group (PCG), due to the proximity to my home. This year was the most successful internship search in my college career. (I was also considered for a fellowship that has now been cancelled due to the pandemic.) This is in part due to tailoring resumes and cover letters/essays to the position I was applying for. I also tried to put a lot of the phrases and/or words noted in the description in materials in hopes that applicant tracking systems would flag my resume as a good fit. I also asked Mary, my FirstGen Ahead coach, to help edit a few of my essays. This all worked out since I received a lot more responses from recruiters this year compared to previous years.                Now, I look forward to starting my internship at PCG in June. I’m hoping to learn about consulting and services that large public healthcare systems could improve on.

Meet Coach Lois! Lois Benishek is a Master Coach with FirstGen Ahead. In this role, she facilitates monthly discussions with FirstGen Ahead’s volunteer coaches and provides sage advice. She is guided by her professional training in multicultural counseling and as a counseling psychologist, which has a focus on career development. She has many years of experience coaching people of all ages. Lois has worn a number of professional hats since completing her advanced degrees – therapist at college counseling centers, faculty member and administrator, and researcher and clinical supervisor at an addiction-focused not-for-profit organization. Lois reports, “If my job description didn’t mention a strong component on the career and professional development of others, then I simply created it!”  Like many coaches, Lois is drawn to FirstGen Ahead because she, along with her brother, were first in their family to earn a college degree. She says, “FirstGen Ahead’s mission of empowering students to succeed in transitioning from college to career is what I would have wanted for myself as a college student. I’m honored to serve as a coaches’ coach and do “work” that I feel passionate about and which feeds my soul.” Her approach to a coaching relationship centers on two adages: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” (Theodore Roosevelt) and “Give a (student) a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a (student) to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” (Maimonides). Lois believes in working with students through a developmental lens given that they vary in their degree of personal insight and other matters. She says, “My goal is to meet them where they are, model the skills they are lacking, and then find experiential ways to promote their growth in these areas over time.” Lois has three pieces of advice to coaches during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, ask your student how they’re doing – essentially take their COVID-19 temperature to get a sense of the extent to which they are managing their new normal. Ask them how you might be able to support them through this challenging time. Second, be a realistic optimist and model that attitude for them. How can they use this experience to better prepare themselves in non-traditional ways to make the transition from college to career? Remind them that this, too, shall pass. Third, students have lost the daily structure that was a part of their academic lives. As such, provide them with some structure – consider scheduling a weekly 15-minute touch-in call with your student. The agenda? They share a positive event and a challenge they’ve encountered in the past week and you do the same. You help them troubleshoot to address their challenge and invite them to do the same with you. Why? You’re modeling that you are walking as companions down the COVID-19 road. They have insights and strengths that can support and uplift others (you!) at the same time that they, themselves, are in need of some uplifting from you. Her advice to students: It’s not the hand you’re dealt, but how you choose to play that hand that counts. Use this COVID-19 experience as an opportunity to pause and reflect. What are your core work and personal values? Cultivate those values and be prepared to articulate them during the interview process. Be the person that YOU want to hire and know why that’s the case.

What Would You Do? You really liked hearing from one of the presenters on a recent webinar. The presenter encouraged attendees to contact her with any questions following the webinar. What is your approach to build on this initial connection?

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Sunday, May 24, 7:30-8:30pm The online student session will be co-led during the summer months by students. A Zoom link reminder will be sent to all students. Sunday, June 14, 7:00-8:00pm An online coach support session will be facilitated by Dr. Lois Benishek. A Zoom reminder will be sent to all coaches.

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