Find a better job after finishing school with Career Center help

Imagine that you’ve finally graduated from college but you can’t find a fulfilling job. With the help of Career Cafe, now you can.

The Career Center is offering a series of workshops based on the Career Cafe website throughout the month of October.

Career Center Coordinator Pippa Pierce said she hopes that the workshops will “prompt (students) to dig a little deeper within the website.”

Career Cafe is a virtual career center that can be accessed online any time at www.cacareercafe.com. There is no registration or fee required to use the site.

The website is targeted at California community college students. It offers a variety of resources to help students with career success, including informative videos, assessment tests, tips for career planning and a job search engine.

“No matter what it is, there are different exercises to do … to measure where you are in the process (of developing a career plan),” Pierce said.

Palomar’s Career Cafe workshop series will consist of five sessions. They will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning on Oct. 7.

Rosie Antonecchia, director of the Career Center, will lead the series.

“I’m just hoping that by having these workshops, people do take it (career planning) more seriously and do engage more in their classes and they do see what the point of going to school really is … to find a career pathway,” Antonecchia said.

She said she plans to structure the workshops around Career Cafe’s content. Each session will emphasize a different theme, such as discovering possibilities and setting goals, exploring careers, learning how to gain experience for future employment and searching for jobs. The final session will be an open discussion to wrap up the series.

Antonecchia said she hopes there will be a successful turnout, so she can break students into groups to focus on a specific area of the website that interests them.

Those attending will have the opportunity to watch videos and complete worksheets from their area of focus.

“It makes it interactive and you become more familiar … in one area,” Antonecchia said, adding that the website has “a lot of content.”

She also stressed the importance of learning about yourself in the career planning process. According to the Career Cafe website, students should incorporate their interests and abilities into their career selection.

“You go to school because you want to have a better quality of life, you want to make more money, and you want to be doing something that you enjoy,” Antonecchia said. “It’s an investment and it should pay off.”

In addition to the Career Cafe and other various workshops, the Career Center also offers online workshops through their website for students who are not able to attend workshops on campus.

For more information about the Career Cafe series or online workshops, contact Rosie Antonecchia at (760) 744-1150 ext. 2193 or rantonecchia@palomar.edu.