As her cake-baking business began piling up the catering orders, Tufts alum Lori Sharton (LA '92) knew that she either needed to expand her business and open a real bakery or quit while she was ahead and start something new.
Sharton, who graduated from Tufts with a degree in English, had a number of different careers before she started her own baking business — an occupation she had expanded from a hobby of baking for her children. Though her business flourished for a while, she eventually decided it was time for something new.
"I decided that I wanted to move back into a more corporate setting," Sharton said. "People said when I was first getting out of the cake business that I should find [a] career counselor, and I thought of Tufts, so I figured I would call and see if they had resources for alum[ni] … It's great to go back to your school for these types of things; there's a certain level of comfort there."
As seniors start to trickle in for résumé critiques and graduate school advice with the real world looming just over the horizon, many alumni have been doing just the same. While Career Services has been open as a resource for Tufts grads for years, career counselors in the department have seen an increase in laid-off alumni looking for advice — likely a result of the country's recent economic woes.
Tufts Career Services offers alumni the same resources it offers to undergraduates: support for making career decisions, as well as job-hunting and graduate school advice. According to Leslie Warner, associate director of Career Services, she and her colleagues have conducted more than 1,000 individual career consultations over the past year, a "significant increase" from past years.
"Alumni, especially young alumni, often ask how to conduct a job search … One alum called today about advice on how to manage the interview process, asking ‘How do I prepare? When and how do I follow up?'" Warner said. "I also help with grad school decision-making, career decision-making, careers assessment and career change."
One young alumnus, Zach Baker (LA '05), contacted Career Services for his first job change earlier this year. Baker, who had visited Career Services for little more than a résumé critique during his undergraduate years, was looking on Career Services' Web site for cover letter writing tips when he learned that he could schedule an individual appointment for career advice.
Baker was working in Washington D.C. garnering support for sustainable agriculture but was considering a transition to a new job focusing on climate change. With a little help from Warner through a phone appointment and a few e-mail exchanges, Baker landed a job with the National Wildlife Federation working with climate change issues.
"I think Career Services is a great resource; it's certainly brought me back into thinking about Tufts and appreciating the resources that are available even after you're gone," Baker said. "My excitement about Tufts was enhanced knowing that they care about your future even after [you graduate.]"
Warner also said that Career Services has resources for helping alumni with decades of work experience under their belts.
"I find that older alumni just have more complicated lives. They're often balancing family needs, and their career questions are often a little more complicated," Warner said. "Career questions have more facets to them when you've been working for 10 years or so, for example."
Sharton, who has changed careers four times and is a self-proclaimed "big user" of Career Services, is one such alum with a multi-faceted job history. In early 2004, as she was struggling with her decision about moving on from her cake business, she talked with Warner for advice.
"I said ‘Look, this is what I've been doing, and I need some help figuring out what direction I want to go in next,'" Sharton recalled. "Leslie helped me figure out what I liked from my previous jobs, even from before I got my master's degree, and how to use that to focus my job search."
Not long after her first Career Services consultation, Sharton found a job as a director of marketing. However, like many others in the weakened economy, she was laid off after budget cuts at the beginning of 2009 and once again faced the next decision in her career path.
"I had been kind of discontented [with my job] over the last few months, and I knew things weren't doing well, so I had kept in touch with Leslie," Sharton said. "I was looking at other jobs [before I was laid off] and checking in with Leslie, talking about concrete questions, for example, about commuting to Providence."
Warner noted that while Career Services has received more requests for appointments from alumni in the past few months, not all consultations come from alumni who have lost their jobs.
"Certainly more people are experiencing layoffs, but it's not everybody. Some people are still doing regular job and career changes. Someone may have also experienced a layoff when they were looking for a job change anyway — it's kind of a nudge," she said.
Regardless of what provokes a job change, both Warner and Sharton emphasized the value of the Tufts Career Network, the university's online alumni listing. The network serves as a community through which both students and alumni can find others in a certain industry and connect for advice and networking. And as networking is a two-way street, students and alumni give and receive advice and other assistance. Warner said that joining the Career Network and keeping an updated profile is one of the easiest and best ways to help out. Even young alumni working their first jobs can give advice in their fields.
"Even if you get a job out of college, you don't know what's going to happen in three or four years," Sharton said. "There's nothing worse than feeling alone in this process, and when there's a community out there for support, it opens doors that wouldn't necessarily have been open before."
