Hosted by the Weingart Center for Career and Professional Development, CareerCon featured a range of events that covered topics such as networking, searching for and applying for jobs and internships, writing effective resumes, nailing the interview process, financial literacy, career culture, and workplace identity. CareerCon ended with a networking and recruiting mixer that allowed job-seeking students and alumni to interact with employers from organizations such as Techtronic industries, Cintas Corporation, and the City of Long Beach, just to name a few. “Eighty percent of attendees will get some kind of offer, whether it be for an internship or a career, through the network they built,” said Michelle Ponce, assistant dean of the career center. “The employers at CareerCon gave students a safe zone to explore networking, and to be trained and guided in what they will experience in the real world.” MaiQuel Vasquez ’22, used the mixer as an opportunity to practice her 30-second pitch and develop her networking skills. Business major Michael Padillo ’21, had already taking advantage of Whittier’s internship connections when he attended CareerCon. Padillo was hired as an intern at Aflac, an opportunity he discovered through Handshake, a career services and recruiting platform provide by the career center. He attended CareerCon to seek out new internship opportunities in the business field. According to Ponce, a primary goal of CareerCon is to demystify the process of finding internships and jobs and to encourage students to use their available networks and resources to start their journey into the professional world.
