Christine Wilson, Ph.D. '03

The UCLA Career Center has a new interim director and a new core program which promises to increase the number and geographic breadth of job postings available to Bruins. Christine Wilson, Ph.D. ’03, previously director of the Graduate Student Resource Center, has been at UCLA since the early 90s; first as a graduate student (earning her doctorate in Slavic languages and literature) and then as an administrator, adjunct faculty and co-program director for the M.Ed. in student affairs in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

Their new program, Handshake, set to go live in mid-May, offers many more job opportunities to browse through and has limited its access strictly to UCLA alumni and students. This is an added benefit to the strong partnership between UCLA Alumni and the Career Center, with programs such as Partnership UCLA, career coaching and career fairs, offering Bruins more resources for professional development and employment opportunities.

Wilson shares her approach to her new position, the mission of the Center, and what it can offer both UCLA’s students and alumni.

What is the basic philosophy you bring to this position?

I believe in the liberal arts experience, and that learning critical thinking and how to effect change in the world is why you go to college. But if you can't get a job when you're done, then you've wasted a lot of money. I want people to have that rich academic experience – where it isn’t about vocational training - but there need to be better ways to translate what they're learning in their degree program into a job. Faculty more and more want to understand how to do that. If we have people who are accessible to their students - career counselors who know about their majors and what those careers do - then we can help them with that.

Engaging with us, via our online platform or in-person, starts students thinking about their career - "How am I choosing my degree? How does my degree relate to what I want to do with my life? If I want to do this job, what do I need to study? If I like studying a particular subject, what jobs would be available to me? What other ways can I prepare myself for a career?"

How will your new online system better serve students and alumni?

We are implementing a new system, “Handshake,” which will go live on May 14. The new system will have many more employers using it, because posting jobs is much easier - now, after a job has been uploaded, it can be advertised to universities with just one click, rather than them having to post it at each university. This should give us on the order of 200,000 more employers in the system. We also want on-campus jobs to be on Handshake, so that the students will access the Career Center’s resources earlier in their studies and we know that early engagement is critical to good outcomes.

Because the system is easier to use and also is set up to serve graduate students and post-docs, in addition to undergrads, there will be more job listings that are higher than entry-level, and also a wider geographic spread of jobs. Alumni access will continue to be $30 for six months. 

This is part of an effort to streamline our offerings, eliminating some that were used sparingly and/or have been overtaken in popularity by other systems. For example, we are also phasing out letter of reference services and online resume critique, but we are extending student access to all career services for an additional quarter after graduation and providing all first-year alumni with free access to Handshake. This access to Handshake also provides access to other resources (some for a fee) such as online resources Inside Track and Going Global.

What are your broad goals?

Our goal is to provide every undergraduate student with an internship, experiential learning opportunity or, at the very least, an authentic workplace experience, which could even be an on-campus job. The thing that makes a job “experiential” or internship-like is that there is a mentoring component to it. Students gain competencies that will help them in their future careers. There are literally thousands of on-campus jobs that give students or alumni job competencies in their areas of interest and that will help them get on their desired career path.

We also want to help students learn about networking – how to do it and why it's important. Not all students are comfortable with the idea of networking – we want it to make sense for them. The availability of networking opportunities such as Partnership UCLA, UCLA ONE and the Alumni Mentor Program levels the playing field. I think our collaboration with Partnership UCLA is going to be very successful.

How are you engaging with the schools and departments to more tightly integrate the Career Center with the student’s academic experience?

We have about 35 full-time employees, divided into four main groups: one for undergraduates; one for graduate students; an outward-facing industry relations team; and a finance and operations team. We refer to the undergraduate team as career engagement educators, which are organized by major and industry. These team members work to develop relationships with the academic departments and schools as well as work with students one-on-one to explore the many career options available to them. They seek to be involved in activities and programs of the departments they represent. The outward-facing industry relations team connects employers to students via career fairs, targeted events and various programs. It isn’t as integrated as we’d like it to be yet, but we’re moving in the right direction.

What message do you have for alumni?

One of the best experiences for our students is to meet alumni and see where they've gone in their careers - even alumni who are only one or two years out, seeing how they've transitioned from college into their first or second job. It’s also very beneficial to see people who have been on a longer path - being able to talk to them and learn how they got there. I think that hearing these stories is what helps students figure out what it is they want to do and how what they're doing academically and what they're doing in their clubs, groups and other activities is setting them up for the career path they want. That engagement with alumni is critical and we value any input from alumni. We love to have alumni come and serve on our panels, conduct workshops, and take part in our events. Alumni are an incredibly valuable resource for current students and Alumni Affairs, especially Associate Vice Chancellor Julie Sina, has been a really great partner in helping us get in contact with them.

For information on the UCLA Career Center, please see their website or call 310-206-1915.