The Business Information Systems - IT Students of America (BIS-ITSA) club hosted its inaugural Employability Jumpstart Event on Jan. 29 with 92 undergraduate students attending. The purpose of the event was to provide newer college students with timelier biz-tech related advice, assistance, information and tools.  

Assisting students was a coalition of BIS program alumni, employers, senior BIS students and BIS faculty. They gave advice on how to be better and more prepared to interview, obtain internships, and land career position job offers.  The event was organized into six different topic venues. 

The first venue option was in Webb Hall 358 Faculty Lounge with a theme of “Employer/Alumni Recommended Strategies and Tools.”  Employer reps and alumni from The Hartford, General Dynamics and Travelers provided information and gave advice to help students be better positioned to obtain internships.   

The second venue was the Webb 407 Lab with a theme of “Better Planning & Monitoring Your Courses,” where senior BIS major Logan French with the assistance of other senior BIS majors demonstrated and shared an “Eastern Four-Year Plan” tool created by Professor Alex Citurs.  The BIS senior team helped students populate their plans with courses and their grades so as to better schedule key courses in time to help land internships/jobs and calculate major and minor GPAs to put on their resumes.  

The four remaining venues were held in the Webb 410 study lab. A few activities included a “LinkedIn/HandShake” for building professional presence, networks and connections and a “Strategies on Courses & CLEP/DSST” for taking more career interest relevant courses. There was also “Resumes and Job Searches” for better positioning oneself for the right internship/job and a “GitHub, ePortfolios, & Certifications” for demonstrating and validating one’s skillsets. 

A team of senior BIS majors was at each of the activities to give advice, help with various tools and make recommendations based upon their experiences with the respective topics and tools as relevant to the interests expressed by the individual newer students. The event received positive feedback from students and marked a successful start to a new annual event.