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Jacqueline Taylor, assistant dean of students and director of the Vocatio Center for Life Calling and Career, said that the center focuses on helping students understand who God has uniquely created them to be by offering opportunities that help them discover what they have been called to do and where they can best serve.
In September 2011, the center transitioned from being called the Career Services Center to the Vocatio Center for Life Calling and Career. “Vocatio” is the Latin word for “calling” which helps the center communicate to students that a career is a ministry, not just a job.
“It’s really a holistic approach to life calling and career development,” Taylor said.
The Vocatio Center offers several opportunities for students to prepare for the transition from being a college student to entering the workforce.
“Many students miss out on the Vocatio Center opportunities,” Taylor said. “Most students think you come to the Vocatio Center to get a resume. While we do help students develop professional resumes, that is not all we do.”
The Vocatio Center works with students by focusing on a gifts assessment through the Myers Briggs personality assessment and interest inventory assessments.
“We can actually generate and interpret a combined report to help students look at options for their major and minor in context of their giftedness through personality and interests, which is really helpful to students who come through and utilize that service,” Taylor said.
There are also “What Can I Do With a Major In…” workshops. In this series, the Vocatio Center partners with different academic departments to present in classroom settings.
Ben Burleson, programming coordinator of the Vocatio Center, said the series has three goals:
“We want to make sure all students are thinking proactively about career development early on in college, even if they already know their ultimate goal,” Burleson said. “We also want to make sure students know the full range of career possibilities that a given major might offer. Finally, we use these workshops as an occasion to make students aware of our services and encourage them to come see us individually.”
Burleson works primarily with freshmen and sophomores.
“The best part of my day is meeting individually with freshman and sophomore students who are not quite sure what they want to do,” Burleson said. “I was an undecided major for awhile and wasn’t sure about my goal even after I declared, so I know what it feels like. This is where we in the Vocatio Center are able to truly get to know students, and we pray, impact and challenge them to think through how academic, extracurricular and career efforts in the short term impact purpose and character in the long term.”
The Vocatio Center focuses on life calling and career planning through teaching students to set smart goals for each year of their time at Union. This is achieved through the career coaching and counseling process.
The Vocatio Center also offers to help students work on resumes, cover letters and graduate school preparation. The Vocatio Center helps students work towards graduate school preparation by advising students on writing a personal statement and researching and analyzing their top graduate school program curriculum in comparison to other programs of interest.
“We do interview training for part-time jobs, which is very different than interview training for an internship, which is very different than interview training for a full-time job because the level of employer investment increases as you go along,” Taylor said. “We walk students through becoming more professional through each stage.”
The Vocatio Center also helps students with portfolio development.
“Many students do not realize that developing a portfolio gives them a competitive edge in this competitive job market,” Taylor said. “We help students gather their artifacts, arrange that information in a visual aesthetic way, help them write content well and organize the content. … the students who make time to do it really excel, and I find that students who take advantage of that opportunity receive more competitive offers than students who don’t have a professional portfolio.”
The Vocatio Center also assists students with salary negotiation, job search strategy and networking.
The Vocatio Center’s team of professionals also offers discipline-specific group training. They have partnerships across the academic disciplines including education, engineering, nursing, psychology, computer science, social work and more. The Vocatio Center is often invited by faculty to enter the Union classrooms by hosting professional develop training that is specific to a discipline. During these sessions, five areas of professional development are discussed: resume, interviewing, job search strategy, portfolio development and salary negotiation.
Each year, the Vocatio Center plans and offers about 50 events on campus, such as Backpack to Briefcase, College to Career and the Teacher Expo.
“We actually have around 50 employers on campus each year, and students who do not take advantage of our services sometimes do not realize that the Vocatio Center is bringing employers in to recruit them,” Taylor said.
The Vocatio Center has also developed an eight-week program called PACE (Personalized Academic and Career Exploration) that is offered in cooperation with the Institute for Intellectual Discipleship.
“Students who are undecided on their major or struggling academically because they are not enjoying their course work related to their major or students who simply do not know what God is calling them to do can really benefit from this course,” Taylor said. “It teaches students to think intentionally about who they are and what God is calling them to do.”
The Vocatio Center also has a goal of helping students successfully transition between college and the workforce by offering tips pertaining to entering a workplace for the first time or at any new job. Taylor said that she wished students could truly realize the importance of first impressions.
“Students do not realize that their first impression is their last impression,” Taylor said. “Once a job offer is on the table and they accept that job, the first month is really a way for them to set a tone for how they will work with the organization. To be open and teachable is so important. Because you are new, everything matters from your appearance to how you communicate and how you take initiative.”
Taylor said being intentional is key to your first month in the workplace and believes that it takes around one year to truly know an organization well and to be a contributor to the company rather than taking and benefiting from the company.
Taylor also said she wished students knew more about the effects of social media on their application process as well as after they actually accept a job.
“You are a representation of the company you work for,” Taylor said. “Anything that is not of good character, anything that is not spoken well with sensitivity can follow you, and that is important for students to recognize.”
Alongside serving as assistant dean of students and director of the Vocatio Center, Taylor is part of the student life leadership team and provides oversight for the Hundley Center and the Student Success advocacy. The Vocatio Center partners with both areas to encourage students toward academic success and understanding how such success influences life calling and career development.
“Our goal is to encourage students to follow the leading of Christ as they seek to serve others, and that requires a commitment to calling and competence,” Taylor said. “…Every day I enjoy coming in to see how I can advocate for a student. I enjoy talking to employers about gifted students that I meet, and I also enjoy intentionally preparing students for what God has uniquely called them to do.”
