Amid a bleak job market, the Career Services Center is striving to help UNM students strengthen their résumés and prepare for the workforce.
Jenna Crabb, director of the CSC, said 2,500 students visited the center last year.

“Students walk in the door and kind of don’t know where to begin — that’s what we do. We show them where to begin,” she said. “All my ‘career development facilitators,’ which is just a fancy name for career counselors, are all trained in helping people figure that out.”
Career Services works with employers, Crabb said, in addition to the various career fairs throughout the year.

“We learn from our employers exactly what they are looking for in order to give to our students so they have the cutting edge that’s required,” she said. “For our Public Services Career Showcase, we are one of five schools chosen nationally to host that event. It was told directly to us that it was because of the caliber of events that we have.”

Lesley Davidson-Boyd, the Career Counseling manager, said the job of a career development facilitator is to provide students with the resources to start a career.

“At Career Services, we are not context experts, so I don’t know every job that’s available out there in every field, but I know the resources to look that up, how to find it and how to contact people,” she said. “My expertise is to be an expert in resources. It’s more about being able to make connections and help people find that path.”

Employees are trained and certified through the National Career Development Association, Crabb said, and are more than willing to work with the University’s departments.

“We welcome any kind of feedback from departments. We typically ask for departments to work with us hand in hand,” she said. “Each of my (counselors) outreaches to the departments, deans and faculty, but it’s up to them to talk to us. We have invited them to open houses in the past, but sadly not very many of them took us up on that to learn about our services.”

Student Mickey Hagg said the center helped give him direction about his major.

“Yeah, I went in there with no idea about anything,” he said. “I still don’t really know what I want to do, but I know that they are there to help and that’s kind of comforting.”

*Career Services Center
2nd floor of Mesa Vista*