How to make the most of your career services office, year by year

Among incoming college freshmen, only rarely does a visit to the career services office rank up there in importance with meeting roommates, finding class locations, dealing with homesickness, and generally getting up to speed on the campus scene. But truth be told, students who use their career service center early and often get the best benefit.

Contrary to popular opinion, career services are not just for students nearing graduation. In fact, if you visit your career services office well before your senior year, you will:

• Be given resources and information helpful in determining your course of study
• Learn effective ways to market yourself to potential employers
• Have a leg up on finding job and internship opportunities
• Be taking the appropriate steps to move into professional positions with relative ease upon graduation More

Maggie Feazell is a Senior Recruiter for Sodexo . In this role, she has a focus on Diversity Sourcing and Recruiting within the Talent Acquisition Group. She is a first-generation Cuban- American, born in Miami and raised in Colombia, South America. To learn more about Maggie and her unique perspective on diversity, as well as her advice on beginning your career, click here.

The 2007 Sodexo Future Leaders Internship Program ended with a bang. On August 14th, interns from across the country, joined with their hosting managers and mentors to celebrate the end of the newly revitalized internship program. For the previous ten weeks interns gained real world experience and got exposure to the ins and outs of contract food service management by working in a variety of stimulating environments on college campuses, health care facilities, corporations and the Sodexo Corporate Headquarters.

Best practices, lessons learned and intern testimonials were all on the agenda. The following quote from one intern is indicative of the overwhelmingly positive experience that Sodexo interns had this summer. “As the title of Pierre Bellon and Emily Borgeaud’s book reads “I’ve Had a Lot of Fun”. I hope that I made as positive an impression on those I had the opportunity to meet and work with as they have made on me. I certainly would love to pursue a career with Sodexo after graduation. Until then, I will continue to use the Core Values of Team Spirit, Service Spirit, and the Spirit of Progress to help make each day a better day.”

Because of the success of this year’s program, the company has plans to almost double its size in 2008. To assist in marketing the program to future interns, Sodexo has hired 14 Student Ambassadors and also enlisted the help of 4 prior interns to be a part of the 2008 Future Leaders Internship Planning Committee. To see a list of students and their respective universities, click here.

Interns Create YouTube Video to Market Their Internship Opportunities

Furthermore, in their continued drive to explore innovative sourcing approaches and to reach the highly sought after Generation Y, Sodexo charged several of their 2007 Future Leaders Interns with producing a YouTube video. The purpose of the video is to give an insight into the Sodexo 's Future Leaders Internship Program to potential future interns and to entry level management candidates. Using their creativity and enthusiasm for the program, the entire video was written, produced and filmed by Sodexo interns. To view the video, click here.

Sodexo receives the Secretary of Defense Freedom Award

The Department of Defense recently announced that Sodexo will be a recipient of the 2007 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award -the highest recognition given by the U.S. Government for support of employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserve. The Freedom Award will be presented during a formal ceremony on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

Nominations for this prestigious award are 100% employee driven and because of its unwavering support of its employees, Sodexo received an unprecedented 38 employee nominations! Those 38 Sodexo citizen soldier employees will be receiving invitations from the Department of Defense and will be traveling from all over the country to attend this very special ceremony. Additionally, to make the event even more special for their employees, Sodexo will be holding a special reception prior to the event to thank them.