Career Services: Resources and Guidance
Ahead of their Fall 2020 start at Parsons Paris, incoming undergraduate and graduate students wrote in to ask questions to Virginie Grillet, Director of Careers and Internships at Parsons Paris. Here are the answers to their most frequent questions about the resources and guidance provided by the Career Services department at Parsons Paris.
What services do you offer for students?
- One-on-one career counseling
- Professional development: résumé, curriculum vitae, portfolio, LinkedIn profile, and cover letter reviews
- Practice mock interview sessions
- Information about job or internship search strategies, graduate school, and networking opportunities
- Workshops, panels, employer information sessions, on-campus interviews, and career and internship fairs
- Alumni network
What is the most important skills to have, when applying to internships in the art & design industry?
For recruiters, it is important to differentiate skill and qualities.
Qualities are attributes you might naturally have (perhaps you’re a naturally chatty person or have strong resilience, for example) and have used to benefit you in life and work.
Skills, on the other hand, are things you’ve learnt through work, training or education, or general life experience.
Hard and soft skills are important for future graduates, e.g. being social, open-minded, talkative.
Hard skill: Hard skills are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify (e.g. proficiency in a foreign language, software, technical skills linked to your degree).
Soft skill: are subjective skills that are much harder to quantify. Also known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills,” soft skills relate to the way you relate to and interact with other people (e.g. communication, leadership, problem solving abilities, creativity, positive attitude).
But it is also about your personality with qualities and strengths.
My recommendation is to build your professional experience (and network) during your Bachelor Degree in different companies/institutions, with specific positions. This will help you to build your skills, have a great resume and understand where you want to go in the future.
To summarize=
1. Creative industry needs different profiles (age, background, nationalities, etc.) so make sure you highlight your experience on your resume.
2. Having different internships on a resume is appealing and professional for recruiters (company size, positions, duration, etc.). And for the student, it shows various skills, strengths and adaptability.
3. There is always room for ambitious and proactive candidates. Industry needs qualities such as hard worker, work well under pressure, responsive, respectful, curious and sociable.
What kind of guidance do we get from the Career Services to find an internship?
The Career Services Department offers professional development workshops to all the students throughout the academic year. Thanks to the Parsons Paris job board, students have access to internship offers. It is the responsibility of the student to attend workshops, to work on the professional documents and to follow advice to find an internship. Resume and portfolio are always crucial for recruiters. The recruitment process from a creative industry will focus more on your portfolio, when for a non creative industry, you will need to only provide a resume.
Does Parsons Paris organise Career Fair?
Every Spring, Parsons Paris holds a Career Fair. Most of the internships are based in France.
Some of the potential employers are international and may connect you with their subsidiaries abroad.
If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
Virginie Grillet
Director of Careers and Internships
parsonscareerservices@newschool.edu