Year one: get in the door
You do not need a career plan to start. In your first year: create a PorterConnect profile, go to a résumé drop-in even with a thin résumé, and attend the Career Conference just to see how it works. Career coaches also do major-and-career exploration if you are undecided — that is a career-services conversation as much as an advising one.
Year two: line up the first experience
The summer-after-sophomore-year internship search starts in the fall of sophomore year. Meet a coach to build the search, get the résumé tight, do a mock interview, and target employers at the fall conference. This is the year the applied-experience requirement stops being abstract.
Year three: go deep
Refine the résumé into field-specific versions, build a portfolio if your field uses one, do informational interviews with alumni (coaches and departments make introductions), and treat the fall conference as a real full-time-and-internship pipeline. If graduate school is the direction, start that timeline now with a coach and the graduate-school adviser.
Year four: run the search
Full-time job search support, offer evaluation and salary-negotiation help, and — this matters — completing the first-destination survey so your outcome counts in the program's numbers. Career for Life means you can keep using coaching as an alumnus.
The standing resources
Beyond appointments: the career closet (free professional clothing), on-campus interview rooms, employer information sessions, the two annual Career Conferences plus smaller field-specific recruiting events, and PorterConnect for postings and employer research. Most are walk-in or self-serve.
How to make an appointment count
Bring something concrete — a draft résumé, a specific job posting, a portfolio link, an offer letter. The most useful outcome of any session is a dated next action: one application, one informational interview, one revision. A coach can only help as specifically as you show up.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.