ESS 809: Career Library

Laura Vogt:
Hello and welcome to the The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Engineering. And this week Kate Zuby, the Career Counseling Library Manager in Counseling and Psychological Services, is joining us to introduce us to the career library. It’s a resource that will help you explore majors, careers, graduate programs. Hi Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Kate Zuby:
Hi. Thank you for having me, Laura.

Laura Vogt:
Can you tell us about yourself and your role at UC Berkeley?

Kate Zuby:
Yes, I can. So again, I’m Kate Zuby. I manage the Career Counseling Library, which is our career service through counseling and psychological services. So we are also now under a larger umbrella of student mental health. And so we are a completely separate career service on campus from the career center, which most folks know about. And so we take a more psychological and holistic approach to the career counseling that we do, which I’ll tell you more about as we go. And I myself am trained in college and student counseling. Was an advisor for a few years as well, and so now I’m doing career counseling and very excited about it.

Laura Vogt:
Well thank you so much for being here today. It was really great to meet you and get to know about the program. Can you give us a short overview of the counseling and psychological services at Berkeley?

Kate Zuby:
Yeah. So we are a standard counseling and psychological services staff on campus. So we have different folks. We have licensed social workers, licensed counselors, as well as psychiatrists within our counseling and psychological services. We used to be on a brief counseling model, which is sort of what most college student mental health services are, which is a set number of allotted appointments every semester. We’ve actually moved into, so we have a new executive director that we’ve had and actually now we have co-executive directors that we’ve had for the last few years, and we’ve moved into what’s called stepped care. So we do one at a time, which is sort of that every appointment is treated as a one-off appointment, which is exciting on a few levels. One that we do have more access for folks, so folks can get in pretty quickly and that students should be able to get referrals and access to different services within that one appointment.

And so like I say, so within counseling and psychological services, we do have this career service which has been in place for, gosh, almost 30 years now. And so within that we actually do still adopt the brief model. So students mostly come to us, say three to five sessions every semester. And so we get to really dig into the mental health pieces behind career counseling. And then again, we do have psychiatry and we do have ADHD testing and other things in counseling and psych services, which I can talk more about if folks are interested.

Laura Vogt:
Thank you. So a couple of episodes I spoke with Mark Aster about students that might not know if they’re in the right engineering major for their interests, and he talked about students who could find out more about speaking with their faculties or their peers, ESS advisors, taking an engineering 92 course, which gives the background on multiple majors and student organizations. But what are some of the different ways that students can research majors through the career library?

Kate Zuby:
So I would say it’s less on researching majors and more on possibly just exploring different options, different career paths, different interests and passions, and skills and values, and things like that for our service specifically. So we see a lot of folks that are already declared in majors who are confused or unsure, and that runs the gamut of first semester freshmen folks all the way through to graduate programs, PhD programs. So we understand that Berkeley is a very academically rigorous environment. We also understand, especially within the STEM fields like engineering, that that can be a real pressure cooker for folks and they might feel unsure once they’re there or they might have thought the major was one thing, turns out to be something slightly different. So what I would say is that for us, we really like to, again, explore folks intersecting identities, really the psychology behind why they might have chosen certain majors or career. Also, holistically them as people and what is going on for them, and how that is affecting their academic life.

So we would do things like assessments. We have assessments on different personality traits, skills, career interests, values. So we would be looking into that. We would be doing counseling, talking to folks through what is happening for you, what’s coming up for you, when you’re thinking about doing this major, possibly making a change or why it feels like it might not be a good fit, whether that be I’m not performing academically the way that I want to be, or I’m just not feeling like this is in my interest area. And so we would go through that with them and really talk through options. First talking through options in the major that they’re already declared in and then possibly expanding that, and thinking about parallel planning, parallel options, other things that might be interesting to them. Other ways in which they might be able to maybe engage some other interest areas that aren’t necessarily professional avenues like hobbies or other things. So, that would be what we would do. Again, not necessarily researching, these are the majors of Berkeley, but really looking into what are your interests as a person, as a human, what brought you to choose this major? How can we put all those things together and find what we think is the best fit for you moving forward?

Laura Vogt:
And so what are the other parts of the career library that helps the students explore who they are and what finding a career actually means?

Kate Zuby:
Yeah. So again, I mean I think our assessments are the biggest thing where students are really digging into exploring all these different facets of their personality and interests. We also do have a collection of books. So people often ask why we’re called the career counseling library. I think it’s a bit of a misnomer. We have a very small collection of books, but we do have that. So we have books on different careers, graduate school programs, things like that. We also subscribe to two separate online services that can help with career exploration. Kind of digging into, again, just areas of interest or even what are my passions behind this? What is my real driving force? And trying to find that North star for students. What is the really exciting thing about what I’m doing and why I first chose this and how can we build upon that?

And then like I say, really the counseling. So it’s almost like imagine mental health counseling but through a career lens. So that’s really what we’re doing. So we’re looking into family of origin for folks. What were the messages about careers that people were given? What drew them to this career? Was it pushed by family? Was it something that was just a real interest area for them, looking into that exposure to different careers and what that maybe again, how that led a student to where they are today. And so really digging into that and also the mental health piece is barriers that they’re feeling or imposter syndrome or just feeling burnout or stress or even anxiety, depression, things like that. So that’s how we would do that, and really digging into, again, through the student’s lens, using their experience to then help guide us and then create a plan moving forward and set goals.

Laura Vogt:
And so when you’re helping them to create a plan, is one of the things that you could discuss with a student is whether they should take on a second major or maybe add a minor?

Kate Zuby:
Yes. And again, I mean that would be less on, so something that you and I were talking about before we started, we are a pretty small service. So again, a lot of students know about the career center on campus and it is a very large, very well staffed service for us. We have about, normally any given semester, about six student facing staff. So we are quite a small service, so we think of ourselves more as generalists than as really specific. We don’t have folks that are necessarily nestled into each major or each department on campus. And so, what we might be thinking about in that regard is talking to the student through, what might that look like for you? If you’re already feeling burnt out, what would adding in a major or a minor or something else do?

What would also be the benefits of that? And so we would be talking through things like that. Less about researching specific things and how they might fit into career later, if that makes sense.

Laura Vogt:
That definitely makes sense. I like the idea that you can look at it from a lens of how they’re doing emotionally with everything that’s going on and whether you want to pile on, on top of that or if it’s an actual answer to like, okay, yeah, you do want to do this and so maybe you should learn a little bit more about that. How do you emotionally figure out how to make it all work?

Kate Zuby:
Yes. We also know that, again, Berkeley being a little bit of a pressure cooker, very academically rigorous environment. We also know there’s a lot of pressure for students to choose a second major to do more, to be in all of these groups on campus who choose a minor.

And so we might want to try to just break that down a bit and say, again, because we are very immersed in the mental health piece, we might want to say, okay, and what would that look like for your life? And what would be the reality of that and how can we come together and think about those things?

Laura Vogt:
I often wonder, it was quite a long time that I graduated from high school. So the idea of going from high school to college, where you’re learning that time management now, because in high school everything is really prescribed of what you’re doing and when you have to be and what the hours are. So does the career library then help figure out that time management aspect part of it sometimes then, of can you do what you’re passionate about but also what you wanted to be a major in?

Kate Zuby:
Yeah. We definitely do do that as well. Again, it would be more talking to the student around, we do a lot of work around procrastination, around time management pieces, around especially, again, it’s sort of whittled down to that mental health piece. A lot of times students come in and say, I’m feeling so burnt out, I can’t seem to get my work done. I can’t seem to focus. I’m really struggling right now. What do I do? And so we would bring in pieces to say, okay, let’s look at the times that you might feel, during the day, that you might feel most productive and how can we really monopolize on that? And what is your schedule currently? How many things do we have on the table? We probably shouldn’t put more onto ourselves if we’re already feeling really stretched thin. And so how do we work within what’s already there and also your life. Do you have to work outside of school? What are the other pressures at home? Like that.

Laura Vogt:
And you said that you also have a little bit of information about graduate school. So do you talk to students about what it means to go to graduate school or how to make that choice? What if they’re going back and forth on if they just don’t know if that’s the right choice for them?

Kate Zuby:
Yes. We definitely do a lot of work around that as well. So like I say, we have built books and then online programs that dig into different graduate programs in the United States. We’re mostly within the States and not so much on an international level. But yes, I think especially with students in STEM fields, I think there is sometimes a lot of pressure to be going straight into graduate school. And so we do talk through students a lot.
Like I know in the college of chemistry, we did a lot of work with students around the shift from everybody needs to go into graduate school or that’s sort of the expectation, and the shift from that to actually maybe I want to go straight into industry and what does that look like? Can I then go back to graduate school? What are some of the barriers that might be in my way at that point? And so really talking through, yeah, what’s going to be right for a student. So if going straight into industry is going to open doors, is going to, again, given financial, personal, family situations, if there is a need to make money right away, right after school or just start paying off loans, that’s important as well. And so talking through the risk cost analysis of that and going through what might be right for that particular student. So that would be a perspective that we would take that way.

Laura Vogt:
And you had mentioned that you’ve worked with students that have imposter syndrome, and I know that happens a lot more than we want it to. So what kind of things can you or how do you think the assessment would help students that are having that imposter syndrome?

Kate Zuby:
I think the assessments for me, and again, I know that there is some skepticism around assessments for folks and I totally think that that’s valid. We often say that students are absolutely the experts in themselves. And so the assessment is sort of an aside to that. What I think about the assessments that is really positive, is they’re so strengths based and I think they really showcase, it’s sort of getting to see in black and white, oh yes, these are my skills. These are personality traits that I can bring into a workforce that are really positive and really spectacular and ways in which I can utilize this language.

So then put into a cover letter, a resume or a CV, things like that. So I think that can be really inspiring in a way for a student who’s feeling, I don’t belong here or I’m not good enough, or whatever that might look like. I think that to see all of these strengths there in words on a page, right in front of you, can be really inspiring, and we also don’t let any of our assessments leave our hands into a student’s hands without being interpreted by a counselor who’s trained to interpret the assessments.

And so what that means is they’re also going to get a really personalized and individualized experience with the assessment. And I think also the counselor can really say, wow, look at all of these things and let me piece this out for you. And you were bringing up these things when we were first chatting. I’m actually seeing that, I’m seeing this expanded upon or really in more detail in this area. So I think it’s just a way to again, identify strengths, have that conversation with a student, start to just showcase for them it’s one thing to feel like an imposter and yet you’re sitting here, you’re at Berkeley. And so there is reason that you’re here and it isn’t a mistake and bolster that strength.

Laura Vogt:
It was interesting last night, I was watching a TV show called Lady Parts and one of the characters in there wants to run a record label. And at one point somebody finally asked her I think the right question, which was, what do you see your company doing? And so I feel like having a career library where you have a counselor that is there to specifically talk about what you want to do and ask those right questions, that suddenly the idea just flowed and you could have this ability to talk about what you actually want to do and what you see yourself going forward as.

I just thought it was funny that I saw the show last night, that I was like, oh, this totally does what I want to try to grasp tomorrow when I talk to Kate in the meeting, of you’re trained to ask those right questions to be able to open up and get the answers at the end that maybe you didn’t think about before you walked in.

Kate Zuby:
Yeah. And I think too, I think sometimes with students, a lot of times, I don’t know that anyone’s ever asked them those questions. I think either, again, we have a lot of family influence, so maybe family said, I really would love for you to go in this way. Maybe it’s something my parents did. And so that was expected that I was going to go do the same thing or a lot of family systems, it’s sort of, these are the five different career choices that we can choose from or there wasn’t any talk about it because again, I know for myself, I was a first generation college student, there just wasn’t a lot of talk around going to get a degree and then a graduate degree and all of that. And so, I think sometimes just asking the right question and even just being asked, what is your feeling about this?

What’s your opinion? And I think also a lot of folks will say, well, I don’t know why I’m going to career counseling so I shouldn’t go. And I try to say, if you’re curious, if you’re concerned about something, if you’re unsure about your major, unsure about career path, it’s a good place to start. And again, for us as counselors, like you saying somebody asking those questions or trained to know what questions to ask, it’s going into therapy. I’m not feeling great, I don’t even know what to say, but that’s why your therapist is there, and that’s why we’re there. So you don’t need to know what questions to start with. We’ll do that for you and then you’ll guide us in the right direction, but we’ll start for you.

Laura Vogt:
And I imagine that you have to work pretty good in tandem with the career center, of you’re helping a student find what their passion is and where they need to go, and then they could go to the career center to help write that resume to help look for the job postings.

Kate Zuby:
Yes. Yeah, and they’re amazing. I mean, I think this is such a beautiful marriage of services. A lot of college campuses don’t even have an amazing career center. Obviously Berkeley’s career center, incredible. And I guess I should say actually, career and engagement center now.

Laura Vogt:
Yeah. They changed their, they did their name this year. I keep forgetting.

Kate Zuby:
My apologies. But they’re really wonderful. So, yeah. So we do a lot of referrals back and forth to each other. I think that sometimes we’ll see a student and they’ll immediately say, oh, I just need help with a resume, or I need help with job searching. And we’re like, you know what, that’s amazing. We’re actually going to go ahead and refer you over to the career center because they’re going to be better with that. So I think we’re a good place to start foundation wise, when folks are just really unsure about what the next step is, but once they get really sure about those things and wanting to find internships, and wanting to find jobs, resume cover letter help, interview help. That’s all the career center and they’re going to be an amazing scaffold for that.

So I think it’s a really awesome thing get Berkeley students get access to. And I would also like to mention, actually possibly and slightly a tangent, but it’s a really exciting service that we have as we are only one of three UC campuses that not only has the traditional career center model, but also has career counseling through CAPS. So I think that’s something that Berkeley students have access to, that not a lot of other students do. So I would encourage them to use it while they’re here.

Laura Vogt:
So let’s talk about the little bit of the nuts and bolts, of if a student’s interested in having a meeting with you or starting to use the services, what’s the process?

Kate Zuby:
Yeah. So it’s pretty simple. It’s very similar to how they would get another CAPS appointment. So, a lot of times students might go through their eTang portal, there’s obviously counseling and psychological services as part of the bigger umbrella of university health services or the Tang center, both same thing. So they might of through their eTang portal. The way that they would do that for us specifically, the best way would be to call the front desk of counsel and psychological services and to just say, I want a career counseling appointment. And then our folks could find them an appropriate match. And they can also let us know if they want any certain kinds of demographics or whatever for their counselor, and we can do our best to accommodate any of that or even language preferences and things like that. So that would be one way to do it. We also have a couple of remote appointments that we’ve been doing since the pandemic hit. One is we do one-off assessment consultation appointments now.

So that used to be something that folks had to go through the counseling process to do. So they would have to do an intake counseling session and then we’d give them access to the assessments. With COVID, there was just so much career upheaval and just stress and things happening for folks. I mean in so many regards, but especially in career pieces, because honestly, things that people thought were just everything proof. Recession proof, all of these things, it turns out they’re not pandemic proof. And so we realized that we really needed to offer that as a separate session. So now folks can just do the assessments. They don’t have to go through the counseling, and that would be something that’s done on a third party calendar system we use when we join in and that’s something they can get access to on our website or through emailing us, but on our website, they can just click on that and then get access and sign up for an appointment on their own.

And then we’ll follow up with them. And then we also have what we call navigation appointments, which are also done actually through Calendly now. So we’re doing a few different calendar systems. But they’re basically navigation of the mental health and wellness resources within university health services. So folks, if they’re confused about which service is right for them, we can help them with that too. So that would be the way that folks would get set up with us. They can also just email us if they just want help and want us to spell it out for them, we can do that too.

Laura Vogt:
And I’ll have links and the phone number all on the podcast webpage, that folks can find the information pretty easily. Are there any online resources that a student can start using now?

Kate Zuby:
Yes. So the one thing is, so we use two different online resources. So one is EUREKA.org and it is a really amazing occupational database, basically. Houses over 2,500 occupational profiles. And each of these profiles includes information on wages for the job, education that you would need, job outlook, so is that job going to be growing or decreasing in need in the next five to 10 years? Personality types that might be best for that job, etc, etc. You can also look up graduate schools in the United States, lots of different things. And it also does have assessments as well. Not the assessments that we use but separate. So that’s one of our online resources. Our other one is Roadtrip Nation, which is basically if folks have heard about informational interviewing, reaching out to folks in a line of work that they’re really interested in and saying, Hey, how did you get to where you are?

Do you have any tips for somebody trying to do that? This website houses, I think it’s close to 2000 interviews now. So they actually send folks out to do basically informational interviews with different people. And so it’s like having access to nearly 2000 informational interviews without actually having to go or do them yourself. So those are our two online resources. They are paid for services that we pay for and students don’t have to, and that’s actually something else I should mention. All of our services completely free to students regardless of insurance status. So you don’t need to have a ship. So the online resources, we have sign up codes, so folks would just need to email us or get in touch with us in some way, whether that’s an appointment with a counselor or just emailing us and we could send them the links to do that and the codes to sign up.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that we haven’t talked about today that you want to add?

Kate Zuby:
I don’t think so. I think just honestly, what I would say is that if students are curious, are interested, I would say do it. Again, it’s really no harm, no foul for folks. It’s all free. If students are interested in the assessments but not sure that they really buy into it, that’s okay. Again, these are things, career counseling, assessments, any of the websites that we use, these are all things that once they graduate, are pretty expensive to do. So each assessment is about 100, $150 to buy. We obviously buy them in bulk, and so get a little discount on that. But for students, all of this is completely free. And so we really want folks to utilize this while here and while they have access to it. So again, what I would encourage folks is if there’s any curiosity, if there’s any sort of wavering on major, on job outlook, on future career, what does this look like? Come see us. Maybe we help. Maybe we give them a new perspective on something. Maybe we just confirm that they are absolutely in the right place and then they feel validated. And I think all of those things are very positive. So that’s what I would encourage.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much for being here today.

Kate Zuby:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Laura. I appreciate it.

Laura Vogt:
You can check out our past episodes with counselors from CAPS in our podcast archives, including discussions on mental health and wellness, and giving yourself time for self-care. And you can also check out our past interview with the career engagement counselors to find out more about the career center. And finally, thank you to everyone for tuning into The (Not So) Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. We’ll be back next week with more information and resources for your time at Berkeley Engineering.