Many seniors find themselves making a pilgrimage to an office on the second floor of Swen Parson Hall, where they can receive help in finding employment after graduation.

The Career Planning and Placement Center offers many services to students who are approaching graduation or who are unsure about their major.

The office has a professional counselling staff, center director Gary Scott said. “The staff gives information on job search strategy and critiques resumes.”

The most visible service of the office, however, is the campus recruitment program, Scott said. Interviews for many different jobs in many different companies are posted at the office, and students can sign up for interviews with these companies, he said.

The center also has a referral service for those companies which do not send recruiters, Scott said. “A student gives us his or her resume. As positions are advertised, we send the resume to those places,” he said. There also is a job vacancy bulletin through which students can look.

Seminars on resume writing, interviewing and job search are programs the center also offers, Scott said.

The center offers a credential service which is appropriate for education majors who have to have them to get a job, he said.

“Our placement rate is 70 percent. We match students with what they want. 90 percent of NIU graduates stay in Illinois because they are unwilling to relocate,” Scott said, which can be a disadvantage to them because they may have to settle for lower-paying or jobs in fields they do not necessarily want to go into.

Counseling and student development for undergraduates is offered by the center as well as listings of off-campus part-time and temporary jobs in the DeKalb area from babysitting to computer programming, Scott said.

The Career Research Center, a center within the center, offers in-house publications and directories so students can get names and addresses of firms they might want to send resumes to, Scott said.