For Students & Alumni
Preparing You for a Successful Career
Our goal is simple — to help you prepare for a successful career after graduation. Whether you have yet to decide on a major or are looking for an internship or job, our experienced and dedicated team will make sure you have access to ODU’s vast collection of resources and network of corporate partners to help you stand out in a competitive job market.
We Can Help You With:
- Resume and cover letter preparation
- Exclusive job & internship opportunities
- Career decision-making
- Networking opportunities
- Graduate school application
- Major exploration
We also offer walk-in advising hours on Wednesdays.
Your Career Exploration Tools
Focus 2 Assessment
Self-assess your personal qualities and explore career fields and major areas of study that are most compatible with your personality and interests.
Challenge Cards
The SparkPath Challenge mindset is an approach to career exploration focused on finding challenges to tackle instead of job titles to fit into.
Helpful Info & Links
You can schedule an appointment with a member of the Career Development team through Handshake.
- If you're not already logged in, you will be prompted to login to your Handshake account.
No-Show Policy for Career Advising Appointments & Programming
We understand that unexpected academic obligations, work commitments, and illnesses
can affect your schedule. However, please inform the Career Development Center of
any change as early as possible, as there is a high demand for appointments. Your
cancellation will allow us to offer your time slot to another student. Be sure to
check your schedule carefully in order to avoid multiple appointment cancellations.
Read Full No-Show & Cancellation Policy
Download our Career & Development Center flyer for more information!
ODU has partnered with Handshake – a modern career development platform to help current
students and alumni reach their full potential: discover new career paths, search
and apply for part-time jobs, internships, and full-time career opportunities with
great companies and non-profits.
Students, sign into Handshake with your ODU username and password; Alumni, create a new account and connect with the ODU Career Community in Handshake
- Schedule appointments with Career Development Center staff
- Personalized job recommendations based on your major and interests
- Easily register for and attend career fairs and career events
Handshake is the official partner of 850+ colleges and universities with over 21 million students + young alums, more than 300,000 employers, and 100% of the Fortune 500 companies.
Download the App
Visit our Career Development Center services page for a list of events and programs designed to support ODU students and alumni in their career search, including:
- Career Week
- Collegiate Career Fair
- Meet the Districts (for Education majors)
- Education Interview Day
- Student Athlete Boot Camp
- And more!
Other valuable ways to learn more about a career path is through an informational interview and job shadowing.
To conduct an informational interview, find someone in an occupation of interest to you and ask them if you could have fifteen to twenty minutes of their time to learn more about their field. The information you gather can help you in a job interview, but most importantly, you have made a valuable contact in the field.
Job shadowing is when you spend a significant amount of time (typically 2 hours or more) with a professional in your field of interest while they are at work. This experience provides you an opportunity to experience the work in action first hand so that you can develop a better understanding of the work environment, skills needed for on the job success and the competencies you need to establish.
Contact the Career Development Center for help finding appropriate contacts and preparing for your informational interview or job shadow opportunity.
The Career Development Center, in addition to being a career resource for you now and as an ODU alumni, surveys graduating seniors / recent graduates regarding job placement and graduate school plans.
Focus 2 Assessment
FOCUS 2 is a user-friendly, self-paced, online career and education planning tool
for college students. It will enable you to self-assess your personal qualities and
explore career fields and major areas of study that are most compatible with your
personality and interests.
Students who use FOCUS 2 make better decisions about their goals and plans and learn
how to self-manage their careers.
Once you’ve completed the FOCUS 2 assessment, we encourage you to to review your results and explore next steps.
New to FOCUS 2?
If this is your first time using FOCUS 2 you must create an account.
The access code for FOCUS 2 is panthers.
Challenge Cards
The Challenge mindset is an approach to career exploration focused on finding challenges
to tackle instead of job titles to fit into.
By completing the Challenge Cards you will learn:
- The world needs me.
- There are many fascinating challenges, problems and opportunities that I can work on.
- I don’t need to choose one job title that I will have for the rest of my life.
- I can take action to discover the challenges I care about, the companies who work on them, the people who work there and what I need to learn to be able to do that.
- When I ‘flip the model’ of career exploration, I can get better results.
How to access the Digital Challenge Cards:
- Navigate to the Spark Path website:
- Click the Sign Up button in the top right-hand corner
- Enter your full name and your Ohio Dominican email address
- Use the access code: panthers
- Create a password to use for future logins
Once you’ve completed the Challenge Cards, we encourage you to to review your results and explore next steps.
