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Career Exploration and Success
Rutgers logo
Career Exploration and Success
  • About CES

About Career Exploration and Success

Rutgers Chair

About CES

Dedicated Staff

4
Departments within CES
38
Full-time Staff Members
15
Graduate Coordinators

150+
Student Interns

Hours & Locations

Rutgers University-New Brunswick is a large campus. However, Career Exploration and Success strives to be accessible to all students regardless of location. Due to the coronavirus outbreak and to ensure we are following all safety guidelines set forth by the university, all our services are now available virtually and we offer limited in-person services by appointment only.

Summer Hours: 

College Ave Campus - 9AM-4:40PM
106 Somerset Street, 4th Floor, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Busch Campus - 9AM-4:30PM
604 Bartholomew Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854

campus student

Contact CES

If you have questions and would like to contact us directly, use one of the avenues below:

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Requests and Inquire

We strive to provide the best service possible. To make it easy and efficient, please use the links below for media, presentation, and vendor requests.

For student organizations requesting a presentation or employer participating please submit the presentation request below.

presentation meetup

Refer an Alumni Mentor

Have an alumnus who is interested in giving back to the university by engaging with current students? Career Exploration and Success works closely with the Rutgers University Alumni Association to provide opportunities for alumni to assist current students in their career development.

Opportunities to Engage Include:

  • Road to Industry Program
  • Career Exploration Nights
  • Student-Alumni Career Connect System
  • Intern for a Day Program

If you have an alumni mentor wishing to assist students, please refer them to our Industry and Student Connections Unit.

RTCM

Refer an Employer

Periodically employers will contact you directly and while you may not have the resources and time to adequately respond to their needs, rest assured we do. Referring employers to us will help increase their visibility and give students greater access to structured employment opportunities. We are also knowledgeable of the legal, regulatory, and ethical challenges to avoid.

If you have an employer partner wishing to recruit students, please refer them to our Industry and Student Connections Unit.


Employer Trip
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presentation meetup
RTCM
Employer Trip

Career Discovery

The Career Discovery Unit is dedicated to guiding students through the early stages of their career journey. Its primary objective is to assist them in discovering their interests, skills, and values, while facilitating the exploration of potential career pathways to inform future decision-making.

The unit is organized into three teams:

  • First-Year Career Engagement Team: The team builds student-to-campus connections through the lens of career exploration, laying a foundation for empowered discovery and informed decision-making for meaningful academic and career paths.
  • Career Exploration Team: The team guides students in uncovering interests, skills, and values, while assisting them in exploring potential career paths. Providing collaborative career guidance, resources, and programs that bridge academics with careers, the team contributes to CES’s overarching mission.
  • Career Pathways Team: The team directs its efforts towards empowering students to leverage their individuality as a strength. This entails guiding them through their career trajectories, facilitating mentor connections, and presenting them with employers that resonate with their values, inspiring students to proactively delve into these connections.

FIGS Breakfast

Career Readiness

The Career Readiness Unit guides students through the later stages of their career journey. Its main goals are to help them develop skills, connect to meaningful professional experiences, and master contemporary strategies to enhance competitiveness post-graduation.

The unit is organized into three teams based on the clients served:

  • Internships & Professional Development Team: The team is dedicated to facilitating students’ connection to high-impact internship experiences and equipping them with the tools to articulate these experiences and essential skills effectively, thus fostering competitiveness in their future pursuits.
  • Career Success Strategy Team: The team specializes in providing coaching and programs tailored for students within specific career interest communities. Additionally, the team develops and nurtures campus partnerships to enhance outreach and specialization, ensuring students excel in contemporary job searches and graduate school applications, all in line with CES’s overarching mission to prepare students for competitive success post-graduation.

CEN

Industry & Student Connections

The Industry & Student Connections Unit strategically connects students, recent graduates, industry, and campus partners to ensure a diverse employer base for Rutgers. By collaborating with other units, supporting initiatives, and facilitating connections, they empower students for post-graduation success.

The unit is comprised of two teams:

  • Recruiting Programs Team: The team is dedicated to creating dynamic employment opportunities that enable industry partners to effectively connect with students at large through networking events, interview programs, and employment platforms, fostering opportunities for students’ future pursuits.
  • Industry & Campus Connections Team: The team cultivates meaningful relationships with industry partners, enabling deeper connections within the campus community through specialized recruiting opportunities.

career fair

Career Operations & Strategic Initiatives

The Career Operations & Strategic Initiatives Unit ensures equal access to CES resources, connects students to them, provides data-driven decision support, and establishes essential administrative and technical structures for smooth operations.

The unit is comprised of two teams:

  • Strategic Outreach Team: The team undertakes a multifaceted mission: driving awareness of CES resources, encouraging student engagement, and critically guiding our staff in maintaining a professional presence. Through adept brand management and deliberate communication strategies, the team ensures student confidence in our mission and enhances our department’s credibility and excellence, fostering positive perceptions among students and employers alike.
  • Operations Team: The team plays a dual role: ensuring equitable resource access and overseeing crucial financial, administrative, technological, analytical, and assessment components that underpin the provision of high-quality resources, thus both connecting students to their career journeys and furnishing the CES department with a solid foundation for its work.

fair ops
FIGS Breakfast
CEN
career fair
fair ops

Vision and Mission Statements

Vision Statement:
All Rutgers University—New Brunswick students will make successful transitions from their academic pursuits to their first-choice post-graduation destinations based upon a clear understanding of the career development process, competitive credentials, access to a robust employer base, and mastery of contemporary strategies for identifying and securing career options that reflect their unique interests, skills, and aspirations.

Mission Statement:
Career Exploration and Success (CES) is committed to assisting students with making connections between their academic experience and career paths. We provide career-related advising, resources, and programs to help individuals discover their interests, values, and skills, explore careers and majors, develop skills through internships and experiential opportunities, and pursue their post-graduate goals. We build relationships with alumni, employers, and graduate schools to optimize internship, job, and career opportunities while also creating strategic partnerships with campus departments to assist students in developing and articulating co-curricular experiences that will help to ensure they are competitive in their future pursuits.

GTV Office

Core Values

Collaborative Approach to Growth: We build mutually beneficial partnerships across academic and departmental units. We value constructive internal and external feedback. We see our success as being directly correlated to a shared vision and reflective of our shared journey to benefit all students.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: We embrace all types of diversity and view career development as an opportunity to impact social justice issues.  We develop services and resources that address the needs of our diverse clientele. We make a commitment to developing and empowering students from all backgrounds and experiences, and believe this to be a shared responsibility of all. Learn more about our commitment to action.

Excellence: Excellence will be imbued and reflected in all we do, from the relationships we create and nurture with our diverse clientele, to the services, programs, and information we provide, to the manner in which we interact with our colleagues internally and externally.

Innovation and Relevance: In an effort to stay relevant, we embrace innovation.  We take calculated risks and view our audacity to try new approaches as a strength. We learn from our own experimentation and share it with the community as a whole, with a commitment to continuous improvement of our clientele's career development experience at Rutgers. We strive to remain nimble, relevant for today, and ready for tomorrow.

Positive Work Climate: We promote an organizational culture that reflects the importance of a workplace that is a model of professionalism. We strive to be productive, ethical, respectful, and growth-oriented. We promote a collegial environment where working hard can still be fun.

Smart Operating Practices: We embrace the importance of efficiency in this fast-paced environment. We seek a synergistic and intentional approach to our operations. We value sharing thoughtful and timely data-driven decisions.

 

Core Values

Rutgers Career Outcomes & Data: First-Destination Survey

Career Exploration and Success collects data from the graduating students in September, December, and May. Faculty, staff, and students with valid NETID credentials may view the full reports below.  Non-Rutgers affiliated visitors may access the public summary reports.

Graduating Students

National Trends and Predictions

Established in 1956, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is a professional association that connects over 9,800 college career services professionals; over 3,200 university relations and recruiting professionals; and 300 business solution providers that serve this community.

NACE is the leading source of information on the employment of the college educated, and forecasts hiring and trends in the job market; tracks starting salaries, recruiting and hiring practices, and student attitudes and outcomes; and identifies best practices and benchmarks.

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Graduating Students
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