Many of the skills you learn and practice through your degree program at Bryant & Stratton College are designed to carry over to your professional life as well. Read about how organizational skills on your resume can help set you up for your dream job.

Did you know the same organizational skills you used to obtain your degree are equally helpful when it comes to landing your dream job? Reading and following directions, paying attention to detail, and time management are all examples of traits prospective employers are looking for. Your penchant for organization will be visible before you are ever hired. It is evidenced by a fabulous resume, a perfectly executed job application, a detailed business plan, and thoughtful responses to interview questions. In fact, your organizational skills will come into play repeatedly as you begin to apply and interview for future jobs. Here’s how:

Your resume is often the first glimpse a future employer has of your abilities. This is especially true in an era when jobs are often applied for online, without any human contact. Each company is going to be looking for something a little different. It’s your job to tailor each resume in a manner that reflects how you are the exact person they’re seeking. Your organizational skills will allow you to keep track of what companies are looking for, the types of credentials and/or information they’re requesting from applicants, as well noting the company’s brand. Pay attention to the tone of a company’s website, and how they word their job descriptions. This will help you craft a resume more in sync with their business’ personality. Resumes that are more company- and industry-specific will grab HR’s attention.

There is a good chance your time management skills have already been put to the test in order for you to be successful at juggling work and family responsibilities while getting your online degree. Now, these skills can pay off as you start your job hunt. Once you have applied for jobs and submitted your resume, human resources departments who are interested in what you have to offer will contact you. Your calendar must be up-to-date so you can schedule interviews at a moment’s notice. In a competitive market, you must be clear about your availability, and you want to make sure you are always on time to every initial interview as well as callback interviews.

In addition to specific education, training, and skills required for a particular job, employers are also looking for three general skill sets. These include basic skills such as reading and writing, critical thinking skills, and personal qualities and abilities. Organizational skills fall under the subset of critical thinking. A list of organizational skills includes:

These skills can be the icing on the cake for an interested employer. When you sit in front of an interview panel and provide thoughtful, organized responses, it is noted. If you are asked to give an example of how you would deal with a particular situation and you reach into your portfolio to share a specific project or report from your internship experience and tie it into their questions, your organizational skills shine.

Bryant and Stratton can help you put the finishing touches on your organizational skills as you begin your future job searches. Our Career Services center will help you gain the skills you need to land your dream job. Not a student yet? Contact the Admissions office for information on how you can add new skills to your resume.

Bryant & Stratton College fell 2-1 to West Virginia Tech in a battle between two of the nation’s best programs.

The #2 ranked Bobcats held a decided possession advantage throughout the game and outshot WVU-Tech 17-7. However, BSC’s 80% possession number wasn’t enough to find an equalizer against the reigning national champions.

WVU-Tech did their damage in the first half as Matias Gandulfo and Daniel Ramirez each tallied before the halftime whistle. Erickson Alves would bring the Bobcats within one in the 68th minute, but BSC couldn’t find an equalizer before the final whistle. Thursday’s loss snapped BSC’s three-game unbeaten streak to begin the year but BSC bounced back with a decisive 3-1 victory over Albany College of Pharmacy to cap the weekend.

Lucas Heffron and Lewis Lacy scored 10 minutes apart in the first half and Mye Mayen would answer Albany College’s lone tally within a minute late in the game. Heffron and Lacy’s tallies at 30 and 40 minutes, respectively were the only foundation BSC needed, but after conceding to Albany in the 80th minute, Mayen sprung into action to reestablish a two-goal advantage. The Bobcats will enjoy a bye week before facing Alfred State on October 3 and SUNY ESF on October 4. The Lady Bobcats rolled past the Albany College of Pharmacy on Saturday, avenging an early-season defeat at the hands of the Panthers.

The Bobcats left no doubt on Saturday, cruising to a 7-0 victory over the 5th ranked team in the nation. BSC went to the half with a 1-0 lead and the floodgates opened in the second half as the Bobcats scored six times to put an exclamation point on their victory. Adela Racic led the Bobcats, factoring on six of the team’s goals and collecting four tallies of her own. After their 6-1 triumph during the week, the Lady Bobcats are now 3-1 on the season as they prepare for a matchup with SUNY Canton this coming weekend.

The Bryant & Stratton college cross country team snagged a 3rd place overall finish out of eight teams at the Bruce Bridgman Invitational at Finger Lakes College on September 11. Tevin Johnson finished second overall to pace the Bobcats while Brandon Morre and Emeka Cakalony each secured top-20 finishes individually. The women’s side was equally impressive as Yadimar Narvaez and Shanee Walton each finished in the top-20 as well. The men’s team followed up that performance with an 18th place finish in the largest meet they’ve competed in, to date. The Rochester Yellow Jacket Invite featured over 200 runners. The field included in-state rivals such as RIT, Colgate University, Ithaca College and more. The men are back in action this coming weekend in the Harry F. Anderson Memorial Invitational Meet on Saturday.

Meg Klepack’s path to medical school might have seemed obvious. The daughter of a family doctor and a former nurse, coming from a long line of physicians on her mother’s side, Klepack seemed destined for medicine.

But she never saw herself as a doctor, in part because she admired her father so much. “He’s up on a pedestal in my mind,” she says.

Instead, after graduating from Cornell with a degree in natural resource management in 2004, she followed her interest in politics and the environment.

It took nine years for her to end up right back where she started: surrounded by doctors and nurses. In January 2013, she began the University of Vermont’s Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program.

“I started walking down the path, and I said, ‘Let’s see where this goes.’ I’ve allowed it to unfold without getting too stressed out about it,” she says. “It has been an exercise in faith. This is going to go where it’s going to go. I’m just going to do my best.”

Her best, it turns out, was a 4.0 GPA. She applied to medical school and got in. She starts at the UVM College of Medicine in the fall.

But a few years ago, Klepack thought she was headed for a career in food systems policy.

It was not something she had envisioned even when she graduated from Cornell. Back then, “nothing was more important to me than working to defeat George Bush, so I moved to southeast Ohio.” For three intense months leading up to the 2004 presidential election, she worked on the Kerry-Edwards campaign in that critical swing state.

After the Democrats lost, she “had no idea of how to find a job as a young person,” so she landed an internship with the Natural Resource Defense Council in Washington, D.C. From there, she headed to Vermont as part of a two-year fellowship with the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), an activist, grassroots consumer group with branches in many states. She was assigned to work as a community organizer for Toxics Action Center in Montpelier.

“I fell in love with Vermont. I thought I was meant to live here,” she says.

Klepack’s next job was as an office manager for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) of Vermont in Richmond. But she created a position that transcended entering data and answering phones. She became outreach manager, honing NOFA’s marketing messages and brand and connecting the organization with a wider audience through the web and social media.

“I felt like I put myself through grad school in organic farming in a year and a half,” she says. “I was connecting with organic farmers and farmers’ markets all over Vermont and organizing and attending workshops and conferences.”

At NOFA from 2006 to 2009, Klepack found herself deep in the middle of the local food movement in Vermont at a time when the entire country was starting to pay attention. Michael Pollan had just published The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Bill McKibben, the voice of the global warming movement, had spent a year eating only local Vermont food to research his 2007 book Deep Economy. And Barbara Kingsolver and her family also had eschewed big-industry food, telling their story in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

“It was exciting to work at NOFA at that time because people were really paying attention to local farms and foods like they hadn’t done for a long time,” Klepack recalls.

The NOFA job was only part-time, so she took on two other jobs to spend more than 40 hours a week absorbing all she could about organic farming and local food. She was hired to develop Burlington Winter Farmers’ Market, and she worked as a research technician for UVM’s Plant and Soil Science Department.

“The food system is a complex system, and I felt the more vantage points I could get into, the more I could build a base of knowledge about the market side of things, the research side of the things, the nonprofit side of things, because you don’t want to work in a vacuum,” she says. “I didn’t know ultimately where I would go. I saw myself working in a food systems role, in policy. I was really interested in how we develop the economic system to allow consumers to buy from local farms.”

Through her organic farming connections, Klepack found her way to her next job, as outreach and local food manager at City Market/Onion River Co-op in Burlington. She also facilitated the Burlington Food Council, which brought together 20 organizations working on various aspects of the local food system, and served as a board member for the Intervale Community Farm, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in Burlington.

“It was really rewarding,” she says. “Suddenly, the work I was doing was positive. The food system has implications for climate change and wildlife corridors and water systems and all the things I care about.”

But after nearly a decade of being deeply immersed in work she really cared about, Klepack felt it was time for a change. She stepped back and realized “there is a difference between working on good issues and what my day-to-day life looked like, and while I really loved the issues, in the day-to-day work, I’m coordinating yet another event, and it was hard to see if I was making any progress. I still was at my computer a whole lot, still working by myself. I wanted a job that was more satisfying to me on a daily basis. I thought, ‘Maybe I need a career change.’ ”

As she started considering various careers, she looked back to her upbringing – where family dinners often centered on patient care or health insurance — and “medicine was the first thing that came to me.” So she began shadowing doctors. She discovered she might actually make a good doctor. And she discovered that her father had always thought that as well.

What finally sold her was “that aspect of medicine that involves the day-to-day connecting with people and helping them with the different crises in their lives: deaths and births and big health problems. There are some interesting social connections that come from those times.”

Once Klepack left her job and found herself plunged into UVM’s Post-Bac Premed Program, she knew she had made the right choice.

“I fell in love with going back to school. As an adult learner, I was a thousand times more curious than I was as an undergrad,” she says. “I loved the program. There were three of us who became this little family inside the Post-Bac Premed Program. We would attend all our classes together, we would eat together, and we would study together. The three of us supported each other.”

Yet she won’t be leaving her local food systems work behind. She believes she will draw on her knowledge and experience as she begins a career in health care.

“There is clearly a growing awareness in the health care system that diet-related health conditions should be addressed through the local food system, by increasing the availability and affordability of fresh, local foods. There also are issues involving environmental health,” she says. “There are so many crossovers between the work I’m doing now and what I’ve done in the past. After all, we live in a system.”

She already has explored the area of public health, which has interested her since her days working with the Toxics Action Center to reduce environmental pollution. She took a course through UVM’s Master of Public Health Program and later worked as a teaching assistant in the online program, moderating student discussions and grading blog posts in Dr. Jan Carney’s “Public Health & Health Policy” course and Dr. Betty Rambur’s “Organization & Finance of Health Care” class. She also assisted Dr. Lynn Zanardi Blevins with a one-hour, online undergraduate course on “Careers in Public Health.

Besides public health, Klepack is drawn to family medicine and primary care. Still, she wants to keep an open mind going into med school, absorbing every new topic that comes her way.

“We all have to continue to listen to our hearts as we walk down the path,” Klepack says. “What’s really important is to check in with ourselves and see if this is the right thing to do. Right now, I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I want to do more of it.”

Q: You joined the Farmer Training program in 2013. Can you tell us about what you were doing before you joined the program?

A: Before we moved to Vermont, we were living in southeastern Pennsylvania. Caitlin has a Bachelor of Arts in humanities, a concentration in environmental studies, and a Spanish minor. She was working as the Director of Development at Kimberton Waldorf School and had previously worked in admissions and marketing. Jason received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering, with minors in math and Spanish. He had just completed a season interning at the biodynamic Kimberton CSA. Prior to his experience at the CSA, Jason worked as a mechanical engineer for a small structural analysis consulting firm.

A: Our love for farming arose from a shared passion of cooking with quality, ethical ingredients. Caitlin’s love for farming arose from a childhood in New York City eating delicious home-cooked, nourishing meals chockfull of healthy vegetables. Her parents always made sure that enjoying family time around the dinner table was a priority. Jason grew up in Colorado and had always been interested in gardening and also loved to prepare special dinners. He remembers all the herbs and beautiful flowers that his parents tended when he was a child. Jason had a small vegetable garden below his apartment when we first met.

A: When we began dating, Caitlin was taking a number of Environmental Studies classes, which helped us further develop our values around food and increase our awareness of organic and sustainably grown food. Right after graduation, Caitlin spent an invigorating summer working with Triskeles, a non-profit which actively engages teens in sustainable farming, cooking, and entrepreneurship. As our values evolved, we became more conscious of knowing our farmers. We soon realized that we felt strongly enough about sustainable agriculture to want to learn more about becoming farmers.

After leaving his engineering job in early 2012, Jason had a wonderful internship at the Kimberton CSA. His time there was very fulfilling. We made a decision that we were ready to make a lifestyle change and pursue agriculture full time.

A: We knew we were interested in pursuing formal agricultural education because the program covers a wealth of subjects, the faculty and guest professors are experts in their fields, and we knew that meeting such a large network of food activists was invaluable. We were thrilled that the program had a number of classes on developing sustainable business and marketing strategies. As students in the program, we were quickly welcomed into the larger Vermont farming community.

Each Thursday is a “rotation day,” spent on farms in the area – Bread and Butter Farm, Intervale Community Farm and Half Pint Farm – so there is exposure to many different farming styles. In a farming education program, students are encouraged to ask many questions and guide their own learning in a safe environment. UVM’s program is in a great location and we instantly felt at home in Burlington. There is an evolved consciousness surrounding food and its source in Vermont and we are grateful to be a part of it.

A: Our main goal is to run a sustainable farm business that supports us, nourishes our community, and nurtures the land. We also hope to continue to learn as much as we can about farming from more experienced farmers in this area, thereby preserving Vermont traditions.

A: We had heard great things about Stony Pond Farm in Fairfield, owned and operated by Tyler and Melanie Webb. Stony Pond offers a farmer incubation program, and we met with Tyler and Melanie to learn more about the apprenticeship opportunity. Tyler and Melanie also encourage interns to begin their own small enterprises. Stony Pond sells 100 percent grass-fed organic beef and sells milk to Organic Valley, which is a farmer-owned cooperative. As interns, we will be living on the farm and milking cows, planning and participating in seasonal intensively managed grazing, feeding and processing of livestock, installing and maintaining fence and water systems, attending farmers’ markets, and more.

A: We will also be managing just under one acre of vegetables, which will allow us to launch Sobremesa. We will also be selling our own fermented foods, vegetables, and herbs at farmers’ markets. “Sobremesa” is a Spanish word that can’t be directly translated in English. It refers to the time spent lingering around the table after lunch or dinner, and having food-induced conversations with the people who shared the meal together. Sobremesa is a time to digest and savor food, family, and friendship. This name is at the heart of why we want to grow food.

A: Caitlin: I love that farming makes me feel alive. The cycle of sowing seeds, transplanting, nourishing, harvesting, and eating – and then composting – is magical. It makes me feel truly in touch with the seasons, and I love living that way. Farming has allowed me to connect with every part of myself: my head, my hands, and my heart. Farming is intellectual, physical, and emotional, and I am grateful to experience these aspects of being human on a daily basis.

Jason: I love working with the plants and being part of their creation, evolution, and life. I feel connected to the natural energy cycle of the universe, and that growing food is the best way for me to experience the cosmic connection. We like to be as close to our food source as possible. Since growing and preparing food is our passion, it is amazing to imagine sustaining our livelihood by doing what we love

Some students may feel as if they need to just simply survive English courses. As an instructor who teaches four different English courses at Bryant & Stratton, I wanted to share some tips for not just passing, but thriving in courses essential to your life-long learning and professional development.  

Most assignments in your English courses are focused on research and writing. This means that, to succeed, you will need to communicate an idea clearly and support it with research.  Thinking about how you can improve in those areas will help you in each English course. One common error I see is students not proofreading carefully. 

Almost all assignments in your English courses include a category in the rubric for grammar, including discussion. Taking the time to not only run spell-check (even in discussion) but proofread can be the difference between an “A” and a “B.” Creating even short assignments such as the initial posts for discussion and reflections in Word can ensure that you meet the word count requirement and have the opportunity to proofread carefully. Incorrect citation can greatly impact your grade.

Click here https://www.bryantstratton.edu/blog/2014/september/instructor-blog-citing-for-success to read more about APA format and avoiding plagiarism.  

Insufficient research is another area that can undermine an otherwise well-done assignment.  This brings us to one of the most important resources for students: the rubric. Rubrics are provided for most assignments, and all major assessments such as the portfolio project.

Remember, this is what your instructor uses to evaluate your work.  Look closely at each category and examine the quantitative requirements (number of sources, for example) and qualitative requirements (scholarly level of sources). Below are additional resources that are particularly useful for English courses:

These strategies and resources will not just help you in your English courses, but in any assignment where research and writing are needed.

Got your first interview coming up? Don’t be tempted to wing it. As competitive as the job market is these days, coming across as uninterested, unprofessional or unprepared during the interview will prove to be a big mistake. Here are three common interview mistakes and how to avoid them.

Let’s face it, many of us move through life at warp speed these days. With so many demands, such as school, work, family, and a dire need to keep our social media followers updated, we are multitasking all over the place. Maybe multitasking works effectively in some situations, but in job interviews, it simply does not.

Francina Harrison, MSW, also known as The Career Engineer (http://TCEnow.com), has seen candidates check their watches, not silence their phones, appear rushed and act like there was someplace else they’d rather be.

“I was shocked that a candidate in today’s market would be so careless and [display] these behaviors. If you can’t make quality time to interview, how will you invest in quality time on the job?” she said.

Social media has fueled a lot of casual interaction that takes away from the formality of the professional world. Newcomers to the business world must show that they know the boundaries when it comes to business, casual and personal interaction.

Furthermore, job candidates must show they can hold a professional conversation – one that is balanced with talking and listening, and that is focused on the topic at-hand. After a brief period of small talk at the start of the interview, everything discussed should be succinct in delivery and related to how you are the perfect person for the job.

“One mistake recent college graduates might make is volunteering too much information,” said Harrison. “Instead of just answering the question, candidates keep talking and talking until they have talked themselves out of a job opportunity,” she said.

Experts suggest researching the company: explore websites; read trade magazines and news articles; and follow social media sites. But, don’t stop there. You must also be able to hold an interesting and well-informed conversation about what you found. Take time to sit down and think about the discussion you could have around those topics. Don’t tell employers what they already know, like the mission statement. Instead, try to understand how the department or position fits into it that mission and talk about what in your background has prepared you to contribute to it.

Also, when asked if you have any questions, don’t say ‘no’ and don’t ask about benefits. Ask a question or two about the position expectations and then use your research again. For example, I read about the company plans to expand the community projects. What types of projects are being considered that my department might contribute to? Then, tie in your experience one more time.

“It’s a hyper-competitive market on a worldwide scale. Most college programs share skills in ‘traditional’ interviewing and obtaining careers,” Harrison. “But in this 21st century economy, power branding, sales and marketing of your career-related value is the name of the game.”

When all is said and done, don’t forget to seal the deal.

“Ask for the opportunity in an authentic and professional way,” said Harrison.

Bryant & Stratton College offers career services for all our students to help them put their best foot forward into the job market. Not a student? For information on how we can help you get started toward a new career, contact the Admissions office.

Students pursue higher education in order to obtain the skills they need to get the job they want. This often means focusing on training and skills that are most relevant to their vocation of choice. For example, students who are studying to become nurses will spend a significant portion of their education focusing on subjects like biology and health science, while students pursuing an accounting degree, will spend more time studying topics such as finance and mathematics.

But many fail to recognize the importance of developing soft skills while earning their degree. The term, \”soft skills,\” refers to the personal qualities that allow an individual to interact and build relationships with others. Employers have recognized the importance that these skills play in job performance; more and more, they are looking to hire individuals who exhibit intelligence, critical thinking and information literacy, among other abilities.

These skills are crucial for nearly every type of job, and significantly affect your level of employability. Your ability to think, process information, and go with the flow is just as important as typical knowledge and training.

According to Forbes\’ list of the \”10 Skills That Will Get You Hired,\”theseproficiencies are indeed important for establishing your employability – the top four attributes listed were all soft skills. The four soft skills included in the list were:

As you research online degree programs to determine which one is right for you, it\’s crucial to find one that will put some emphasis on soft skills. While it is important to build a foundation of \”hard skills\” pertaining to your degree (e.g. finance and statistic courses for an accounting degree), it is also important to focus on developing and enhancing the interpersonal skills that will help you thrive in the workplace, therefore making you a more desirable job candidate.

Bryant & Stratton College Online aims to help students maximize their employability for career success through its Employability Series. This set of core competencies is integrated in to the College\’s online degree programs, to complement occupation-specific training and help graduates get hired. Interested in learning more about the online degree programs offered by Bryant & Stratton College Online? Call 1.888.447.3528 to speak with an admissions representative.

John Lennon is often quoted as saying “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love…” While the great musician probably wasn’t dispensing career information and advice, thinking about this philosophy may help you navigate your career – and the rest of your life – with success.

How often have you been motivated by fear? Maybe it started with being afraid to go back to school because you thought you were too old. Perhaps it was not going after a job or a promotion because you feared being rejected. Or, maybe you didn’t volunteer for a career-advancing project because you worried you didn’t have the right skills. Whatever it is, we are all too often held back by our own fears.

When said out loud (or written down) this can seem like an obvious step but it often takes a little thought to figure out what’s holding us back. One way to identify your specific fear is to think about something you really want in your career. If there’s something holding you back it will likely be at the end of your thought of what you want. For example “I want to that manager’s position but I’m afraid I won’t get it if I apply,” or “I want to go back to school but I’m afraid I won’t see my children as much.” When you understand your specific fear, then you can figure out how to diminish it.

Just like everything else in life, overcoming a fear takes practice. You may have seen extreme examples of this in immersion therapy for people with severe phobias. We’re not recommending that you jump head first into your deepest fears – especially without the guidance of a certified professional. But, practicing tackling small fears can help you gain the confidence you need to face bigger career-changing fears. Try to do something that scares you every day and you’ll be surprised how easily your other fears will dissipate.

It’s really easy to wish you had done something differently in the past. But focusing on these moments of regret could be affecting your present day decisions. There is a lot to learn by past mistakes or failures, but make sure you are thinking about what you will do differently next time not dwelling on the mistake itself.

In the workplace, it can be hard to admit you are afraid of something – especially if that something is part of your job responsibilities. This can be especially true if you are young and just starting your career. However, finding someone you can trust at work to be an ally and a confidant can help you from getting in over your head or passed up for interesting assignments. By talking to someone in your office about your fear you may find they faced something similar and know what you can do to overcome it. If you can’t find someone at work, turn to your friends or family. Sometimes even just saying your fear out loud can help it seem less scary.

Fear is definitely linked to stress, so if you’re feeling particularly anxious about something make sure you add stress-reducing activities to your life. Eating right, exercising and meditating are all known to lower stress. Everyone is different so find something positive that helps take you to your “happy place” and make sure you do it a couple times a week. Conquering your career-related fears can help you advance in your current position and it may also help you get a new job (either now or down the road). When you get over your fears, you’ll be able to take greater risks that will result in greater rewards. Showing that you are the kind of person who can make an impact in an organization is a valuable employability skill and something that will make any employer take notice. Bryant & Stratton College Online aims to help students maximize their employability skills for career success through its Employability Series. This set of core competencies is integrated into the College’s online degree programs, to complement occupation-specific training and help graduates get hired. Interested in learning more about the online degree programs offered by Bryant & Stratton College Online? Call 1.888.447.3528 to speak with an admissions representative.

Did you just finish your first year of college, only to realize that you do not enjoy your major? Thinking about changing to a new course of study?

You better be sure.

Did you just not happen to like these classes? Did you and your professor not hit it off? Were you bored with the first year of requirements because you want to get to the meatier classes the seniors are taking? If you are going to change your major, you better darn well despise it, because it may take a lot of work to earn back that year.

Brook Urban, senior academic success coach for Bryant & Stratton College Online, said the decision to change your major should not be based on a single feeling or experience.

“It is an important decision and should not be taken lightly,” she said. “It is important to consider the short and long-term effects.”

The first issue: not every requirement you took will transfer to your next degree. For example, if you were studying paralegal and decide to transfer into the medical administrative assistant program and Bryant & Stratton College, not a single paralegal class would transfer.

As for the long-term, Urban said, you need to consider, and answer, a series of serious questions: Why am I making this change? What career field do I want to break into? What credentials/education do I need to get a job in this field? As you consider these decisions, it is important to reach out to your academic advisor who can help them review their answers and determine how many credits will transfer.

If the student decides to make the jump, the academic advisor will be the one to process the request. They key to changing majors is making the switch as soon as you know you have chosen the wrong course of study for you.

“It is never too late to change your major, but I would recommend you try to decide early on in your degree program,” Urban said.

The great thing about starting a new year is that you can resolve to change all sorts of bad behaviors – you know, things like downing four glazed donuts every morning or a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey every Friday night, spending way too much money on that online gambling site, or waiting until the last minute to get started on your course assignments.

Right. We all know that probably most of those resolutions will be toast by, oh, mid-February at the latest. However, there is one resolution you need to make – and can probably keep – right now. It will not only make this year better for you, but in terms of your career future, it will likely keep potential employers from deciding you don’t quite have the professional maturity they were looking for.

What resolution is that? Simple: you resolve not to ever again say negative, whiny, snarky things about anyone in any online venue. Being critical of others in an online setting (think LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, a school social media site) is guaranteed to do more damage to you and your professional reputation than it will do to the person you’re criticizing. It makes everyone who reads your comments doubt your professional judgment (remember, as a student, you’re laying the foundation for your career), it leaves the impression that you’re a critical, negative person (who no one will want to work with), and in case those two damage factors aren’t bad enough, your comments never go away. 

Since one of your goals when creating your career options is to build a strong, positive professional reputation (your professional “brand’), you want to make sure that you’re not demonstrating the exact opposite through your online comments. It’s long been a management best practice that you praise in public and criticize (if necessary) in private. It’s exactly the same with your online communications: social media sites are public environments, and you want to be sure to treat them as such. One, it’s the right thing to do, and two, this will keep potential hiring managers from seeing any sarcastic, snide, or otherwise embarrassing comments you might have otherwise made in the heat of the moment.

Here are some basic student social media etiquette resolutions to make right now:

When in doubt about an online post you’re about to make, ask yourself this question: Will this comment demonstrate to others how mature, professional, and smart I am (for years to come)? If not, you probably want to back away from that keyboard.