Have you ever been asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” People might think this is an innocent question, but we know it’s so pressuring, especially for graduating students. Thankfully, with CIIT’s full support, our dedicated Career and Placement Officers have gone the extra mile to help our CIITzens fearlessly find and pursue their dream careers!
CIIT’s Career and Placement Officers – Ms. Jessica Rae Digol and Ms. Anne Jarem Aguilar – play an integral role in ensuring our students are industry-ready once they march. They provide a variety of career services from constantly improving our internship program (where our students are matched with our expanding pool of industry partners to get valuable workplace experience), to hosting career preparation initiatives and individual career consultations.
Ms. Aguilar and Ms. Digol always go above and beyond for our students. Most recently, they were driven by their own initiative to earn their certification as professional career coaches from the Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC) program by the Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches (PARW/CC).
This internationally recognized program equips aspiring career coaches with an array of skills, including conducting career testing, career assessment, and interview training, as well as teaching goal setting, resumé writing, client personal branding, and career search strategy. Significantly—since an effective career coach needs to lend a compassionate ear—this program also covered the development of essential soft skills like communication, empathy, and listening.
“The certification will help build our credibility as career development professionals so our students can more confidently share their career aspirations and challenges with us. From there, we can guide them towards a clearer career direction and better prepare them for future employment.” Ms. Digol explained.
Ms. Aguilar enthusiastically added “Becoming a Certified Professional Career Coach is not just a personal achievement or simply an additional credential to boost my career profile, I also consider it my commitment to the CIIT community to continuously provide them with industry-relevant and high-quality career and placement services fit for their needs. It is a reassurance that CIIT students and graduates seeking professional career coaching services are being attended to by a competent career development professional.”
Ms. Digol and Ms. Aguilar balanced their full time jobs as Career and Placement Officers and their personal commitments to complete this intense, year-long program. It consisted of a 600-page training manual containing six self-paced learning modules, a practical exam where they demonstrated their career coaching skills on a demo client with an actual career issue, and a written comprehensive exam.
In fact, our officers often wondered if they could finish this certification and keep up with their other obligations. Ms. Aguilar found the process extremely demanding because, on top of being a Career and Placement Officer and a specialist instructor in CIIT, she is also completing her M.A. Clinical Psychology degree, has another part-time job, and a volunteer work.
“I’ve been juggling all these roles for quite a long time and it’s such a proud moment for me to be able to pass the CPCC certification” Ms. Aguilar recounted happily. “With this certification, I will be able to contribute even more to enhancing existing and designing new needs-based and industry-relevant career and placement programs for our students and graduates.”
Ms. Digol agreed with her colleague “I had doubts if I will ever pass the examination since it was difficult to accomplish simultaneous goals at the same time. Thankfully, though, I was surrounded by a team and a manager who assisted me in the things that I needed and wanted to do.”
CIIT wholeheartedly supported our Career and Placement Officers. From taking care of their program fees to showing understanding for their additional load, we wanted to do all we could to aid their efforts to prepare CIIT students for their future careers.
Ms. Aguilar pointed out “Our CPCC certification training was quite expensive. Still, CIIT supported our team in reaching our goal of becoming more competent Career and Placement Officers by fully sponsoring our training fees. The school board and our managers were also very supportive, patient, and encouraging as we pursued our CPCC certification.”
With empathetic, accomplished, and professional Career and Placement Officers eager to help our CIITzens plan their careers around their passions, CIIT students will surely rest easy knowing their futures are in capable hands.
“This certification will enable us to provide a more structured, credible, strong career coaching program for students and graduates. They can entrust their career worries and inquiries to us and receive the best possible delivery of our program.” Ms. Digol affirmed.
