Alumni Share Strategies of Success at Career Center Event

Should you wear a yarmulke on a job interview? What do you order at that lunch meeting in a non-Kosher restaurant? How and when should you bring up the subject of Shabbat or Yom Tov? These are just a few of the dilemmas Yeshiva University’s Career Center helped students and alumni navigate together during an interactive conversation on November 26 on how to excel in the workplace while staying true to their religious values.

Rabbi Yona Reiss addresses audience at Career Center event.

“We want you to start thinking about these issues so you’ll be better prepared to face them if they come up,” said Joel Strauss, chair of YU’s Undergraduate Alumni Council Career Committee and a graduate of Yeshiva College and the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School. “The bottom line I want you to take away from tonight’s event is that we as Orthodox Jews have a tremendous responsibility to always act in an appropriate manner, never take advantage and never feel entitled—but we also have a tremendous opportunity to be a Kiddush Hashem [sanctification of G-d’s name].”

The evening featured more than 14 alumni in fields ranging from medicine to accounting and management and representing big-name companies, including Citigroup, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Panasonic North America. Read the rest of this entry…

Lolita Wood-Hill Offers 11 Tips for Students Pursuing a Career in Medicine or Dentistry

With the need for health care professionals in high-demand, more and more students are choosing to pursue careers in this fast-growing industry.

Lolita Wood-Hill is the director of pre-health advisement at Yeshiva College.

“Yeshiva College students have consistently sought careers in medicine and dentistry but the past several years have shown a marked increase in the number of students applying to these programs,” says Lolita Wood-Hill, director of pre-health advisement at Yeshiva College. “With the increased interest in healthcare, we have also seen the quality of our applicant pool rise, attesting to the high-caliber students Yeshiva University is able to attract.”

Yeshiva College is not alone. At Stern College for Women, “the number of students interested in the health fields has grown substantially,” according to Dr. Brenda Loewy, pre-health adviser at Stern College, “and the acceptance rate has gotten better and better.”

With a medical school acceptance rate of 88 percent—well above the national average (approximately 50 percent)—and a 90 percent acceptance rate to dental schools in 2011, YU students have gone on to pursue graduate degrees at YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a host of Ivy League schools including Columbia, Harvard and Cornell. Read the rest of this entry…

College EDge Informs, Educates Underrepresented NYC High School Students About College

On Friday, December 16, College EDge—a Yeshiva University student-run organization founded to inform and educate underrepresented public high school students about college—ran its first event of the academic year. Titled “Design Your Future: Choosing Your Career Path,” its goal was to inform students about the wide variety of career and trade options available to them and how to begin on their journey. The event, sponsored by SCWSC, YCSA and YSU, attracted 42 students from nearby George Washington Public High School in Washington Heights.

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The event began with Laurie Davis, director of counseling & programming at YU’s Career Development Center, presenting on numerous career options, current hot job sectors and general tips on resume-building and job interviews. Following Davis, Lolita Wood-Hill, director of Yeshiva College pre-health advisement, spoke about how students can play to their strengths in choosing a career, drawing on her own personal experiences as well as her years of experience in academic advisement.

Following the presentations, participants lunched with 16 trained College EDge mentors from Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women who volunteered to assist with the event.

“This event also accomplished one of the many indirect but important goals of College EDge: the integration of Yeshiva University with its community—bridging the gap, breaking the barrier,” said Jonah Rubin ’12YC, founder and president of College EDge.

After lunch, each of the mentors met with groups of students to discuss how to apply what they learned at the earlier presentations to their individual interests. The Career Development Center provided professional career assessment packets to help guide the discussion. The event concluded with a brief discussion about college and college life, led by Brian Sanders ’13YC, director of public outreach for College EDge.

To learn more about College EDge or to get involved visit www.collegeedge.us.

Heights Initiative Offers YU Students Opportunity to Impact Local Community

The Heights Initiative is one of the fastest growing student-run organizations in Yeshiva University, with well over 100 participants this year. The program serves as a forum for YU students to mentor, tutor and teach in local public schools or during after school programming, and to facilitate the integration of YU students into the greater Washington Heights community.

YU students teach in local public shools as part of the START Science program.

Aaron Greenstein, president of the Heights Initiative, was inspired to get more involved in the organization after working as a Literacy Program tutor last year in a local middle school. As a tutor, he helped improve the reading and writing skills of 8th-grade immigrants from the Dominican Republic who were struggling to pass their tests to move on to high school.

“In the short amount of time I spent there, I saw great improvement among my students,” said Greenstein. “I had a sense of achievement and euphoria every time I left the school, and I wanted to do more to help.”

In March, Greenstein and fellow student Adam Berman applied for a grant from the New York City Council’s Black Latino and Asian Caucus. With assistance from their faculty mentor—Dr. Gabriel Cwilich, associate professor of physics at Yeshiva College and the director of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program—and Allison Rubin, YU’s presidential projects and government relations manager, the City Council later awarded $8,000 to the Heights Initiative to help fund their community service projects.

“This grant money will enable the Heights Initiative and the student-run organizations that it oversees to make an even greater impact on our local Washington Heights neighborhood,” said Berman, former head of the Heights Initiative, who currently serves as a mentor.

Cwilich perceives the organization’s work as an opportunity to bridge the gap between the two populations in Washington Heights. “Each community should see what the other has to offer,” said Cwilich.

A College EDge event in April drew more than more than 70 local public high school students.

One example of the organization’s many successful initiatives is College EDge, a student-run organization founded to inform and educate underrepresented public high school students about college. College EDge works with numerous YU departments such as the Career Development Center and the Writing Center to provide students with proper resources.

“We help students get the edge they need on their college education,” said Jonah Rubin, president and founder of College EDge, “both by exciting them about the prospect of attending college and helping them achieve that goal.”

College EDge runs an annual seminar and fair that helps motivate and prepare public school students for college. Last year’s event drew 77 students from Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. College EDge also recently launched its mentorship program which pairs Stern and Yeshiva College undergraduates with students across New York to help educate them about college and assist with the application process. Other events featured presentations from YU’s Career Development Center, delineating the various career paths and options available to the public school students.

In addition to running independent programs, the student-run organizations overseen by Heights Initiative meet throughout the year to discuss their achievements, challenges and ways to further improve service to the greater community.

Other projects of the Heights Initiative include Project START (Students, Teachers, and Researchers Teach) Science, a program where YU students and professors design and implement scientific curricular modules in a local public school; YU Bridgers, a group of students who jog across the George Washington Bridge and clean it; bone marrow drives; and a business initiative that helps local merchants improve their businesses and increase revenue.

“It is incredibly important to be involved in community service both inside and outside the Jewish community,” said Berman. “This is especially imperative when we live in a community that is not predominately Jewish. With that perspective in mind, I think that it is crucial that we do our best to make a positive contribution to our local neighborhood in any way we can.”

On Friday, December 16, College EDge will present “Design Your Future: Choosing Your Career Path.” The event will take place in Furst Hall, 500 West 185th Street, room 535, on YU’s Wilf Campus.

Learn more about the Heights Initiative, its various programs, and how you can get involved here.

YU Alumni Offer Aspiring Professionals Insight into Religious Observance in a Corporate Environment

A sizable crowd of Yeshiva University (YU) undergraduates filled Weissberg Commons on the evening of September 14 to discuss the challenges and opportunities that abound while working in a non-Jewish environment.

“Being Orthodox in an Unorthodox World” was sponsored by YU’s Career Development Center (CDC), the Student Organization of Yeshiva (SOY), the Torah Activities Committee (TAC), and the Syms School of Business Student Council and featured YU alumni currently employed by some of the larger and more prestigious law firms, investment banks and accounting firms in New York City. The participants—who work for Goldman Sachs, PricewaterhouseCoopers, JPMorganChase, Hain Capital, Citigroup, Golden Mountain Investments, Proskauer Rose LLP, Stellar Management and Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP—spoke about real-world issues many Orthodox individuals face when joining the workforce.

One of many CDC events planned for the semester, the session served as a component of Yeshiva University’s renewed effort to prepare its students for life after college through a variety of personal and communal advisement and informational sessions.

“Our goal tonight is to help prepare our students for situations and challenges they will face in the secular world and give them the tools, resources and support to help determine how to handle these scenarios,” said Laurie Davis, director of counseling and programming at the CDC.

The program began with some words by Rabbi Yona Reiss, The Max and Marion Grill Dean of YU affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). Prior to his current position, Rabbi Reiss worked in an international Wall Street law firm and he shared some of his experiences interspersed with a few words of Torah. In one such story, he related how in his first year, his firm had a tradition that all newcomers dress as elves and hand out gifts to the other employees during the holiday season. Uncomfortable with this, he decided to dress as a Maccabee instead, to the delight of his coworkers.

Joel Strauss, YU graduate and partner at Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer, helped organize the Sept. 14 event.

“Being open about observance creates a reminder to yourself and expectations in the case of others that you have a right and a responsibility to be different,” said Rabbi Reiss.

Following this, the audience broke into four groups with a male and female professional leading a discussion on different situations an Orthodox person may encounter in the workplace. The conversation ranged from issues of head-covering to non-kosher restaurant etiquette to the proper way to leave early on Fridays. Throughout, these professionals stressed that being Orthodox should never prevent someone from gaining employment anywhere in the business world, but it may, at times, require going the extra mile under the higher scrutiny of executives.

At right, C. Howard Wietschner ’88YC, head of the Hedge Fund Industry Group at Goldman Sachs, talks to students at the CDC event.

“I have heard many stories about problems that can arise if you want to live an observant lifestyle in the corporate world, things that could have been avoided if you attended a panel like this,” said Benjamin Rosenberg ’11SB. “I came looking for advice and now that I heard these interesting stories, I know what to expect when interviewing for a job.”

One of the participants, Eveyln Havasi ’82S, a managing director at Citigroup, commented at the close of the event how YU graduates constantly impress her for their hard work and dedication. “Their consistent commitment to the long day of a dual curriculum showcases their capability and competence,” said Havasi. “The caliber of the students here is as high a caliber as the Ivies.”

Panelists Offer Insight for Jobs in the Creative Arts at Career Development Center Event

When he first started Yeshiva University in 2005, Yishai Seidman said he thought he had three choices: become a lawyer, accountant or doctor. He picked the last path, but after a few semesters he realized something was amiss.

YU graduate Yishai Seidman, a literary agent, was one of the panelists at the Careers in the Creative Arts event.

“I was fooling myself,” Seidman told a crowded room of students at a panel discussion on “Careers in the Creative Arts” organized by YU’s Career Development Center. In his second-to-last semester, Seidman switched trajectories and decided to major in English. He completed the requirement by taking seven English courses in his final semester.

“I just decided to do what I wanted and figure out a career later,” he said.

Fortunately, after graduating, Seidman found an internship with Writers House, a literary agency, and ended up becoming a literary agent at Dunlow, Carson & Lerner in 2009. As part of his duties, Seidman helps other agents manage their writers as well as managing his own growing client list. A literary agent, he explained, has many responsibilities: discovering new authors, helping them develop and, most importantly, selling authors’ work to publishers.

“If you sell a book like Twilight, it’s like winning the lotto,” Seidman said. “It’s astounding how many people write books.”

Other panelists at the event at YU’s Beren Campus included Yosef Herzog, a YU graduate who is a production assistant at NBC’s Today Show; playwright and actress Eleanor Reissa; artist and interior designer Ani Brieger; and the assistant director of the Career Development Center, Rebecca Weiler.

“Do your best to get at least one industry-related internship under your belt,” said Herzog. “But above all, take advantage of any connections you may have in the field to at least get your foot in the door.”

Weiler spoke about her own journey to finding her profession. A singer and a songwriter, she opted to approach the creative arts from a business side. After spending a year at Columbia Artists, she became a senior coordinator for The Metropolitan Opera, where she supervised the “Live in HD” series, a program that broadcasts shows and performances directly to movies and schools all over the world.

“I grew up wanting to be a performer, and I made it to Broadway, but it wasn’t in the way I expected,” said Weiler, who originally anticipated working on the artistic side of the industry.

After five years she decided to return to school to pursue a degree in counseling, another of her passions. Three months ago, she joined Yeshiva University.

Her advice to students was to “be resourceful, be creative, be quick on your feet and be calm.”

The event was eye-opening for some Stern College for Women students.

“I’m not sure what I want to do,” said freshman Rachel Pearlstein. “I didn’t even know what a literary agent was.”

As the panel wound down, Hannah Rozenblat, an English major and author of the blog, “My Ink Stained Hands,” debated about reworking a novel she wrote when she was 14. Now, she knew an agent.

Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalist Share Keys to Business Success at Career Development Center Panel

Yeshiva University’s Career Development Center hosted a lively panel with seven members of the venture capitalist and startup world. The event, titled “Working in Venture Capital and Startups,” was held on Monday night, April 11 on the Beren Campus with panelists: Simi Blaustein, High Line Ventures; Melody Koh, Time Warner Investments; Chris Paik, Thrive Ventures; Francesca Romano; Cross Commerce Media; and Ben Siscovick, IA Ventures. Two successful Yeshiva University graduates, Alex Taub, of Aviary.com, and Zev Lapin, of Bucket Ventures joined them on the panel.

From left, panelists Blaustein, Koh, Lapin, Paik, Romano, Siscovick and Taub.

Michael Strauss, entrepreneur-in-residence and adjunct professor of management at Sy Syms School of Business, led the discussion. He began by asking the participants to describe their typical day.

“There are no typical days in startups,” said Taub, whose company produces free online design tools and received startup funding from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Spark Capital.  He said that while his official day begins at 10 in the morning and ends at six, the actual hours are closer to beginning at seven and finishing at 10 in the evening. “You have an always-on mentality,” explained Taub.

Strauss asked the participants what they thought was the most important skill. Nearly unanimously, the answer was passion.

“It’s a pure meritocracy,” said Taub. “Investors don’t care about your GPA… they care about your passion.”

The panelists also discussed how they decided to invest in startups. Blaustein said that a good part of his time is spent evaluating teams before he decides to invest any money. “We’re looking for companies that have complementary skill sets,” he explained.

Lapin, who began his startup while an undergraduate at YU, advised students that “any skills you don’t have, your co-founders should have.”

Siscovick, whose multimillion dollar firm, IA Ventures, specializes in investing in new forms of data storage and retrieval, said that breaking into the venture capital world isn’t easy. “The supply and demand of the market are skewed,” he explained. “Every venture capitalist has a different story and there’s no one path.”

The close to two-hour presentation ended with a lengthy Q and A session moderated by Brian Maruffi, director of the Ira Rennert Center for Entrepreneurship at Sy Syms.

“Many students appear to have an entrepreneurial mindset from early on in their career at YU,” said Laurie Davis, director of counseling and programming at the CDC. “Several have even started small ventures while in Israel or even high school.”

Yehuda Silbermintz, 20, a junior who is working on his own startup, found the event “essential” for him. “You need to know your business in and out and be able to answer every question.”

Jeremy Hodkin, 20, a sophomore, who, along with fellow YU student Zachary Deutsch, is launching a web-based startup, said “the best part of the night came when we met individually with the panelists. I got emails and business cards!”

Career Development Center Offers Students Opportunities, Resources to Connect with Wide Range of Employers

Two down, two to go.

Sarah Clyde, a Stern College for Women senior graduating in May with a shaped degree in computer science, had four job interviews in the last two weeks. All of them were with employers she met at Yeshiva University’s annual Career Fair, organized by the Career Development Center, on April 1.

“The Career Development Center always stresses how networking can get you in the door for an interview,” Clyde said.  “The Career Fair is like a mini-interview and networking event. Once you make that personal connection with the recruiter, you’re more likely to be called in for an interview.”

This year’s Career Fair offered students the opportunity to meet and engage with more than 45 employers across a variety of fields, including medical technology, publishing, Jewish communal work and finance.  According to Sarah Rosen, director of alumni and employment relations at the CDC, that wide range of options is carefully cultivated by the Center throughout the year.

“We try to make this event available to a diverse employer base,” said Rosen. “The diversity is important because we can expose students to employers they may not even realize they would be interested in. The fair gives students the opportunity to hone their skills with different types of employers.” Clyde agreed, offering similar advice to other students: “Don’t only approach the companies you came specifically to see. Take a risk and start a conversation.”

For some employers, the Career Fair was their first encounter with the student body of YU. “This is our first time here and we’re excited,” said Robert Zyzynski, a recruitment intern at the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board. “We’re looking for students who have open minds because at our agency we really need people who can consider all options. We heard about this recruiting opportunity and we jumped on it.”

For others, like Spreemo, a healthcare technology organization, the fair represented the chance to tap a tried-and-true labor market. “I’ve been involved in three businesses in the past that have recruited from YU and always had good experiences,” said Pamela Harpaz, the company’s chief financial officer. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Jared Schuler, a talent acquisition associate for Scholastic, Inc., was similarly impressed by a current public relations intern at the company who is a student at Stern College. Her work at Scholastic has made the publisher interested to learn more about the student population at YU. “It’s our first time one-on-one with this school,” said Schuler. “We wanted to come and see what they’ve got.”

The CDC prepared students for the fair with informational materials and workshops about revising resumes and the art of the personal pitch. Jonathan Scheiner, a senior studying Management of Information Systems at the Sy Syms School of Business, thought that both discussions helped him present himself more effectively. “I think the companies I spoke with today were very receptive to my pitch, and I think looking them in the eyes and smiling was a big part of that,” he said.

Clyde is already on her way. However, she will continue to seek the guidance and feedback of the CDC as she advances her job search. “The CDC has years of experience dealing with both students and employers,” she said. “They know what employers might and ask and where students fumble on interviews. It can only help to sit down and have a conversation with an advisor.”

To learn more about the Career Development Center at Yeshiva University visit www.yu.edu/cdc.

Career Development Center Program Offers Parents Tools to Help Students Succeed

Upperclassmen who mentor incoming students are supported by a variety of programs on Yeshiva University’s undergraduate campuses, but parents helping other parents? That is something new. On October 17, YU’s Career Development Center hosted, “Parents to Parents: Employment Trends, Job Readiness and Lessons from the Business World,” in which two current YU parents, Dr. Steve Safier and Dr. Elly Lasson, discussed how parents can effectively assist their undergraduate children to enter the working world.

(From left) YU Parents and presenters, Steve Safier and Elliot Lasson

Lasson is the executive director of Joblink, a nonprofit job placement organization serving the Baltimore, Maryland community and is also an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore. His son Yaakov is in Yeshiva College; his daughter Yaelle is currently enrolled in the S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program. Beginning with a “state of the union” on the current job market, Lasson detailed the skills and knowledge that current graduates need to enter today’s challenging environment. Highlighting strategies as simple as preparing short summaries of one’s expertise and experiences and emphasizing one’s preparedness to make adjustments for and to a career, Lasson explained to parents how they can best encourage and assist their children to find and sustain careers. He also opened the floor to a conversation with the parents on appropriate behaviors, dress and interpersonal communications for interviews and the workplace.

Safier spoke more directly to the behavioral aspects of job searching and ongoing career development and listed “Five Things Parents Can Do to Help Their Children Get Jobs.” Safier’s son Yehuda is in Yeshiva College; his daughter Michal is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. Formerly a chief operating officer within the SUBWAY Sandwich company, Safier is now CEO at Of Both Worlds, a coaching business he founded to help college students and recent graduates find their first jobs. Noting that one’s behavior directly affects one’s employment opportunities and experiences, Safier said that self-image, personality and bearing are important differentiators of entry-level employees who have similar technical skills. In addition to a student’s education, he said, students must develop, and parents can assist in developing, five critical skills: reading comprehension, writing, presence, responsiveness and the ability to network — both to get interviews and to succeed in their jobs. Safier advised the parents on how to help their children and also asked the parents for some of their own ideas, which they were happy to share.

Marc Goldman, executive director of the Career Development Center, said the event developed because he separately came into contact with both speakers and wanted to think of a creative way to allow them to jointly share their enthusiasm with others. The information they offered was “very useful” said Goldman, who was glad to see “much of what they said was in sync with what we already do here.” The speakers had “a balance between knowledge about both the job market and the specific community that really engaged the audience, who obviously are invested in their children’s successes.”

Reaction to the event from the parents was equally positive. Will Schwartz, parent of a Stern College for Women freshman, said that he “enjoyed the event, which provided practical advice for both parents and students. The tips and advice were helpful, as in today’s tough environment any leg up can be a step in the right direction.”