Delivering valuable career service online

“When  the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, operations of BPS Career Service were not entirely impacted as we were already delivering part of our career services virtually” says Anja Lohrer, Berlin Professional School career service and alumni relations manager. “We connect with students via videoconferencing for individual career consultations, reviewing their application documents, discussing individual questions and working with them on their specific career goals and needs. Videoconferencing has been our way for the past two years as we want our services to be available for all students and alumni, no matter where they might be located.”

BPS Career Service also offers an internal career service platform with jobs opportunities all over Europe, an event database including recruiting events in Berlin and Germany, detailed company profiles, videos to help discover new career paths and companies, as well as career articles to read and learn from. A weekly job and event newsletter keeps students and alumni up-to-date.

However, there were challenges to overcome with providing career events when all on-campus events had to be cancelled overnight due to the pandemic.“COVID-19 changed the face of recruitment” Lohrer explains. “We launched a virtual career event series with external experts to help students be prepared for the new landscape.” The series included virtual presentation skills workshops with rhetoric coach Dr. Jane Bormeister, in which our students learned how to appear during virtual meetings, job interviews and presentations. BPS alumni Lukas Marzi contributed to a seminar on virtual networking and lawyer Andreas Dippe provided our international students with an update on German visa regulations. Still running is the two-part online seminar series “Negotiate salary like a pro”. Two managerial professionals with long-term career experience share best practices and give valuable tips. 50 students and alumni joined part #1 of the salary negotiation series with Ela Krief, sales executive, start-up consultant and career mentor this week. Now we are excited to continue with part #2 next week, during which René Barth, who works as consultant and remuneration expert with a major consulting company in Germany, will share his experience with our students and graduates.

Students and alumni of BPS will find further information and updates on BPS Virtual Career Events on our career platform: BPS Career Center.