Finding that one perfect job post-college can weigh on students’ minds, but Cal Poly has the resources to help.
Mustang Jobs is a website run by Career Services that specifically caters to job-hunting students. At Mustang Jobs, students can find job listings, information on employers and resources for applying for a job or internship.
The website can be an invaluable resource when looking for employment, civil engineering junior Isabelle Rawlings said. Rawlings herself has used Mustang Jobs to look up information on Career Fair employers as well as find her own internship opportunities.
“There’s definitely a lot of resources on Mustang Jobs,” Rawlings said. “I know a lot of people who’ve actually gotten jobs through Mustang Jobs.”
Some students may have more luck than others, though, depending on what they’re looking for. Career fields such as engineering and business almost always have more job offers than typical College of Liberal Arts fields such as writing or film and video, Career Services Program Coordinator Carole Moore said.
This is not due to a bias on Career Services’ part, but a simple reflection of the economic situation, Moore said.
“It’s going to be indicative of what the market is,” Moore said.
Even within a career field such as engineering students speecializing in electrical and mechanical engineering, students are going to see more job opportunities than an environmental engineering student, Moore said.
Despite this, the counselors at Career Services themselves don’t actively try to balance out the number of job opportunities for every student, Moore said.
Instead, employers simply come to Mustang Jobs and post the positions they have available, and the staff at Career Services monitors these postings.
“There’s no such thing as, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to have equal this job to equal that job,’” Moore said.
In addition to helping students find internships and careers, Mustang Jobs also helps students find short-term positions while they’re still in school.
Social sciences graduate Reynessa Reyes used Mustang Jobs to find a part-time position caring for an elderly woman while she was a student. She didn’t use it to look for any full-time jobs after graduation, though.
“When I was looking for my job, I was still in school, so I knew I wouldn’t have time for a long-term career,” Reyes said.
Philosophy senior Jacob Brandt also uses Mustang Jobs to help him find temporary jobs in landscaping and day labor work.
“I mostly use it for part-time local,” Brandt said.
As a philosophy student, Brandt said the website doesn’t offer him many career opportunities in the direction he wants to go. Moore said this is because there’s a natural gap between career offerings in fields Cal Poly is known for and jobs in fields that are not generally associated with a Cal Poly education.
For instance, there are very few medical opportunities on Mustang Jobs, simply because, unlike some other universities, Cal Poly does not have a medical program or nursing school. In the past, Career Services counselors devoted more time to recruiting employers for the website, but currently, with budget and staff cuts, Moore said Career Services doesn’t have the resources.
And with between 60 to 120 new job postings on Mustang Jobs every day, Career Services barely has staff to screen the listings for fraud, Moore said.
“At this point, we’re not even able to manage the number of jobs coming in,” Moore said.
Nonetheless, Career Services strives to ensure that every Cal Poly student finds a job after school, Moore said.
Along with Mustang Jobs, Moore recommends students also check out websites such as Idealist.org to cast a wider job-search net.
Mustang Jobs is valuable because it’s for employers who specifically want Cal Poly students, but other job-hunting websites can be useful tools as well, Moore said.
“Mustang Jobs to me is the website where employers that are really interested in Cal Poly students go,” Moore said.