NHS students to get rare style of employment-skills practice

When Newton High School seniors arrive Newton’s Goodwill Career Connection Center on April 29, they’ll have a rare opportunity waiting for them.

The center has arranged a mass “mock interview” session for 163 NHS seniors, allowing them to meet with actual employers for job interviews.

The event will be a chance for the students to get more familiar with the job-interview process, as some will undoubtedly be new at it, and give area employers the opportunity to find out what fields are of interest to the Class of 2015. The center’s coordinator, Miranda Kulis, said the event is as much about young members of the work force building confidence as it is about skills and gaining interview experience. The center, which opened last fall, is on the second floor of Newton’s Des Moines Area Community College campus.

“It’s also a chance to network with people in their career field,” Kulis said. “We had the students submit which fields they were interested in, and we were able to match all of them up with their first choice of fields.”

Kulis said she’s still assembling the list of which area employers will be at the event, but she hopes to have between 40 and 50 companies or institutions represented. She said there will be as heavy an emphasis on getting Jasper County businesses to the mock interviews.

The center is coordinating with the NHS guidance department to make sure students arrive with a résumé and a portfolio. “This is a chance to get a good feeling about what’s out there, and how to interview for it,” Kulis said.

She said there will likely be representatives from the medical, communications, engineering, parks and recreation, manufacturing and other fields.

The employers will begin setting up at 11 a.m., and the first interviews will begin at noon. Students will be able to present a résumé and a portfolio to employers. Some might be matched up well enough to begin work with those same employers soon after high school graduation, while other positions might be simply research for when a college degree is iminent.

One advantage students will have at the event, as opposed to in an ordinary interview at an employer’s facility, is the practice is where they can succeed, but there are really no consequences if it doesn’t go well.

“It’s a chance to get comfortable,” Kulis said. “And it’s a chance for students to see how they present themselves, and maybe some things to work on.”

To Kulis’s knowledge, this is the first time a Newton event of this scale has allowed students to work specifically on real-life interviewing skills.

“I’ve got a really good feeling about this event,” she said.