We caught up with Andy Chan, vice-president of the OPCD

The end-of-semester crunch is upon us, where students are in a last-minute grind to find summer internships and study for exams.

To make this season a little bit easier for you, The Tab reached out to Andy Chan, the Vice President of the Office of Personal and Career Development.

He has become somewhat of a campus celebrity as a result of his visionary work with the OPCD and his impressive business experience. Since joining the OPCD in 2009, Andy Chan has made it his mission to transform the concept of “career services,” both at Wake and in higher education at large.

After talking to Andy Chan, I found that the OPCD offers so many resources that I didn’t even know about, from a variety of 1.5-credit “college to career” courses, to “The Marketplace,” a resource for tracking down job opportunities with companies that don’t rely on campus recruiting.

So, what brought you to Wake?

First of all, I appreciated President Hatch’s commitment to addressing the transition from college to career; this dedication to his mission, his mission critical approach, drew me to Wake Forest.” Andy also expressed appreciation for Wake’s “collaborative culture” and “friendly” environment in which professors, students, and the administration work together to solve problems.

 In your Ted Talk, “Career Services Must Die,” you address the need for a new type of college to career guidance. What sets the OPCD apart from traditional “career services”?

The Office of Personal and Career Development strives to start early in the career process as opposed to waiting until senior spring. We emphasize exploring career options with more consciousness and being reflective about what a meaningful life and career looks like for each individual. We also stress the idea that you are not married to your major, and what you do outside of the classroom can have an even larger impact on your career prospects than what you study. The OPCD has also changed the way we work with recruiters; rather than having recruiters search exclusively for students of a particular major, our database makes it so that recruitment happens across all departments.

What makes Wake students different from other students?

Wake Forest students are outstanding communicators with strong interpersonal skills, which I think can be partly attributed to our small class sizes. Wake students are willing to work much harder than other students and are appreciative of opportunities; they don’t have the sense of entitlement that often comes with an elite education.

You’ve been working with college students for over 10 years now…in this time have you noticed a change in students’ concerns?

The concerns are similar: Will I get a job? Will I make enough money? However, there’s a statistic out there that millenials will average 20 jobs in their lifetime; earlier, people stayed in the same jobs for longer. Making career and life choices is challenging and the best thing students can do to help them navigate the post-grad world is to develop a set of mentors.

What are your favorite and least favorite things about your job?

My favorite thing is the people; they are talented, creative, positive, and appreciative and we get to work on some of the most innovative ideas in higher education. One of the challenging things is that there are more ideas than money. We always want to do more for our students and our university than we possibly can.