WASHINGTON 一 Situated in one of the country’s most important cities, NYU Washington, D.C., is buzzing with job opportunities, internships and clerkships for students of all years to explore their interests and build their professional portfolios. Getting an internship can be competitive — and overwhelming — so NYU Washington, D.C., provides students with a vast set of resources and events to find clarity throughout the chaos. Welcome to Career Week.

One of the hallmark events of Career Week is a visit to the Groom Law Group, a law firm focused on the areas of health insurance, retirement plans and investments. NYU Washington, D.C., students have the opportunity to speak with three experts in the field, each with a different focus and client base, gaining insight into how they could apply their education and student resources at NYU toward a potential career in policy or law.

Sophomore Peirong Li, an NYU Shanghai student studying in Washington, attended the event hoping to learn more about the intersections of policy, law and economics.

“It was a really great discussion and I learned a lot about careers in tax law, retirements and insurance benefits, as well as annuities,” Li said. “The lawyers also helped us understand the career and educational paths that we could take to be in their position. I’m still exploring my interests with my internship in the Brademas Center but I found it to be a really valuable part of my NYU D.C. experience.”

The second key event of the week included the opportunity for students to get professional headshots to use in their LinkedIn profiles. After getting their pictures, students attended a workshop where they learned how to properly build profiles that effectively showcase their professional experience and goals.

LS first-year Riley Bryant, a professional media artist, described her experience taking the students’ photographs and how NYU Washington, D.C., helped make this goal possible. 

“NYU D.C. provided us with so many great tools and amenities to make this photo workshop happen, including studio lighting and access to our balcony, which helped us get a really great professional background for our students,” Bryant said. “Most students didn’t have a recent photo for their LinkedIns and this solved that problem.”

LS first-year Elan Schwartz, a Capitol Hill intern and campaign staffer, stressed the importance of updating his LinkedIn profile and headshot.

“Getting an internship on the Hill or even in a standard office requires you to have a really good resume, which can start with your LinkedIn profile,” Schwartz said. “I personally haven’t updated my LinkedIn page in a while and I haven’t changed my profile picture in almost three years so this was a really great opportunity to highlight my marketable skills and make my LinkedIn page look professional and presentable.”

NYU Washington, D.C., Career Week events also included guest speakers from the technology and business industries to provide their perspectives on how students could develop their careers in a variety of other fields and diversify their career. Bryant attended some of these events as well.

“The speakers offered a great opportunity to get an insight into what our future might look like,” Bryant said. “They provided advice on what our future selves would like to know and they provided information we could apply to our own lives.”

Overall, NYU Washington, D.C., Career Week provided students with a glimpse into their future careers and tangible skills to expand the opportunities available to them. With a heavy emphasis on professional development at NYU Washington, D.C., the events of Career Week are not ones to be missed.

Contact Rahul Mahesh at [email protected].