I’ve been at Stanford for 19 years this month (started June 2006), in a variety of roles. I currently manage Career Services for Management Science and Engineering, which is a department within the School of Engineering. I ‘ve been in this department for 6 ½ years, initially in a traditional student services role, focusing on our MS students, basically, helping them get in then helping them get out! In December 2022 I was promoted into the Career Services role.

To be honest, even though I have a MA in Counseling Psychology, which included curriculum in career counseling, I didn’t think about applying for this role until my boss suggested it, because I’ve never been in any of the roles that our students tend to go into – our ‘big 4+small 1’ as I call it is finance, consulting, product management and tech, plus entrepreneurship.

Then I realized that I didn’t need to be an expert in those fields, because we have wonderful alumni who come back, and they’re experts. If I could engage with people, build relationships, curate programming etc, then I could do this job – and that was exactly my skillset. I see my role as basically a 3-circle Venn diagram: career counseling and programming, alumni relations, and content.

I provide 1-1 career counseling with our BS and MS students, and work with our alumni to curate relevant, helpful and interesting career talks and workshops based on what I see that the students want and need – everything from classic career ed topics such as LinkedIn profiles, resumes, interview skills etc through to preparing out students to excel in the non-academically related job skills – things like business communications, identifying mentors. I also provide and manage alumni-facing events such as our reunion gatherings, and collaborate as part of the department content team to highlight what our alumni and graduating students are doing, for example, with our employment reports and channels such as our podcasts.

I think the biggest mistake is not networking, or thinking you’re networking when you’re not really. Collecting business cards or handing over your resume at a career fair isn’t networking. Networking has a bad reputation amongst many people, who see it as transactional. Really, it’s just building relationships, in the hope that you can both be helpful to each other. I think too often students don’t realize that people mean it when they say to get in touch (eg, guest speakers in lectures, or at workshops hosted by alumni).

Often, this is because students don’t think they have anything to offer to people who are already working. The truth is that you have a lot to offer – your energy, the latest thinking and research that you’re learning in your classes, your insights into how your age group is thinking about things, or how to reach you or how you’d use a particular product. So approach networking with curiosity, and a mindset of how can I help this other person too. You can send links to articles or podcasts you think the other person would like, be available as a sounding board, even give recommendations for restaurants or activities if you know something about a location someone will be visiting. The biggest thing is to take the time to intentionally build and nurture relationships, while recognizing the strength of these weaker connections.

I think too often students get caught up in identifying the ‘perfect’ first job, believing that it sets the whole course of their career. The first job is exactly that – the first job. So long as you’re building transferrable skills (and if you’re working hard, listening to feedback, experimenting with how you do your work, and continuing to learn, then you’re always building transferable skills), then you can pivot. Your career will be 40+ years long.

At Stanford, I’ve gone from event planning for professional education to facilities management to student services to career services. You’d be surprised at how often my facilities experience has helped me in this role, even though they seem very unrelated. Remember too that the job market is always changing, and there are roles that come and go - my husband is in a job function that didn’t even exist when he graduated.

So I always advise people to try things out and see how it goes. Internships are perfect for this, because they’re a limited time, so you have nothing to lose in trying it out. I’ve seen people try something they thought they’d love – majors, career areas, hobbies – and absolutely hate it. And vice versa. It boils down to experiment, assess, keep an open mind, and give yourself the grace to change direction if necessary. Nothing is forever.

WhatsApp will introduce in-app advertising for the first time, placing ads only in the "Updates" tab used by 1.5 billion users daily. While chats remain end-to-end encrypted, WhatsApp will collect basic metadata like location and language for ad targeting. The move marks a shift from WhatsApp's original no-ads policy and aims to boost Meta's revenue amid its costly AI investments. The platform also announced paid subscriptions for content creators and ad promotion for broadcast channels. While Meta assures users that privacy remains a priority, the changes have reignited concerns about data sharing and WhatsApp's evolving business model. Read more HERE from NYT.

Meta is launching a new AI lab focused on developing "superintelligence," a loosely defined concept beyond artificial general intelligence (AGI). Led by Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, the lab is part of a $14.3 billion investment to regain ground in the AI race. Amid underwhelming performance from its Llama 4 model and concerns about falling behind rivals like OpenAI and Google, Meta is offering compensation up to $100 million to attract top talent—using the promise of superintelligence as both ambition and branding. Read more HERE from NYT.

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