Landing Careers as Consultants

ICAR does not offer a language program, but students who graduate with a degree from the Institute still need to know how to translate their skills and knowledge for potential employers. That task was a primary focus of the third ICAR Career Intensive, which was held on March 28 and explored the fields of organizational conflict and consulting.

"The translating of the skills we learn at ICAR into the real world is often a gap between theory and practice," said Patricia Maulden, who earned her M.S. degree and Ph.D. from ICAR and is now an adjunct faculty member. She attended the all day session to learn about consulting and sharpen her interviewing skills. "I am not partial to interviews and never know quite what to say," Patricia explained. "But not only did I get to practice, I got feedback, which was particularly valuable."

Students from every corner of the ICAR program attended the session, which is part of the new series of intensives that began in October 2007. The initiatives are designed to improve students' preparation for job searching and provide industry-specific information, said Julie Shedd, ICAR's director of student services and graduate admissions. Julie worked with Erin Ogilvie, assistant director of student services and graduate admissions, and Michael Shank, ICAR's government relations adviser, to design and implement the program. In addition to organizational conflict, the intensives have covered careers in development, security and intelligence. ICAR plans to hold at least four intensives next year.

Each intensive includes a discussion on transferring conflict analysis and resolution skills into the given field, as well as resume reviews, mock interviews, and conversations with professionals from that field. The latter proved especially enlightening for first-year M.S. student Karen Cotter. "They encouraged us to be authentic in our pursuits, and that kind of surprised me, as opposed to being more calculated," she said. "That was really encouraging."

"Part of my message was to go ahead and step out, do what you want to do," said Lou Kerestesy, who served as one of the presenters. He earned his M.S. degree from ICAR and is now vice president of The Ambit Group, a management consulting firm. He said the intensives are critical for ICAR graduates because "there are still not a lot of job titles out there with what we do, so people have to be creative and perhaps create markets where they don't quite exist." Rachel Barbour, another ICAR M.S. alum, advised the students to focus on networking, informational interviews and practical experience to stand out from the crowd when searching for work in a competitive job market.

The other professionals who participated in the intensive were Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, who earned her Ph.D. from ICAR and is president of her own company, Kommon Denominator, and Stan Bradley, chief of the Investigations and Resolutions Division at the Department of Defense.

Even though Karen still has another year to go at ICAR, she said the intensive helped her "make plans and fine-tune them. It also opened up more possibilities. After the career intensive, new doors were opened just by talking to the presenters and to Julie. It helped me see that there are more opportunities."