A group of alumni from The University of Texas at Dallas has formed a career guidance advisory organization geared to guiding current students and recent graduates of the University toward the right career path.
Comet Advisory is the brainchild of Tobin Abraham, BS 2013, a graduate of the finance program at the Naveen Jindal School of Management. He and two other JSOM students as well as a graduate of the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication are the founding advisors.
“A couple of years ago I worked at a startup that’s related to career guidance, so I have a passion for it,” Abraham said. “Recently, I started seeing my younger brother and some of his friends deal with some of the same issues I experienced regarding uncertainty about career direction.”
Those conversations gave Abraham an idea that he began brainstorming with some of his college friends from UT Dallas: Jeff Trinh, BS in finance 2013; Alex Mbanefo, BS in accounting 2013; and Angie Luu, BA in emerging media and communication 2014. During their discussions, they hit upon the idea of giving back to UT Dallas beyond just monetarily, he said.
When it came time to formulate some specifics about how to do that, they all agreed that they wanted to give career advice, completely free of charge, to UT Dallas students. They would start small and grow from there. They put together a business plan, set up a website and then planned their first event — a question-and-answer event they dubbed Ask Me Anything, held Jan. 17.
“We got a lot of support for our first event from our friends and other alumni, who found us online through JindalConnect and Facebook and are interested in being mentors,” said Luu, a UX Designer at Capital One. “We were able to connect one-on-one with some of the students that showed up. It wasn’t as big as we wanted, but it was definitely more intimate, so that was really good for our first event.”
The services they offer include one-on-one mentoring sessions with interested students during which they help them develop actionable 30-60-90-day plans. They also plan to host public networking events, which will range from guest lectures to panel discussions to more Q-and-A events. All the services are geared toward helping students reach their career goals.
“Whether students are looking to start an internship, or want to break into a specific industry or field, we give them advice for putting together a plan to get started,” said Mbanefo, an analyst at Pizza Hut. “How it works is maybe they start reaching out to people and networking in the first 30 days. Then they have a couple of résumés submitted by 60 days. By the 90-day period, hopefully they’re having that last round of interviews or deciding that the path they’ve chosen is wrong for them and they change directions. It’ll be more detailed than that, but that’s how it works at a high level.”
“We’ve had great support from faculty and staff. We’re pretty happy about that,” said Trinh, a portfolio manager at Wells Fargo. “In order to make this work, we will need support from other successful alumni who have started careers in different fields from across the schools and disciplines being offered by UT Dallas and are looking for a way to give back. Becoming an advisor is a great way to do that.” Abraham, a product manager at TripCase, said that the group chose to offer campus-wide career mentoring so that they could foster a supportive environment of curiosity that would help students explore the widest range of career choices.
“No matter if they are thinking about a career in business, engineering, medical school or just don’t know, we think there are some common traits that all students need to have,” he said. “We encourage them to be exploratory in nature based on their interests and skills. By the end of the year, we hope to have a lot of participation from both alumni and students so that we can find the right advisor for each student. We’re not going to turn down any student, regardless of major.”
Students and recent graduates interested in getting career advice from the Comet Advisory can get in touch with a mentor by visiting their website and completing the contact form. Alumni interested in mentoring UT Dallas students and recent graduates can begin the process by completing the application form.
