E33: Career Planning for Students | Amanda Laungani | Heebner Career Development Center

There has been a lot of talk about the entry level going away, and that's not necessarily true. I think the skills that are needed are pivoting, and so the things that we're hearing loud and clear are that students need human skills. And so, when you pair that human skill that you're getting here at WPI with that technical skill that you're getting, our students are really well poised for success in the future, especially in this landscape.

For many students and their parents even before enrolling in college, there is much thought given to the jobs and salaries students can secure after graduating and how a university can help them get there.

Today's students and graduates are preparing to enter a workforce that is being radically reshaped by technology. Some of the jobs they will have don't even exist yet. That's why universities like WPI make career planning and development a key part of the student experience.

Welcome to The WPI Podcast. I'm Shawn Needham. In 2025 WPI was among LinkedIn's best colleges for career success. While US News and World Report ranked the university number 18 for 40-year return on investment with the average graduate netting 3.4 million over that period after subtracting the out-of-pocket cost of attendance.

Amanda Laungani is the director of WPI’s Heebner Career Development Center. She's been at WPI in various career-focused roles since 2014. Amanda, welcome to the WPI Podcast.

Thank you for having me.  We are so excited today to be talking about career planning and what that looks like from the students and parents, beginning to look at schools, visiting schools

Tell us about your role with WPIs Heebner Career Development Center or HCDC.  So, I have been at WPI for 11 years, and we're thinking every day about how students are applying to jobs, how AI is changing the job landscape, and creating programs, and services that address those needs. So, it's a really cool place to be right now supporting these young folks as they enter the job working world. And we also, here at WPI serve alumni for life.

So, I get to support our alumni as well as they're navigating the job market and wanting to give back and helping our current students here at WPI.

What do you tell prospective students about their career prospects before they come to WPI?

That is the question of the hour. It's such a great question. I have the opportunity to engage with incoming first year students before they even commit to WPI. And what I'm telling parents and students is that you need to be thinking about your career even before you think about where you're going to college. So, taking every opportunity to network, thinking about who is in your network, so family, friends. Folks that you went to high school with, folks that you're gonna be going to college with. Every first-year student should have a LinkedIn profile where they're connecting with alumni and classmates even before they come to WPI. In this current world that we live in, I think.

Networking is more and more important than it's ever been. Networking has always been so, so important, but I think now more than ever, with all the technology that's available. Folks being able to network and connect is really important.

And so that's vital something that students should be thinking about before they come to WPI has an amazing alumni network that students should tap into. And so, thinking about that early and often, and utilizing that alumni network to support them as they grow, and then becoming an alumni someday, and giving back to those students and connecting with their alums as

Right. At that point they can pay it forward and help, correct, yes. Help other students that will come after them.

What makes WPI’s HCDC different from those at other schools?  That's a great question. There are not very many schools currently who serve alumni for life for free, and I think that is a vital piece of the equation.

Here at WPI, we talk about a strong alumni network. We talk about alumni who care about each other for the lifetime of their time. We have alumni who will run into each other at the grocery store and are connecting that way, and they're also connecting back with us.

So, in times when, the job market isn't super great, alumni can come back and seek services with us and use those tools and resources, they can always come back and network and connect within our community and with other alumni.

Additionally, WPI is a place that is very AI forward, and so when we're thinking about career development, there are a lot of tools in the AI world that are changing the way recruiting is done, and we're very privy to those tools. And on top of that information, because.

We live in it every day here at WPI and so we can provide that information and support to students in ways that maybe other schools can't.

And I think the faculty are engaged in that here at WPI.

There has been some anxiety around how technology and how AI will be or could reshape the workforce and job prospects and even those that are in the workforce now.

There are a lot of very bold statements being made around the impact that AI will have and what it could mean for people that are in the workforce. What is your feedback and advice for them?

One of the things that we prioritize is getting feedback from employers and alumni who are also employers and hiring managers to understand how are their needs shifting and what are they seeing in their workplaces. We're also engaging our board of trustees here at WPI in these conversations and really making sure that we understand what's happening out in industry so that we can support students while they're here.

For example, there has been a lot of talk about the entry level going away, and that's not necessarily true. I think the skills that are needed are pivoting, and so the things that we're hearing loud and clear are that students need human skills. They need problem solving, they need communication, in a project-based curriculum you're doing a lot of teamwork, you're working with people in the community.

In your IQP, you're doing consulting work, you're working with people who are different from you and learning how to communicate with people. And so, I think our students are leaving with those skills that make them such great assets to companies in this changing AI landscape. Because we have such a breadth of representation here at WPI, both in our students and also in our alumni, in our employer partners.

Students have a lot of options when they graduate. I think a couple of years ago, if you were looking at computer science, big tech was really the place that you were gonna go, but every company is a tech company and every company needs that support. And so, when you pair that human skill that you're getting here at WPI with that technical skill that you're getting, our students are really well poised for success in the future, especially in this landscape.

Right. They're ready for this new entry level. Absolutely. That, that we're seeing.

Yeah.

How early on in a college student's time on campus should they be thinking about career development and tapping into the resources that the center here offers.

So, you mentioned that really this should begin before they even come to college, but let's say it's their first term or semester what is your advice to those? Newer students.

When we have students coming in, we know that first semester, those first two terms, you're really focused on making new friends adapting to the college lifestyle. Adapting to the pace of the curriculum. So, what we typically recommend for students is that they come see us in the second half of their first year.

That might look like a resume critique. That might look like a, hey, what services do you offer that might look like sort of planning out their four-year career program or their five year or their. Sixth year, depending on if they're doing A-B-S-M-S here at WPI. But really engaging for the first time in that second half of their first year.

And then maybe talking about and thinking about what are they going to do in the summer between their first and second year. We recommend that a student does something every summer. That may not be an internship. That could be a personal project, that could be a early learning research opportunity here at WPI.

That might be a. Grocery store job back home but just doing something to put on their resume and using that second semester of their first year to plan for that. Or the, those c and d term, those last two terms of their, their first year.

And any experience is, is good experience in many cases. Is good experience. Yeah. Make sure you get it. Get your good experience. Yes. And make those connections too. What other steps should students consider taking to make themselves the strongest possible job candidates?

I think that WPI is a unique place in that students really can engage in a lot of different things that suit their interests. And so, thinking early on about maybe what that interest is and. Gathering experiences along the way that sort of set you up for that success. So, thinking about, I always tell students, you should absolutely join some sort of professional club that aligns with your major career goals.

That's essential. It's great for networking. It's great to get some additional projects on your resume, some additional experience. Thinking about maybe what classes are not in your major, but maybe helpful to you as you're on your career journey. Maybe you're a mechanical engineer, but you really are interested in going and working at a biotech company someday, and so maybe you're taking a class in biotechnology.

Creating a roadmap for yourself where you can put things together to create this experience that's going to lead you to that first job.

A lot of folks think that they're gonna graduate and get their dream job, and that's not always the case. And so, thinking about. What would be a good first steppingstone job for me? Or what are a lot of opportunities?

Careers aren't linear in anymore in the way that they used to be, and so you may start in one area and jump to another area and sort of just being open, the yes person mentality, right? You never know where your passion is gonna lie.

There are certain careers where it's one-to-one, right? So, you might go to medical school and be a doctor or go to nursing school and be a nurse. But at WPI. It opens up so many different doors for you. And so, any major that you choose here can lead to a number of careers. It's definitely not one-to-one.

How have you seen the job market evolve over time, over your 11 years at WPI? And how can students best prepare for the changes that maybe we can't even anticipate yet?

I think the more diverse your experiences are, the more adaptable you can be and the more you can pivot. And so, we see alumni for life. We'll often see alumni come back at that career pivot, time change. So at that five year, 10 year point where maybe they're ready to go in a different direction, and because they had a lot of diverse experiences at WPI, they have those skills to help them pivot, we have an idea of what's going on in the job market at any given time and can give good advice based on what we're hearing.

In some cases, especially now, there might be areas of the US or in the world where maybe they hadn't thought about having a job or moving to that place, but maybe there is a burgeoning place. That's a great. Location to launch a career in a certain field?

Absolutely. I think one of the things that we're heavily focused on, we've always been focused on this, but I think now more than ever, is really making sure that no matter where a student graduates, no matter where they wanna go, there are opportunities available for them.

So, whether they're coming to WPI from. California or another part of the United States, and they wanna go back home, or they wanna stay here, or they wanna go to the Midwest. We wanna make sure that we have opportunities for students that are available to them. And so, when we're working with employers, we're really targeting employers who either have a national brand or there's a diversity of places that folks can go.

When you look at the outcomes of our students, about 60% of them will stay in Massachusetts, but the rest of them go throughout the United States and throughout the world. We have a lot of students who will really love their IQP experience, and so they'll go work internationally after they graduate.

We've been focusing on making sure we have a good representation of employers who are recruiting our students from places like Texas, like California, like Florida, to make sure that our students who are coming here from those places have opportunities if they should choose to go back home after they graduate.

You can go home again and some people you can go home. Some people want to do that.

How do you see WPI’s HCDC moving into the future and evolving with the inevitable shifts in different industries and fields over time?

So, we know that our students who start this year are going to probably graduate into jobs that aren't available right now. And so, we are paying close attention, listening to research that's coming out, engaging our alumni to understand. What is changing? What is pivoting?

Are there curricular changes that need to be made so that our students are prepared to enter the workforce and trying to funnel that information? Are there new opportunities that we need to be on top of and working with our employer relations team to reach out to those organizations to bring them on campus and recruit.

Things are evolving rapidly in, in the hiring landscape. Things that we're focusing on right now. Biotechnology, AI is a big space. Cybersecurity, making sure that our students who are coming into these programs are supported in that job search, but also making sure that we're not losing sight of.

Our OG programs like mechanical engineering and computer science and making sure that our students are still having opportunities in those areas as well and prioritizing those. I know that there has been some talk about computer science recently and our students are actually doing quite well in our computer science programs in terms of their outcomes, and I think some of that is the great academic support that they're getting, the career support that they're getting in their academic programs, and then also making sure that we're helping folks as they're graduating and finding opportunities or finding internships and things like that.

At WPI, we are a global university in many ways. How can the HCDC help and support international students in their job search and career planning?

In a lot of ways, I think it starts from even before students come to WPI. So, the Ebner Career Development Center. is engaged in pre-arrival webinars and helping students understand the resources that are available to them before they even come here. And then during orientation, we remind them of the resources that are available

I think it's really important to be able to support these international students as they're coming to the us and so some of the ways that we're doing that are asking questions of our employer partners, are you willing to host an international student for an internship or a full-time job?

Tracking that. So international students have easy access to those employers who do those things. At our career fairs, very visibly identify employers that are willing to sponsor or support an international student. And so, students can easily identify that we actually see a very high percentage of international students in our office.

And whether they're going on to companies in the US or abroad, or graduate schools, our international students are really set up to succeed here at WPI.

Great. Could you speak a little bit to the differentiator in how a lot of employers see WPI and the kinds of students who graduate from here?

This is so important. We regularly survey our employer partners who are coming and recruiting our students, and we ask them how our students compare to other students that they're recruiting in the marketplace. We ask them to rate them based on.

Things like teamwork, communication, ability to work on a team, technical skills. And our students consistently rate high in terms of those competencies, compared to other entry level graduates that they're seeing in the marketplace.

If We can get one alumni at a company, then that relationship is going to blossom because so many times, we'll hear from a company who got one alumni and now they want more, and so they're coming back to recruit WPI and we're seeing that in our outcomes.  Every year we.  Publish our outcomes data. It's available to anybody. You can get it on our website and that will highlight, our success rate, which is how many of our students are employed in graduate school, in volunteer or military service.

You can see where, what kinds of companies our students are going to, and that list grows every year. So. That's great. It talks about average starting salaries. And so, we're very transparent about that, but I think it really speaks to the reputation of WPI and that growing employer list who are recruiting WPI and coming back to get more of our students,

Amanda, thank you so much for being on today's episode and whether listeners are thinking about coming to WPI or maybe a different school.

A lot of the feedback you shared will be very helpful to them and their families as they think about the college planning process and look toward their career prospects after graduation. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.