You’re about to finish your studies at Northland Pioneer College and now you want to present yourself in the best way possible to potential employers to start your career. But you have no idea how to write a résumé or answer interview questions skillfully.

Without expert advice, it can be difficult to position yourself, your skills and your qualifications in a dynamic way that makes you stand out and get hired.

Career Services manager John Spadaccini works with an NPC student to review her résumé and conduct a mock job interview. The office’s services are available not only to current students but also NPC alumni and community members. Job fairs are held at the college at least once per semester and are open to the public. See NPC’s website for dates.

NPC’s Career Services department, directed by John Spadaccini, is one of the best resources available to job seekers in northeastern Arizona. He helps students, alumni and community members in one-on-one counseling sessions; prepares you with mock interviews; works with employers to develop workforce pipelines and presents numerous workshops and career fairs at various sites around northeastern Arizona.

Lexi Merrill, a former cosmetology student who earned an associate degree in applied science at NPC, is one of many students who benefitted from the assis-tance provided by Career Services. Now working as a hairstylist in Tempe, she plans to enroll at Arizona State University to study in an operation management and cosmetology instructor course.

“John Spadaccini helped me with for-matting my résumé, especially for the SkillsUSA competition,” Merrill says. “He taught my class the interview skills we needed to be confident.” Merrill made the most of the tools Spadaccini taught her, and she advanced all the way to the 2016 national competition in SkillsUSA and won the silver medal in the job demon-stration category. And, those newfound interview skills really paid off. In the short time since Merrill completed her studies and began working as a cosmetol-ogist, she has been featured on Fox 10 News television in Phoenix and in AZ Bride Magazine for her excellent work in hairstyling and make-up for brides.

Sharay Haws, a current cosmetology student at NPC, says Spadaccini was a big help to her in writing her résumé. “He gave me a lot of great advice and taught me how to speak more professionally and business-like.” Spadaccini spent several hours with cosmetology students and conducted mock interviews with them. Haws, whose goal is to become a traveling make-up artist, used her Career Services training to earn first place in the Skills-USA regional competition last spring. She plans to consult with Spadaccini again before finishing her studies at NPC and highly recommends others do the same.

Spadaccini says he can help you, too. “NPC Career Services can help you determine career goals, learn how to write a winning résumé and develop great inter-viewing skills,” he says. “Career Services offers a wide range of resources and information on the best ways and places to search for good jobs.” 

NPC’s Career Services partners with ARIZONA@WORK – Northeastern Arizona, a statewide workforce develop-ment network that helps local employers recruit, develop and retain the best employees for their needs. Together they provide several workshops and career fairs each year that are open to NPC students and the public. 

These workshops include Spadaccini’s outstanding “Job Search for the 21st Century” presentation, designed to prepare you for success in job hunting and inter-viewing. He’ll help you learn that a career-ready person effectively navigates pathways that connect education and employment to achieve a fulfilling, finan-cially secure and successful career.

Spadaccini works closely with job recruiters, too. For example, he is collab-orating with Sgt. Tasha Riley, the Native American liaison for the Arizona Depart-ment of Corrections, in the recruitment of Native correctional officers. During the month of September, Career Services hosted the Arizona Department of Corrections at NPC’s tribal centers in Kayenta, Hopi and Whiteriver for career informa-tion sessions. 

Spadaccini frequently travels to each of NPC’s four campuses and five centers to assist students with career readiness. NPC faculty often request Spadaccini to conduct career workshops that are tailored to their classes. Spadaccini is currently working with Kevin Jones, faculty member in English, to develop a career workshop on résumés, cover letters and thank-you letters that will be part of a class assignment. The Whiteriver Center worked with Spadaccini to develop a four-week work-shop series that was presented on Tues-days during the month of November.   

Many additional career resources are listed on the NPC website, including NPC Jobs Connection, powered by College Central, a career events calendar, a career quiz, the Arizona Career Information System, O*NET Interest Profiler, an occupational outlook handbook and links to several external job boards. To schedule a meeting with Spadaccini and learn more about Career Services go to: 

www.npc.edu/CareerServices