Jason Parrish is the new Industry and Alumni Outreach Manager for SCAD’s Atlanta region. He focuses on making and maintaining relationships with industry professionals to cultivate job and internship opportunities for alumni and current SCAD students. Parrish has been employed with SCAD for almost ten years, but is a recent arrival in his position with career services, where he hopes to continue SCAD’s dedication to creative careers.
Parrish noticed many students do not take advantage of career services. Though he admits as a student at the University of North Carolina he also didn’t use career services as much as he should have, “I went in to meet with a career counselor during my last semester to get my resume reviewed, but that’s really all I did.” SCAD students are very much the same, often waiting until the end of their senior year to try and bring everything together, but SCAD’s career services offers much more than just a quick tune up before graduation.
Parrish credits the school’s separation of industry outreach and career advisers as a part of his office’s success, “SCAD takes it a step further by having people out in the industry actively bringing in jobs. Other schools have career advisers doing outreach at the same time, making it difficult to work directly with students and get them ready. At SCAD, we have staff whose only job is to get students ready for employers and other staff that maintains those relationships.”
Relationships, Parrish notes, are important in landing a job, “While you’re here at SCAD, you have a fantastic network. You may not even realize it, but a lot of getting a job is who you know. Some people make the mistake of thinking that just being a straight A student with a phenomenal portfolio is enough. I wish it were that easy, but it’s not. Even if you’re fantastic at what you do, no one is going to know about it unless you network yourself. You have a huge opportunity to network while you’re here. You’re probably already doing it and don’t even realize it.”
While Parrish stresses the importance of networking, he also notes that experience and personality tend to set applicants apart, “Companies like to see applicants who come in with some sort of experience, whether that is an internship, a collaborative project, or previous employment. Anything that can make you stand out helps. Personality is important as well, but companies look for all different personalities. You never know. It is important for students to do their research and see how they fit into a company’s culture. We can help you see how you’d fit with a particular company.”
Although new to his position and learning more each day, Parrish is very knowledgeable when it comes to job opportunities and skills that SCAD students and alumni should know about. With less than 20 percent of the student body making an appointment with career services, it seems that it is a resource that many of us could take better advantage of.
Parrish and the entire career services office aim to give SCAD students and alumni the support they need in their career prep and search. To learn more about career services visit their information page or email careers@scad.edu. To find out who your career adviser is, log onto mySCAD > “Student Resources” > Advisers.