The Center for Career Exploration and Development at Ithaca College released a new podcast titled “Career Corner” on Oct. 19 to give advice to students on how to take their career paths to another level.
“Career Corner” launches a new episode each Thursday on Spotify and Youtube, with guests from a variety of industries who share their experiences and provide guidance for students to navigate their future after college.
Samantha Elebiary, associate director of career engagement and education, said the Center for Career Exploration and Development started working on the podcast in Spring 2023 and began searching for someone to host the podcast.
“The podcast is something that the Career Center team has been talking about for a couple of years now and have wanted to bring it to fruition,” Elebiary said.
Senior Kaitlyn Coffey, the producer for “Career Corner,” said she applied to join the podcast team because she saw the listing as the perfect opportunity to build up her resume. Coffey said she wants to be a producer in the future.
“It’s a number of factors,” Coffey said. “When I saw the [Center for Career Exploration and Development] was looking for a producer, that really appealed to me.”
Elebiary said the position for the podcast host was originally supposed to be a one-person gig. However, Elebiary said she quickly realized that she should involve multiple people with the podcast.
“As it’s grown and as we’ve met a couple of other students who have interests, we realized that they all bring something really important and special and unique to the team,” Elebiary said.
Junior Lukas Kauffman is the host of “Career Corner.” He said he wanted to help other students start up their careers.
“I thought it would be a really great opportunity for myself,” Kauffman said. “But I also really like the sound of the project and what it would help students with.”
Kauffman said he has worked very closely with Coffey to create the script as well as draft the questions they will ask the interviewees.
“I take a look at those questions, tweak them to what I think might make up the best interview, and then add some of my own to kind of expand the kind of baseline,” Kauffman said.
With the production side of the podcast figured out, all the team needed now was to get the word out to the college community. That was when they hired junior Kylie Shultz as their marketing and media strategist.
Shultz said she has experience with promoting video but not so much with audio. She said she had to rethink how to make the audio aspect more compelling with the absence of video.
“This is definitely a challenge on my end,” Shultz said. “I’m kind of stripping the aspect of video away to just try to make that excitement through the audio.”
However, Shultz said she feels good about how the podcast has gone so far.
“So far it’s been really exciting and really successful,” Shultz said. “I have a lot of high hopes on that end.”
“Career Corner” will also feature interviews with alumni about their time at the college as well as their work out in their respective fields.
“We’ve got some really awesome people on,” Coffey said. “I think we’ve done a good job of booking guests that complement each other.”
Shultz even hinted that the podcast might have a high-profile guest on in the future.
“We’re trying to keep it a little hush hush because things are still in the works,” Shultz said. “But let’s say there might be a major member from the IC theater community coming in to make an appearance on a podcast.”
So far, the podcast has released four episodes, with guests like Olivia Carpenter ’22, founder and owner of Via’s Cookies, and Eden Strachan ’21, filmmaker and founder of Black Girls Don’t Get Love.
The team tabled outside the Center for Career Exploration and Development on Oct. 20 to promote the podcast.
At the tabling, the group gave out free items to people passing by and had them scan QR codes to listen to the podcast. The group also took suggestions from students on what they want to see for the future of the podcast.
Shultz said that she was very optimistic about the launch of the podcast and that people were showing interest in it.
“I think it’s a really good track,” Shultz said. “Just for students to have an option to just listen in and feel like they can connect to something once a week just to know that they’re on the right track and they’re doing something right.”
Elebiary said she would love to see the podcast run for the foreseeable future.
“We want to be really successful with this podcast and have it run for multiple years,” Elebiary said. “We would love to touch on all the different majors.”
