One Graduating Senior’s Career Road Trip Success Story
For Becca Robinson ’18, a visit to Lincoln Financial Group with the Career Center led to an offer to work there full time after graduation.By: Meghan Kita Monday, January 8, 2018 04:32 PM
A visit to Lincoln Financial Group on the Philly Career Road Trip led to a job offer for Becca Robinson ’18 (center). Photo courtesy Emma Hamm.When Becca Robinson ’18, a double major in math and economics, pictured her final winter break from Muhlenberg, visions of job applications danced in her head. She assumed she’d have to spend her final month-long block of freedom writing cover letters, sending out resumes and maybe—fingers crossed!—scheduling an interview or two.
Instead, thanks to a sequence of events that began with the Career Center’s Philly Career Road Trip on Nov. 6, she landed a job with Lincoln Financial Group in Radnor, Pa., before heading home to New Jersey.
“Going into second semester, it’s like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” Becca says.
Becca will be part of the company’s Leadership Preparation Program, a two-year rotational program that will begin, for her, in Lincoln’s new digital department. She learned about the opportunity on the Career Road Trip, which she chose to attend on a whim after receiving an email from the Career Center. “I wanted to feel like I was being proactive,” she says. “I didn’t expect anything to come from it.”
Her tentative plan until that point had been to move home and pursue a career in actuarial science in New York City. She wasn’t sold, though, and she liked the culture at Lincoln and the people she met there, including Victor Taiwo ’12, the university recruiter and program manager who worked with the Career Center to set up the visit.
“She asked a question at every session we had, and it was a different question every time,” Taiwo says of Becca. “You could tell she was engaged and excited to be there, and that sparked my interest. She reached out to me within 24 hours, expressing her gratitude for getting to meet and talk to people.”
The two of them had a phone conversation, and Becca sent Taiwo her resume. Soon after that, Taiwo met with the manager of the new digital department, and Becca came to mind as an ideal candidate due to her strong analytical background as well as her interest in working with people. The manager set up a Skype interview with Becca, one she says she felt especially prepared for thanks to the Career Road Trip, during which a panelist shared that Lincoln uses behavioral interview questions.
“It’s hard to think on the spot about a time, say, you displayed leadership skills,” Becca says. “Knowing that was something I should have ready was a nice advantage.”
Just a week after that interview, Taiwo called Becca to offer her the position, which is contingent upon her maintaining a 3.0 GPA and graduating at the end of the semester. “I wasn’t expecting to hear back that soon and that far from graduation,” Becca says. “It was amazing timing, right before the holidays. That’s when your extended family is like, ‘So, what are you doing after graduation?’ It was nice to have a plan.”
