A group on campus is working to help students maximize their potential, develop career skills and achieve their goals.
This evening, Southwestern Advantage LEAD program will be holding a seminar entitled, "Making Decisions to Maximize Your Career Freedom."

Wilson Smith, one of the five campus leaders for the program at West Virginia University will lead the seminar.
Southwestern Advantage started in 1855 as a summer program for students, but has evolved into an organization that now helps in-school students throughout the world through the LEAD Program.

Its main mission is to be the strongest organization in the world by helping young people develop the skills and character they need in life to reach their goals.

Anthony Hendrickson, another LEAD program campus leader, said the seminar is free to students and runs about an hour long.

"We really like to focus on is relationships because relationships (are) business, and we make sure at every seminar we do icebreakers that are really intuitive and help students open up to information.

"It kind of opens their minds up to what we will be teaching prior to the seminar," Hendrickson said.

"One thing that almost all college students believed coming into college is that they would end up with a better career than they would have otherwise, so basically the seminar will be about how to take what you learn in college and set yourself up for a path for success to reach that ultimate career that you want to get to."

Hendrickson said one of the ways they teach some of the skills is by talking about the job interview – how to look at job offers and then look at the other side, too, including how companies view students while they are going through the interview process.

"We try to actually prepare students for interviewers, like what they’re looking for and the top personality traits that interviewers hire for, which is professionalism, high-energy, confidence, self-monitoring and intellectual curiosity," he said. "At the end there will be an entire section about actual decision-making and how that affects everything you do and how to make better decisions. Ultimately, our goal here is to add as much value as we possibly can to every student we meet."

Wilson Smith, campus leader of LEAD Program, said the overall mission of the LEAD Program is to help many students on campus develop themselves so they can reach their skills and goals outside of college life.

"We try to help students develop things that are considered soft skills – transferable skills.

"Everything from communication to managing personal relationships, money management and the things they will need to succeed that they may not necessarily have a class on," Smith said.

Smith said the LEAD Program holds seminars each week. Some of the previous seminars include "Physical Fitness," "How to Connect in 90 Seconds" and "Financial Peace."

"Students have the option to come meet with us one-on-one to talk about some of the things they learned at the seminars, but also it’s like having a success coach; they get to meet with us once a week and kind of talk about their goals and how they are progressing," Smith said. "We give them tools they can use on a daily basis to help them with the information they learn during the weekly seminars, but also it’s a tool to hold them accountable for their outside goals from everything like how much time should they spend studying for class to how to get along with their roommates."