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A podcast out of the Office of Career Services at the University of Tampa is hoping to help students beyond campus and in their career journeys.

Madison Tarleton, assistant director of career readiness, started the podcast “Campus to Careers: A Roadmap to the Real World,” which has been available since May on Spotify.

Tarleton is a career coach, supporting junior and senior undergraduate students in their career development.

Her role, she explains, is helping students navigate different points of their college experience. She tasks students with talking to professionals in the industries of their interests and with conducting informational interviews to obtain clarity about what jobs in those fields might look like. The podcast is structured similarly to how Career Services offers other programming, with the seasons and episodes mirroring the curriculum.

“I did want it to be a little bit more mobile and a little bit more fluid, so that it could have relatability outside of just the University of Tampa,” Tarleton said.

The first season on the podcast featured Rachel Killam, senior assistant director of career exploration at UTampa.

Killam’s approach is helping students find what “makes them come alive,” or things that already interest them, that can potentially be used in their future careers.

In one episode, Killam demonstrates what an exploration appointment with Career Services looks like, which might include career mapping or whiteboarding. The episode provides a guideline of questions that may be asked, and that listeners can use to create their own blueprint for success in college.

Some examples of questions that might be asked include: Do you have a major yet? How did you pick it? Is there something you’ve thought about being a part of that’s not related to your major or interests?

“For college students specifically, the podcast will cover how ‘job seeking’ is really about becoming an expert on yourself — understanding who you are, where you are going, what’s out there and how to get there — and especially engaging intentionally in the college experience to learn these things about yourself/life after UTampa,” Killam said.

In Career Services, the coaches emphasize knowing who you are before you can pick a job or a place you want to work, Tarleton explained.

“We want students to feel really reassured about where they are in the process. We also want parents to feel reassured that the students are doing the right thing,” she said.

In the final episode of the first season, Tarleton talked to Monika Alesnik, the coordinator for leadership and competency development at the University. They talked about what competency means, why it is important and how they can help job seekers to think about their skills in a more transferable way.

Season two is in the works, Tarleton explained, and will be focused on internships: their value, how to look for them, how to find good ones and also how to translate the skills from internships to jobs and elsewhere. Episodes in season two are expected to drop during the spring semester.