As a UMBC graduate, you remain an essential part of our Retriever community. The UMBC Career Center is here to support your career development and hiring needs, whether you’re navigating a job search, making a career change, or looking to hire top talent.
All listed services are available at no cost unless otherwise stated.
For services with associated fees, payments can be made by check or credit card (American Express, Discover, Visa, or MasterCard) in person or via our online checkout page/CASHNet.
Individual Appointments
We offer career appointments both in-person (Math/Psych 201), virtually via Handshake, and by phone (410-455-2216). Appointments can be scheduled:
📅 Online via Handshake
📞 By phone at 410-455-2216
🏢 In-person at the Career Center (Math/Psych 201)
Recent UMBC graduates (within 6 months of graduation): Free unlimited appointments.
Alumni beyond 6 months post-graduation: One free appointment, with additional 60-minute sessions available for $30 each.
Need career support? We’re here for you!
Some topics you may want to discuss during your appointment are:
- Clarifying career interests and values
- Identifying skills and strengths
- Identifying resources to research employers
- Determining a course of action for your job search
- Writing effective cover letters and resumes
- Developing a career portfolio
- Preparing and practicing for interviews
- Learning to negotiate your salary and evaluating job offers
- Navigating the graduate school application process
FOCUS 2
FOCUS 2 is a self assessment tool designed to provide users with personalized career and education exploration and planning services. It assesses your:
- Work Interests
- Skills
- Values
- Personality
- Leisure Interests
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® – Offered by the UMBC Career Center
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) is an instrument that can help you understand personality and preferences that influence your decision making style. The MBTI can enhance understanding of yourself, your motivations, your natural strengths and your potential areas of growth. The MBTI ® inventory can help you understand how you interact with others and are perceived by others. The results can measure your preference in four areas:
- Where you prefer to focus your attention and get energy
- Your preferred way of taking in information
- Your preferred way of making a decision
- How you orient yourself in relation to the outer world
Taking the MBTI ® allows you to develop an understanding of your personal traits and to become aware of the interrelationship between self and occupational choice.
Learn your MBTI type, when you operate at your best, and when you are most competent, natural and energetic. This knowledge about yourself can help you make better-informed decisions and career choices. Knowing your personality type can help with career planning at every stage, for example, when advancing in your organization or making a career change.
The fee for this assessment along with the corresponding appointment for interpretation is $30.
Handshake Account
Handshake is UMBC’s online system for job seekers. Included are full-time, entry-level and experienced-level positions. In addition, Handshake gives you access to a comprehensive calendar of career events.
Recent UMBC graduates have a Handshake account prepopulated by Registrar data feed, and you can simply log in with your myUMBC single-sign-on credentials to activate the account. If Handshake does not find an existing account for you, using single-sign-on or your UMBC email address (in the username1@umbc.edu format), you can sign up for an account:
- If you sign up with your UMBC email address the new account request will automatically be approved. Note, that because you are signing up manually you will need to always log in using your email address and Handshake password. You will not be able use the myUMBC single-sign-on method unless you return to UMBC as a registered student in the future (i.e. your account is auto-updated by the Registrar data feed), or you contact the Career Center to add your Campus ID to your Handshake account to allow for single-sign-on authentication.
- If you sign up with a non-UMBC personal email address (gmail, yahoo, etc.), your account request will be sent to a pending bin and a Career Center staff member will need to review and approve it. If you don’t receive approval within 2 business days you can email careers@umbc.edu to check on the status.
If you are having trouble with your job search we urged you to schedule an appointment with a career specialist to review current job search strategies and to receive recommendations for the most effective practices of branding, networking and resource utilization. We strongly suggest that job search candidates utilize a variety of methods to conduct an effective job search and not focus exclusively on online resources.
Workshops & Job Fairs
Retrievers Connect
The Career Center, in partnership with the Office of Alumni Engagement, is pleased to offer Retrievers Connect – a networking platform just for the UMBC community. You can connect with other alumni for career discussions, advice, and new contacts. There are filters to search the database on industry, major, location, topic of interest, student organization, sport, and identity information. The platform also gives alumni the chance to share their expertise with students and other graduates.
Career Center Website
Our website includes access to resources such as online workshops, job resources, and links to related sites and publications, including Vault (virtual career library) and FOCUS 2. For access to these tools and more go to our Tool Kit.