Barbara Hundley (right) at 1996 Career Information Day with Claudia Delestowicz

1.  Why did you start the ACC?
During the 1980's , the Executive Director of the Illinois Alumni Association, Lou Liay traveled the country to various cities where alumni were living and one of the questions he often asked at those alumni gatherings was "What can your Alumni Association do for you?" He heard over and over the resounding response that alumni need career assistance and help with jobs. Lou Liay is responsible for the creation of the center.  He sought funding from then, University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry, and I was hired in November 1987. I remember both of those distinguished gentlemen telling me "Go up and make it work". Thus the Alumni Career Center got its start in the old Roosevelt Road Building, and after 4 moves to better locations in Chicago still today is meeting the original goals and missions to serve graduates from all three of our campuses.
 
2.  What did you focus in the early days?
In the beginning we focused on marketing and outreach. Getting the word out and adopting a theme of "if you build it, they will come" and thus they did. Outreach Programs were put into place and I traveled around the state of Illinois in connection with the Office of State Wide Programming under the direction of Charlie Evans promoting the Alumni Career Center and giving four hour seminars on career management issues for the alumni who attended.  I truly became a career coach assisting alumni in the office and on the road with their career management issues.  My responsibility was to empower graduates to identify their skill sets and put them in front of career tools for a successful job search. We had huge numbers that we were serving and I remember when five major corporations in the Chicago area let go hundreds of employees all at the same time. We provided assistance both at our center and at their work places as consultants. I feel we taught some of the best classes and mentoring techniques to assist our alumni that were outstanding. My motto was "Its Networking or its Not working" and I taught the four C's....Communicating, Connecting, Collaborating and Corresponding.
 
3.  How did recruiting and the job search change during your term as Director?
In 1987 we had one typewriter and a lot of cardboard boxes for our library. The paper files soon went into an electronic database, "The Alumni Networking File". We were lucky to receive some funding and purchased computers for the library and installed a electronic resume referral program assisting both the job seeker and the employers. We spent a lot of time in recruiting the recruiter which meant I went out to meet with hiring representatives all over the state to convince them reasons why they should hire our alumni. I remember one gentlemen said to me when I meet him for our meeting..."You are gonna hit me up for money, aren't you?" I said, "no ... the contrary, I’m going to help you with your hiring needs and share with you information about the placement program for Illinois Alumni." It was fantastic and it grew and grew.  During my time at the Alumni Career Center, we hosted many seminars, job search programs and job fairs all geared toward University of Illinois graduates. .  We were known all over the world, thus I became a consultant travelling to other parts of the USA to share comments about our services. There were paper job listings in ring binders and that largely went away and job lists and career planning tools all went on line, thus a virtual career center was born.
 
4. What are you most proud of?
The fact that the program is in place, strong as ever, and still assisting alumni and employers make their match is a major accomplishment after 25 years. In 1999, Chancellor Aiken asked me to accept a position on the Urbana campus as Associate Chancellor for Alumni Relations, thus I had to say goodbye to a program that I created. During my tenure we received several awards for our program, one in particular which was an honor to go to Boston, MA. to accept from CASE, Council on Advancement and Support of Education.  Many other schools tried to copy our program and some did, but did not progress thru the new stages like we did.  We are the only one in the country and that is a great accomplishment for me and Lou Liay, who provided the direction in the beginning.  The economy is in a rough time as we all know and the jobs issue is a major focus for our Presidential candidate campaigns like it was during other years we assisted our alumni and now it is pretty awesome for our recent graduates and seasoned job seekers to have a virtual career center to use and get assistance for their career management issues.  I am extremely pleased with the staff that I hired, the alumni that I assisted and the promise that the Alumni Career Center is thriving well.

Barbara Hundley served as the UIAA Alumni Career Center's first Director, from November 1987 to June 2000