Want to hire a Wofford student as a part-time employee or intern for your company? The Career Center can help.

The Career Center has aided alumni and friends of the college by connecting them with students interested in job opportunities, whether that be an Interim internship in January, a summer seasonal position or a part-time in-semester role.

“We provide assistance from start to finish and can provide as much or as little support as the alum needs,” says Dr. Laura Love, director of external relations for the Career Center. “We can help from initial job description creation all the way to facilitating interview scheduling and providing space at the Career Center. We leave the hiring decision completely up to the alum and serve more of a facilitator in making the process happen.”

The Career Center allows students to track jobs and internships available for application through its website. However, the center can also help identify specific fits for a certain job opportunity with alums. 

“We discuss with the alum what qualifications they might have for their opportunity, and we work to target the appropriate students,” Love says. “Unless there is a required class year, most opportunities are sent out to all students to ensure each student has a fair opportunity at applying.”

Hiring a student at Wofford doesn’t just help the student develop critical job skills. It also helps businesses get fresh ideas, improve workflow and identify potential hires come graduation. Here are some recent experiences to illustrate that from alumni and friends of the university who have worked with the Career Center:

Chris Schwendimann ’97, Full Sail Advisors

Schwendimann connected with the Career Center to fill a position with Full Sail Advisors, a financial planning firm with offices in the Greenville-Spartanburg area as well as Asheville and Charleston. Schwendimann interviewed six students, extended offers to three and had two students accept their offer: Johnson Jolly ’25, an accounting and finance double major, and Emmett Oneil ’26, a finance and economics double major.

“The resumes I saw, I was very impressed with the caliber of students,” he said. “Whether that’s the admissions department recruiting and admitting exceptional folks or Wofford continuing to develop exceptional folks, I don’t know. But they were pretty darn impressive.”

Schwendimann says his focus is not on giving the students a task list. It’s more on offering a spectrum of financial work for them to get accustomed to – business development, planning and investment management and relationship management – and maybe even get the students certifications that will help them down the road. In the process, Schwendimann looks to identify good fits for future job opportunities.

“I’m hopeful that it will be successful enough that I can repeat the process next summer and eventually find the right full-time people to join our staff and help grow with us,” Schwendimann says.

Matthew Bolton ’81, Enhanced Systems Consulting and BankSecure Technologies

Bolton founded Enhanced Systems Consulting, a software development and integration company, in 1991, and it progressed so rapidly that in 2014 he founded a second company, BankSecure Technologies. 

“Right now, it’s primarily installed in banks and credit unions,” Bolton says. “We think it’s got applications in other areas.” 

That’s where Moa Mohammedi ’25 and Joel Gammah ’26 come in. The two students are working with Bolton during Interim to investigate different aspects of BankSecure Technologies. Mohammedi, a finance major, is focused on cost justification and price points, while Gammah, a computer science major, is going under the hood of its code to inspect things such as mobile implementation, messaging systems and notifications.

“They’re very helpful, because they do bring that clean chalkboard that doesn’t have all the minutiae that the rest of us have,” Bolton says. “So they’re not bound by what they think can be done and can’t be done.”

Bolton hired two Wofford students four years ago, and one of them went on to work with him full time at Enhanced Systems Consulting after graduation. But he says just as important as finding a potential long-term employee is helping a student “get exposure to what you think you want to do.”

David Berry, WSM Ventures, LLC - Take 5 Oil Change

Berry has been franchising Take 5 Oil Change locations for the past five years, establishing 13 locations across Augusta, Western North Carolina and the Tri-Cities area in Tennessee, though he is based in Spartanburg. He had been thinking about hiring an intern for a while before last fall, when he decided to act on it.

“I just thought, ‘Hey, there are students in town that are probably much more savvy than I am in terms of data analytics who can work to pull this together, and it would be good experience for them and it really would help us out as well,’” Berry says.

Berry initially planned to hire an intern in September and have them work throughout the fall semester. Hurricane Helene threw a wrench in that plan. But the Career Center made the rest of the process seamless, and by October he had more help than initially expected.

“It was awesome. I reached out to [Career Center executive director] Curt McPhail and then he connected me with Laura. We put together a job description, posted it. I think we wound up having nine or 10 candidates apply,” Berry says. “Originally, we were just planning to bring on one. I think I interviewed six at the Career Center – they were able to accommodate the space – and then we wound up hiring two of them.”

The students oversee different areas for Berry. Earth Patel ’25, a computer science major, is assisting Berry by pulling data and analyzing reports among other duties, while Caleb Hack ’27, a finance major, is evaluating new business opportunities and running financial analysis on income statements.

These types of successes are very common feedback that the Career Center receives from those who hire Wofford students.

“We’ve heard from alumni that Wofford students are extremely impressive, and it’s first evident from their resumes and even more so when they have the opportunity to speak with students,” Love says. “Most of the alumni and employers I work with are looking to recruit more Wofford students as a result of a past interaction with a Wofford student.”

If you are interested in working with the Career Center to hire a student for an internship or part-time work, reach out to Love at lovels@wofford.edu. Love also says it’s worthwhile for alumni to establish a connection with the Career Center even if they’re unsure if they have a position to offer at this time.

“If you know you at least want to give back to students, even if it’s not in the form of a formal position, but if it’s simply allowing a shadowing opportunity, just reach out to me to start the conversation,” Love says.