On Friday, the Career Center is hosting the Student to Professional Conference for its second year. This conference aims to give students exposure to many workshops in a day-long event to prepare them for job-searching after college. And as our rival universities continue to produce high competition, these opportunities to improve oneself are invaluable resources that students really can’t afford to miss.

Especially for our generation, qualifications for employment are steadily increasing, with job openings becoming harder to find and even harder to fill. It is now becoming seemingly impossible to find a job without having a college degree. But a degree is more out of reach than ever, not only because of the work required but also because even a student with ambition might not be able to afford a college education.

So for those lucky students who attend and finish college, they’re at a huge advantage. But there are other skills needed to be at the top of employers’ lists.

Everyday qualities that are sometimes too obvious to notice must be honed to make a good impression. Communication, for example, is one skill that cannot be taken lightly. With the increasing integration of technology into every facet of our lives, spoken and written eloquence has gone drastically downhill, and fewer students know how to construct a full sentence with proper grammar and spelling or even send e-mails that are professionally worded and written.

This is one of the biggest reasons why professional workshops and other post-graduation preparation workshops are so crucial for students to attend. While you may have a college education, you will be immediately eliminated from the list of possible candidates for a job if you send the employer an e-mail that says “ur” instead of “your.” Or even not knowing when to use “your” or “you’re.”

Attending these workshops to become aware of these slight advantages could be the difference between employment and unemployment.

So in short, take advantage of the resources available to you while you’re in college so you can learn these rudimentary syntax rules so that employers know you have a mastery of the basic communication skills before they look at your degree.