OU’s Career Center and Food Pantry will host its Career Closet on Friday to provide students, faculty and staff with professional clothing for interviews and job opportunities this recruitment season.
The Career Closet will carry a range of styles and sizes of donated clothing, keeping with its mission of giving the community the resources it needs to succeed.
“We expect the clothes to be in really good shape so that you don’t have to take them to go get cleaned and do different things like that because access to those types of things can be difficult sometimes,” said Kelsey Brown, event coordinator for the Career Center. “They need to be in as near perfect shape as we can possibly get them to hand them over to you.”
The Career Closet accepts both new and used clothing, though shoes are not currently accepted. Donations are welcome year-round and can be dropped off at the OU Food Pantry.
“The response from donors is honestly always incredible,” Brown said. “It seems like every time that we have one of our Career Closet days, our inventory is completely gone … and somehow, between August and January, we have so many people still continuing to bring us clothes.”
Donors include alum, faculty and community members. Recently, engineering firm Garver partnered with the Career Center to host a clothing drive, demonstrating a way local businesses can get involved.
“It’s not the same people every time,” Brown said. “It’s people all over the community that are hearing about this through word of mouth, one way or another, and are going, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that they did that.’”
Beyond clothing donations, the event is funded by the Career Center and OU Food Pantry, but some costs have diminished because much of the equipment has been purchased in previous semesters.
“Because we’ve been doing this now for almost two years, the investment on our end, for the most part, is pretty low,” Brown said. “Each semester, if there are certain things that we see that are really big deficits, like a white button down shirt, we try to get those in every size and in men’s and women’s, so that (students) at least have this one staple that you should have in your closet.”
Although the recent severe weather could have an effect on attendance or donations, Brown said she still expects students to be motivated to attend the event.
“Students are incredibly efficient when they want something, and I think that this is important enough that the opportunity of showing up outweighs any type of weather or cold,” Brown said.
Brown also added that the Career Closet shows how dedicated the office is to supporting students.
“I think that this is another way to show … how deeply we care about the students and how with the career fairs and any type of professional development that you have, we want you to feel incredibly confident going into any of those situations,” Brown said.
The Career Closet is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday at the OU Food Pantry.
This story was edited by Madisson Cameron and Audrey McClour. Ryan Little and Tori Pham copy edited this story.
