UC Irvine Giving Day 2025

LinkedIn is a mainstay of employment recruiting, and our students need to make a strong showing there. The profile photo is a large part of their first impression.

Many prestigious business schools and private institutions provide professional photography services for their students to add professional headshots to their online profiles. These services are costly, slow to turn around photos, offered a few days of the year, and as mentioned, not widely available to broader ranges of students – especially those from lower economic statuses.

From, “Putting Head Shots to Work” (inside Higher Education, February 10, 2023)

1. More institutions are installing professional head-shot booths in their career centers to assist students on the job or internship hunt.
   
   
2. Some faculty members require that students visit the head-shot booth and establish LinkedIn accounts as coursework.
   
   
3. “Having a professional head shot may be more important than ever given that more interviews, and jobs, occur remotely. Every company wants to hire professionals who will represent their organizations properly, and this booth removes one of those barriers so more of our students will have professional head shots than ever before.” – Jennifer Benz, Miami University in Ohio 
   
   

Since we launched the Iris photo booth in September 2023, more than 800 students, alumni, faculty, and staff captured professional-looking head shots. This no-cost resource is offered on a self-service, drop-in basis. Our professional headshot photo booth complied with the photo guidelines for the new ZotKey Digital ID.

I loved working at the Division of Career Pathways because the work environment fostered growth. They grow in the leadership role I was in as well as career readiness skills. Everyone had my best interest at heart when it came to my plans after college and the career path I wanted. If it were not for working at the Division of Career Pathways I would not be in the PhD program that I am in now.
- Yadhira Garcia, Class of 2023 and PhD student

Your Giving Day gift to the Division of Career Pathways fund will support the annual equipment renewal costs for the Iris Photo Booth including staffing, marketing, and outreach. We THANK YOU for allowing Career Pathways to continue offering this service at no cost to the UCI community.