I've recently decided that I want to have a career in higher education. (Academic advisor would be my dream job.) Right now I'm in between my sophomore and junior year of college, and I don't have a lot of experience. This past year I tutored math to small groups through my school's tutor program, and I was an administrative assistant for about 6 weeks for the school's TRIO tutoring program (started after spring break). I didn't have any student contact or anything for that one - just working on organizing information about the program so a report could be made about the effectiveness of the program basically.
Besides that, I haven't done anything remotely related to higher education. (No RAing, giving campus tours, working for any student affairs type departments or anything like that.) I'm going to be studying abroad for a full year this year, so I won't be able to get any experience doing that stuff this year either. I'm hoping to get involved my senior year by signing up for this online program where you "meet" virtually once a week with a high school student and help them with getting into college, and I want to get involved with the study abroad department a little by being a peer advisor to an exchange student.
Writing this all out, I'm actually starting to feel like maybe I do (or will have) enough experience to get an assistantship, but I just feel like I'm kind of late getting the ball rolling since I didn't decide what I wanted to do until halfway through my undergrad career and I'm not sure how much the things I'm planning on doing my senior year will count since I'll be applying to programs and assistantships in the middle of that before I really get my feet under me.
Basically, I'm just wondering how much experience one usually needs to land an assistantship in higher education (especially in something like advising since that's what I'm most interested in, but I'll take anything). Is it super competitive or do most people (even those without experience) end up getting assistantships? If it matters, I'm okay with pretty much any school in the country as long as they have a decent employment rate.