By Misty Crooks

Photo by Ryan Graybill on Unsplash

Career panels and employer info sessions at the Office of Career Planning & Professional Development provide guidance on pursuing different careers as well as opportunities for students to connect with potential employers. Recent panels include Careers in Research Beyond the Tenure Track (Fall 2021) and Putting Your Grad Degree to Work in CUNY Administration (Spring 2022). To experience these firsthand, view the recording of our Fall 2021 panel Working in the World of Books and register to attend our upcoming events. Our fall 2021 slate of events got specific with tips for networking while tapping into new ideas around thinking creatively in your job search. Read on for three highlights.

Insights into Networking

Networking is a major element of a successful job search. It can also be the most stressful part of moving forward in your career. Because there is not one single method, networking can feel nebulous. Reaching out to people we don’t know can feel like cold calling. Luana Y. Ferreira, Director of Student Affairs at SUNY Bronx Educational Opportunity Center, provides some pointers. Think about how you and another person, or your two organizations, intersect. Use these intersections to create entry points to discussion. These intersections can be mutual connections, similarities in background, or aligned goals of organizations or companies you are a part of. Doing this will allow introductions and conversations to feel more natural. If you have met someone who seems good at networking, this is likely part of what they are doing. After creating a positive connection, use that connection to build more. Ask new professional contacts to introduce you to someone you want to ask for an informational interview. For more on the details of building professional relationships, check out our webinar on networking and building connections.

Connecting the Dots

Another way to utilize intersections is to mine your own experience. You can broaden your job search by naming the meta-level skills you gain in grad school. Emma Stanton at Recora Health lists problem solving and systems-level thinking as two of the main skills that candidates with graduate degrees bring to the table. As graduate students, we learn to investigate what conditions create the lay of the land. We can use this to develop innovative solutions to issues. What organization doesn’t need this? What other benefits could you bring to a job? Are there skills you have been using in your work and academic life that tend to go unnoticed in your cover letters and resumes? These could be unpaid leadership responsibilities, helping colleagues think through written work, or conducting literature reviews. You can translate the skills required for these tasks into ways to produce results for the places you want to work. See our blog post for a wealth of information about transferable skills.

Assessing Needs

An effective complement to the connect the dots approach is assessing organization needs. Lisa Millsaps-Graham at the Brooklyn College Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Recruitment advises that thinking this way helps you make a case for why you should move from candidate to hire. Some of this information can be gleaned from job descriptions, but numerous panelists and our career counselors advise thinking of a job description as a wish list. Job ads are often created with the image of the ideal candidate who doesn’t really exist. Collect job descriptions to learn the common required skills within a field. Then, combine this with extensive research into that field. Read publications and blogs written by and for people in your industry. What are the current challenges facing the field? What is the industry expected to look like in the next 10 years? Where are the opportunities for growth? Use the answers to these questions to craft cover letters, a resume, elevator pitches, and talking points for networking.

For more guidance on these tips or to think through how you can put them into practice, schedule a session with one of our career counselors.