By Anders Wallace

Vault website

As a GC student, you get free access to Vault.com. Vault is a career research website that helps you find out what it’s really like to work in a certain industry, company, or profession. In addition to helping you understand the ins and outs of the working world, Vault offers loads of tips on how to position yourself to start, advance, or change your career.This blog introduces you to some of the most popular features on Vault.com, such as career guides and other resources. It also outlines some of Vault’s newest features, like the career advice blog, video interviews with professionals, revamped “industry” and “profession” research pages, and more.

Vault’s New and Improved Content

Accessing Vault for Free

Access Vault using the Office of Career Planning & Professional Development’s institutional portal, which can be easily accessed on our tools page. Once you reach the Vault.com login page, follow the onscreen instructions to create an account. As a GC student, you get free access through the university.

Once you reach Vault’s homepage, you’ll find quick access to all of Vault’s key sections. Across the top menu bar you can find links to research companies and internships, access resources for help on all aspects of the job search process, and check out comprehensive guides on different career paths.

In the past year, Vault has been focused on creating shorter, more easily digestible content. New blog posts come out on a daily basis, and there’s a much wider selection of videos with professionals from a range of fields talking about their work experience.

Video Interviews with Industry Professionals

Videos contain interviews with professionals from a wide range of fields discussing their careers, how they became professionals, and the pleasures and challenges of their everyday lives on the job. These videos run between 10 and 20 minutes, but you can also skip to specific sections of the video that interest you if you have a more targeted question (the most popular search category among Vault users, for example, was to learn about “a day on the job”)

To access videos, hover over the “Tips & Resources” link in the top menu bar. Scroll down and click “Career Q&A Videos.” Here you can find the featured video of the day. You can also find loads of videos with experts in different fields grouped according to broader interests like “Finance,” “Arts and Design,” and “STEM.” Alternatively, click the “View all videos” link to access a comprehensive list of all their videos, which you can filter by industry or topic. Videos stream in your browser, and come with transcripts and captions.

Vault’s Career Advice Blog

What else is new? Consider checking out the Career Advice Blog (this is also accessible under the “Tips & Resources” item in the top menu bar). Blogs aren’t traditional content. Instead, they’re meant to be thought provoking. More often than not, they tackle job seeker questions that cut across fields, everything from how to answer typical interview questions to how to build your personal brand.

Industry and Profession Exploration

Consider checking out Vault’s revamped Industry and Profession pages (also under “Tips & Resources”). Under “Explore Industries,” you can find your ideal industry by searching detailed industry overviews and outlooks, explore rankings of the fastest-growing industries, and access a list of industries in alphabetical order. Under “Explore Professions,” you can discover the best profession for your skills and interests through in-depth overviews of professions in different fields. You can gain insights on the main responsibilities of each job, what the work environment is like, and what it takes to get ahead.

Vault profile pages for individual industries and professions now have more content than ever. In addition to giving you the industry background, these pages discuss current trends in the industry. This advice can be invaluable if you’re deciding whether to pursue a career. Typically, pages for individual professions give you an overview of job functions, earnings, work environment, employment prospects, current trends, and any skills, training, or accreditation you might need. Pages for industries give you an overview of the industry, and an outlook for the industry’s future growth, and professional associations that can be helpful. Also, don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of the job profile, where you can find related industries and professions that share similar characteristics.

Practical Job Search Guides

Finally, the “Tips & Resources” tab also offers four practical sections dedicated to helping you get the job: Resume Tips & Samples, Cover Letter Advice, Interview Tips & Questions, and Networking 101.

Under Networking 101, for example, you can find articles, videos, and guides on how to network more effectively and address common fears and misconceptions that may be holding you back. You can also find first-hand accounts from working professionals about how they used networking to move their career forward. There are also blog posts that relate networking to other job search issues like personal branding.

The Enduring Value of Vault’s Career Guides and Job Board

In addition to Vault’s new content, it also boasts a job board (under the menu item “Jobs” in the top menu bar). Just like other job search websites like Glassdoor and Indeed, this page lets you search a huge database according to specific criteria like job title, keyword, or location. Unlike these other sites, many employers give Vault designated job postings.

Vault itself pulls job postings from other sites like Indeed and Glassdoor. They’ve even set up an algorithm that scrapes jobs listed on companies’ own job listings page to give you the widest possible selection of openings. Don’t forget, you can sign up for job alerts to filter through the noise and get any new job posts that match your search criteria directly in your inbox.

Perhaps the most well-known feature that Vault provides are its Vault Guides. These guides give you in-depth reporting on various industries. While these guides are comprehensive – tackling everything from workplace diversity to compensation and employer culture – they tend to be best for mainstream career paths like Finance, Consulting, IT, and Media & Entertainment.

Conclusion

Hopefully these tips have been helpful in giving you a sense of all that Vault has to offer! Hop on, create your account, and enjoy. If you need advice, or if you ever want to discuss your career options with a career counselor for a more tailored approach, feel free to schedule an appointment with our advisers in GC Connect.