Read Transcript

• Job Searching in Uncertain Times: Smart Strategies for Success (for Non-Academic Jobs)

  [REBECCA SCHRAMM, CO-PRESENTER]:00:03 Hi everyone, welcome. So glad you could join today’s workshop on job searching in uncertain times. Smart strategies for success. We’ll be talking about the non-academic job search. My name is Rebecca Schramm and I am with the Office of Career Planning and Professional Development here at the GC. And I’m joined by my colleague Emily Seamone today who you will hear from in a little bit. So today’s session is designed for master’s students, PhD students, postdocs, alums as well who are exploring different career paths outside of academia. Whether that means industry, government, nonprofit or other professional roles and either already in their job search or just starting in their job search for roles. So over the next 75 minutes or so we’re going to talk a little bit about how to search effectively in an uncertain market. What you can control, how to stay focused and how to position yourself strategically. And I know job searching right now can feel pretty daunting. The good news is that there are ways to approach it that can make a difference and that’s what we’ll be focusing on in our conversation today. Okay, just a little bit about our office. We offer one-to-one career advising appointments which you can schedule on Handshake. It’s also the home of a pretty extensive job board and events listing. We also offer career events. We have information sessions that we promote on our events page. We have a really robust website, blogs and resources and we have tons of workshops and webinars just like this one. We’re actually recording today’s presentation. It will be available on our website along with 45 plus previously recorded webinars from our office. We invite you to explore and we’re going to be sharing all materials with you today within a week of the program by email and you’ll also be able to find them right on our website. To share with you a little bit, our career planning guide is available on our website, provides guidance and samples of resumes, cover letters, other application materials as well as tips on interviewing, networking, career exploration and applying to grants. And our Alumni Aloud podcast features 100 plus GC alums in a huge range of roles and fields, academic roles, non-academic roles and they are sharing with you in those podcasts a little bit about what you can do in your degree program and beyond to transition into different roles and prepare yourself effectively. One more resource that we wanted to point out today for people who are joining us and are perhaps more familiar with an academic career and academic job search, you’ll find information on our website about two really great career exploration tools. The first one is called Imagine PhD. The second one is called myIDP. So if you’re just starting to think about possibilities beyond academia, these are excellent places to begin. You can take some of the assessments that are in these platforms and actually come in and meet with us here at the Center to talk a little bit about your findings. Okay, we’re going to start with a poll. I’m going to drop the poll into the chat and you can just answer in the chat. This will give us a little bit of a sense of just where you are in your job search process. I’m going to go ahead and drop the question and I’ll read it out. So just where are you in your job search process? Are you just beginning? Are you researching and networking? Are you applying? Are you interviewing? Are you in your final stages or offer stages? So for those of you that are here with us today, just drop into the chat where you are. We see applying coming in. It’s great that you’re in that stage. We’ll see if anybody else responds. And the research phase, really important phase of the job search process. It’s usually the very start and I see that some of you are just beginning. So you’re really in the right place today. Thank you so much. And for those of you that are maybe already in the process, just beginning, already applying, it would be just great to hear maybe what’s your biggest challenge so far. So if you want to just share, is it figuring out what you want to do, finding those relevant opportunities that you want to apply for? Is it tailoring materials effectively? Is it actually landing the interviews from the application or staying motivated and confident through the search? If you’re open to sharing in the chat, just what are you finding are some of the bigger challenges that you’re facing? Okay, so where to find those opportunities? The right places to look, maybe the right people to talk to. So tailoring materials effectively, that can definitely be challenging. Also getting interviews, yes. Really what the job search is about, right? Landing interviews. And also staying motivated and confident, which is really normal. It can be a very vulnerable process, right? With a lot of 05:00 highs and lows. So thank you so much for sharing where you are. We’ll try to touch on all those pieces today. Okay, Emily, we can move forward. So just wanted to ground this conversation in a quick look of what’s sort of happening in the broader market. And this is some information pulled from CNN Business and the Economic Policy Institute. So recent data shows the job market’s certainly been slowing down. In August, only about 22,000 jobs were added, which was below expectations. And in June, we saw the first month of negative job growth in four years. And unemployment is ticking up a bit. So behind these numbers, of course, are several trends. Inflation, tariffs, shifts in the immigration workforce, and general uncertainty about the economy. And of course, we know the federal workforce has been hit extremely hard by cuts. Emily, if you want to move to the next slide. And then recent data shows that job losses have been most pronounced in the professional and business services industries, the federal government, trade, manufacturing, and construction. But there are some encouraging signs in parts of the economy. Healthcare, obviously really always a growing part of the sector. Social assistance, a lot of that requires services as well as childcare, and also leisure and hospitality. So I don’t share some of these numbers with you to make you anxious. Just to emphasize, it’s not you. If you feel like your job search is maybe slower or more unpredictable than you’ve experienced in the past, or especially that you expected or anticipated at this time, a lot of it is the market. And understanding the context can maybe help you adapt and strategize a little more effectively. So with that in mind, what we want to focus on is really what’s in your control. So when things feel uncertain, it’s certainly easy for all of us to focus on what’s out of our control. Hiring freezes, changing budgets, layoffs, timelines that might be delayed. But the most successful job seekers tend to put their energy into what they can control. So here’s a little bit of what that could look like. So your mindset, finding ways to stay positive and persistent, even when results take time. And I think relying on others, whether it’s working with a counselor or an advisor here in the office, getting other support from friends, family, or other services at the GC. So really working on your mindset. Also your effort, dedicating consistent time each week toward the search. We’ll touch on this a bit, but it’s great to think about your job search processes a part of your week. So how many hours per week are you going to have to put toward it? What do you do each day of those weeks to move yourself forward? And to kind of come out of a cycle of just looking at jobs and applying and worrying. Your flexibility, also just being open to different kinds of roles that maybe use your skills in new ways. Also your preparation and research, such an essential part of your search. Knowing your field, understanding what the employers are looking for, your networking and your strategy, a lot of that is in your control, right? So building relationships rather than just applying online, your interview readiness, knowing how to tell your career story, that’s really, really important to do that confidently, right, and fluently. And that can take practice. And finally, your follow-up. So after a conversation, after an event you go to, after an interview, what are you doing to stay in touch and maintain or build relationships? Those are little things that can make a really big difference in a search. So it can help to reframe the job search a little bit rather than thinking about it as looking for a job. You can think a little bit about it as managing a professional project, and you are in charge of the timeline, the strategy, and how you tell your story. So here’s where we’re headed today. So we’re going to start with job search preparation, how to get ready before you even start applying. We’ll cover how to develop a job search plan, how to update your materials. We’ll explore different job search methods beyond the online postings, so networking, connecting with recruiters, and some creative strategies you might not have tried before. We’re also going to share some examples of outreach messages and sample timelines and tools you can use, and then we’ll end with a summary and next steps. Okay, so let’s start with job search preparation. Now, this is a little bit of what a typical job search may look like in real time. So from the moment you hit submit on an application to your first day on a job, that whole process can take anywhere from four to 20 weeks or more. And so we have a little bit of a timeline map to give you a sense of what you might expect or could expect. So often weeks one through four, that’s preparing your materials, doing your research, creating a plan for yourself. Like what does your day-to-day look like when you say 10:00 you’re going to network? What does that look like? How much time are you spending on job applications versus follow-up or other activities? And to start building your target list of organizations you’d like to be at and also people you’d hope to connect with. Then we’ve got one to four weeks of conducting informational interviews, starting to apply to postings, starting to maybe go physically right to events and programs where you may meet people. Then we have about one to six weeks of participating in first, second, or third round interviews. We don’t often hear more than three rounds, but more rounds is actually becoming quite common. And there can be one to two weeks or even more in between those stages and phases. So that’s another part of this process that can be a little bit lengthy. From there, it can take one to two weeks to even receive an offer, and it can take some time to negotiate an offer. That’s something you’re going about with an employer. And from there, it can take another one to two weeks to sometimes get that written offer from the human resources department to sign and send it back. And from there, you might start immediately, but you may be in another role that you need to give some notice for. So maybe it would take up to a month to even start that new role. So altogether, that can be five months or more, start to finish, which is just important to know and to plan for if you haven’t experienced this kind of search before. And we like to show this because it just helps to normalize the pacing of a search. A lot of people expect results very quickly or in a few weeks can get very demotivated if they’re not hearing back and start to feel discouraged. But job searches are more of a marathon than a sprint. And we typically share that one can expect a job search to take, I think, at least six months, especially in a challenging market. Okay. So before you even start applying, though, it’s really essential to know three things. The first thing is to know yourself. So what are your key skills? What are your accomplishments? What are your strengths? What makes you unique? What’s the story you want people to associate with who you are and what you do, right? So to really know yourself and to know what you’re looking for, which is the second thing. So what kind of work really energizes you? What fields or industries do you want to be in? What kind of work environments do you really thrive in? What values do you want an organization to hold that you work for? Even things like location, right? Job title, salary range, to really know what you’re aiming for. And finally, the third thing is to really know your field and your occupation. So what are employers actually looking for? What keywords appear most often in the job descriptions? What are people looking for that maybe aren’t in those job descriptions based on your conversations you hopefully are having or going to have with people in the field? And what trends are shaping the field right now? Sort of what’s happening right now that you’re going to be able to speak to and align yourself with on an interview. Okay. So if you’ve come to some of our workshops before, you may have seen some of these exercises. For those who are new, we like to lay them out. The one that we recommend is to record your past experiences. You don’t need to do this on your resume. Just grab a pen and paper, head to a cafe, go to the library, and think about what are the research, teaching, internship, and service roles you’ve had? List the skills you use and actually what you accomplished in those experiences. And if you’re thinking about accomplishments, think about the impact that you had. Where did you make change? Where did you make things better? Where did you come up with a more efficient way of doing something? What were you recognized for? Then you’re going to notice some of the patterns you see. And this is just the beginning of your career narrative. We’ll send this exercise today, but what you’ll end up with is a list of your core skills and strengths. This is a little bit of what that exercise looks like. So let’s just take a pause right now. And if you would be open in the chat, type just one skill you’ve gained from one of your jobs or educational experiences that you think will be helpful in your next role. Those can be things like strong interpersonal skills, strong communication skills. Maybe it’s a hard skill, a technical skill that you have. So what’s one of your strengths that you know will be helpful in your next job? All right, we have attention to detail. Great. Customer service skills. Let’s see if anything else comes up, but that’s an amazing start. I’ll keep my eye on the chat. Okay. 

  [EMILY SEAMONE, CO-PRESENTER] And it could be even skills that you’re gaining right now. 

  [REBECCA] Yes, that’s a great point. It doesn’t have to be a past skill. It can be a present skill. All right. Well, that’s coming in. If you want to head to the next slide, Emily. So once you’ve clarified those interests, those strengths, you want to learn more about your target fields, your audience,15:00 right? So a simple but pretty powerful exercise is just to collect three to five job postings for roles you can imagine yourself in, right? You’re going to highlight the desired skills, knowledge, and experiences, make a list of repeated skills and words, and compare those just back to your own list. You can circle matches, underline gaps. That’s where you might need to grow or get creative. And this kind of analysis helps you speak the employer’s language and guides your materials a little bit later. Okay. So sorry, I’m battling a cold. Give me one moment. We also have Excel pivot tables that came in. That’s a great skill. All right. So you can take your research further by talking to real people who work in fields or roles that you’re actually interested in. We’ll talk about how to do this in a little bit, but after you’ve done all the online job searching and readiness you can, starting to reach out to people who are actually doing the kinds of work you want to be doing or work in an industry that interests you is really helpful. You can ask if they have time for a short informational interview, just 20 to 30 minutes, sharing insights about their career path, what work looks like day to day, what skills are most valued, how hiring trends happen in the field, what trends are shaping the industry right now. These conversations are helpful on a variety of levels, but they definitely help to identify your alignment with certain roles, but also gaps in skills and experiences that, you know, it’s sort of figuring out from there what are some of the bigger gaps and what’s a longer term plan maybe for filling them, but we’ll also touch on some of the shorter term possibilities for building those skill sets and closing those gaps. Okay. So after talking to people, you find some gaps in your analysis, maybe software, project management, program management, communication skills. There are many ways to fill them. We have a list here of MOOCs, online learning platforms, on top of the skills you can, of course, build here at the GC with the many resources that are available to you, but you can also build skills experientially. So maybe you’re taking on a new volunteer project or you’re already involved in something and you can tweak the role just a teeny bit, right, to build a skill. Maybe there are some collaborations you could initiate. Maybe you could create your own small scale initiative or project, right, to build and showcase that skill. So these experiences really show some outside the box thinking and they make great stories for interviews and resumes. So building some of those skills experientially is something we often work with students around. So rather than feeling stuck, you can sort of think about maybe what’s one concrete way I can start to close this gap in just a few months. Maybe we can’t close it entirely, but focusing on skill gap completion is something that can be actually incorporated into your job search strategy week to week. Okay. And I also see another skill that came in here, vendor management, which is excellent. Okay. So once you’re clear about what you offer and also where you want to go, it’s time to dust off those job search materials and come up with a plan. So I’d love to hear from anyone just an idea you initially have just right now, one thing you think you maybe could do this month to either prepare yourself more fully for the job search, or maybe it’s something you’ve been thinking about doing, but avoiding, we all do it. And that could be, you know, updating your materials, scheduling an informational interview, finding an event to go to, maybe getting a book out on a particular topic. So as we jump into the plan and materials, just one thing you’re maybe thinking about doing or know you need to do for your job search that you want to start moving on after today. Okay. So networking and informational interviews. Yes, we will talk a little bit about that. It’s usually the hardest thing for people. And it makes a lot of sense why, but it’s also one of the most effective pieces of a job search. So it’s great to see that. And updating your application material. Excellent. Okay. Let’s give one more second for anything else that might come in. Okay. 20:00 We’re going to talk about both of those pieces today, and I’ll actually turn it over to Emily now.

  [EMILY] Okay, great. Thank you, Rebecca. All right. So as Rebecca was just mentioning, you can come up with different tasks and come up with a job search plan to help you stay on target and know where you should best devote your time and energy because the job search can feel like a full-time job. It’s really helpful to break it down a little bit for yourself. So you might create a job search system to manage it all. For example, you could keep records of employers that you send resumes to, your contacts, research on potential employers, any other items related to your search. You could use a binder, paper, computer files, or Excel spreadsheets, whatever works best for you. And you may also want to write out your specific job search goals, tasks, and when you plan to complete those goals if you think that would be helpful to kind of keep yourself going. And it may also make it feel a little bit more manageable and this all depends, again, on knowing yourself, what’s worked for you in the past when it comes to projects. And I know a lot of students don’t think of their work as project management, but that’s essentially what it is. You can think of your job search a little bit about in the same way. What do you need to stay organized and motivated? And once you’re clear on the types of jobs you will target, you’ll want to also update your job search materials and tools. Rebecca was mentioning this. We have a library of past webinar recordings on best practices for resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles, which you can listen to at any time. And we’ll include those links in our follow-up email over the next week. In addition, we are happy to meet with you in person or virtually to review all your materials and talk about your personal situation and background and what might be best for you. You may also want to put together a portfolio of work examples, such as writing samples, presentations, photos, videos, or other creative work. And note that this typically depends on the field that you’re targeting. So when you complete the gap analysis, gap skills analysis exercise that Rebecca just went over, you can just take note if any of the job postings are requesting such materials. Many of them do not. But then again, if there’s like, say, sometimes we see for non-academic jobs that grad students apply to, there could be a writing sample request. You may also want to put together an elevator pitch, which is essentially a two to three sentence introduction to who you are and what you’re interested in professionally. And this can be helpful, especially as you’re meeting people, but also even when you’re writing emails and introductions. It could be helpful to have business cards ready. It sounds a little old fashioned, but people do still use them, especially in person. And finally, you can begin to think about three references you will list if employers request people that they can speak to who know your past work and educational experiences. So you may have already done some of this. And while we do not have time in this presentation to dive into best practices for resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles, on this slide, we’ve listed a few general tips for these items. And as we mentioned earlier, we have workshop recordings on each of these topics. And in fact, we will have a cover letter workshop coming up in November, which we’ll share in a bit. So here you can think about some general best practices or prioritizing relevant experience and skills to fit within standard page lengths, especially for the resume and cover letter. So you’re really identifying the best strategy for your background and target jobs, and then you can apply that strategy to your resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profile. So that may include coming up with specific sections that will, on your resume, that will really highlight and pull out your skills and make it really easy for the employer to quickly digest what is it that you offer, what are your strengths, and get that across within the first 10 seconds or less. A lot of students will end up creating master templates for each career area or type of role to which they’re applying. So a template resume and cover letter, if you’re applying to, say, three different types of jobs or areas, you might have three different templates ready based on the research you’ve already done, especially kind of that collecting different 25:00 job postings within each area and then kind of seeing what are the keywords and skills that are continually asked for. That way, as the next bullet point says, when you go to tailor your resume and cover letter to each specific job, you can pull up that field or career area’s template and you’ve already done a lot of your work. Now you’re just quickly going through that one particular job posting and looking for, okay, what’s a little different here than the other job postings for similar type of roles and making a few tweaks, but you won’t feel like you’re rewriting every cover letter and resume, which, as you know, can get to be a lot of work. So for tailoring, you really want to focus on the match between the job requirements and your background, consider the field and company, and incorporate keywords for the position and field. So note that a lot of that you will have already taken care of if you set up those templates. And then once you’re satisfied with your resume content, you can literally copy your bullet points from your resume into your LinkedIn experience section. You can, LinkedIn, because it’s not length-based, you can add more if you feel like you have to cut from your resume. You still don’t want 20 bullet points, but LinkedIn does collapse the sections, so you can add more to it. And then, of course, you can customize your About, Headline, and Skills sections to match kind of the target career areas. It does get a little tricky because you can’t have different LinkedIn profiles for different audiences. So if you are concerned about that because you’re targeting different areas, we’d be happy to discuss that with you a bit more. For additional help with your materials, you can schedule an appointment with us. You can review blog posts on our website. You can listen to the past webinars in our webinar recording section, which we mentioned. And, of course, you can register for our upcoming webinar on the cover letter, which is on November 12th. And we’ll send that around to you again in our follow-up email. You may also want to practice interviewing once you start applying for jobs so that you are ready when an employer contacts you for an actual interview. And you could do this by scheduling a mock interview appointment with us. You can practice on your own. Some people even practice by recording themselves on their phones. You can practice with others. You can practice with AI interview platforms. We’ve listed some here. And we also have a recorded webinar on this topic. So where does one find job opportunities to apply to? And it sounds like some of you are already have been in the works of that or have already been in that phase. So I’m wondering where you all have been finding jobs, if you just want to drop that into the chat real quickly. We’ll just get a sense of the different ways people have been finding. Handshake, LinkedIn. Great. LinkedIn, Glassdoor. Wonderful. Those are good kind of broad, kind of encompassing all different field websites. Herc. Okay, HERC is what we would call a little more specialized, field-specific. That’s great. If anybody hasn’t heard of that, that’s higher education. I’m forgetting what the R is. Then I think consortium, but basically higher education. LinkedIn CUNY websites. Great, great. Going directly to the source. If you want to work for a specific school or organization, going to their website. Okay, specific newsletters. Good. Arts Roundtable, Rachel Mead. That’s a great one. Yes. Okay, so here we are getting a little more specific to field-specific type of jobs. Higher ed jobs, CUNY jobs, Chronicle. Okay, good. Other examples that are field-specific. Wonderful. Okay, great. Those are all good examples. Okay, so finding jobs. You all have probably heard of these primary methods for finding jobs. Basically networking, online job postings, and recruiters or headhunters is another term. We’ll talk about that a little bit. Career fairs. You may have noticed or notice now percentages next to each of these methods. And while percentages, these percentages can vary depending on the resource. You can see that by and large, maybe not surprisingly, networking is deemed the best method for landing jobs. That is 60 to 90% of jobs are thought to be secured through networking or connections. The more 30:00 specialized the job, the more you will need to rely on networking. And even though online job postings and recruiters and career fairs may only be responsible for 10 to 40% of jobs or how jobs are secured, that is still a fairly decent amount. So therefore, we do encourage everyone to use as many of these job methods as possible, kind of trying to vary them as much as possible, especially in a challenging job market. However, you just want to keep in mind how much time you are spending in each area. If you’re finding yourself heavily investing vast majority of your time in these methods that are only probably going to yield a smaller return on investment, then you want to rethink that a little bit. Where does everybody, if you want to drop in the chat, where you think you’re spending most of the time on your job search tasks right now, if you are in that process? Online postings, okay, great. Thank you for being honest. And that’s, by the way, where usually people are spending the majority of their time. So very understandable and common. And yes, people do still get jobs that way.

  [REBECCA] Yeah, I wanted to share, you know, online postings can be helpful when you have maybe like the direct experience related to the role and or you have done that exact thing before. You know, that’s maybe a higher likelihood of getting a response from an online posting or you’ve worked for a competitor organization, right? It’s definitely possible. But something we also share is like once a position is posted online, organizations and people on teams probably already have, that’s taken a while to get that posted. They’ve probably already known the role is going to be open or someone on their team is leaving and they probably already started to reach out to their network and connect with people who might be a good fit for the role. So that’s why, you know, part of why networking is so important.

  [EMILY] Great. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So let’s dive into each of those. So for networking, most experts agree that the most effective strategy for securing jobs is networking, as we’ve said, and the majority of jobs are said to be secured this way. So having a connection at a organization can be extremely beneficial in landing interviews for jobs, or at least perhaps getting looked at. Sometimes we don’t even know if they’re looking at everybody. In some different organizations, like say CUNY, a public institution, there are a lot more rules for reviewing and showing that you have indeed reviewed every application, but that’s not always the case for a lot of organizations. So let’s talk more about how to reach out to your network and expand your connections really quickly, which is essentially what we mean by networking. By the way, we do have a webinar recording just on this topic. So we’re just going to be going over kind of high level tips. So networking is building, maintaining long-term relationships for mutual benefit. And today’s work world will be absolutely must cultivate and maintain a network throughout our entire career, not just when we need a job. But when we’re starting out our career, we have to start somewhere. So starting to network now while you are a student will be extremely beneficial to you in the long run. In addition, networking allows you to tap into the hidden job and internship market, meaning finding out about jobs that are not posted. And some experts estimate that around 40% of jobs are never posted. So if you want to get in there and be one of those people that are already considering before they even post the job, this is, networking is the way to go. And through networking, you can gain insider information and beneficial knowledge about the field, about companies and organizations and search strategies, even specific to that organization. And through networking, you can also be introduced to others in the field, which is really key. So first you can start with who you know, you could touch base with friends, family, professors, classmates, alumni about any jobs that they may be aware of. If you already are on LinkedIn, you most likely have mass many connections. It sounds like a lot of you are. And what organizations you can consider, what organizations do your connections work at? Are any of interest? Are there any jobs at these companies? And then second, you can expand your network by targeting organizations where you’re interested in working. You can do this by setting up informational interviews, which we’re going to talk about more in the next slide. You can also use your connections to get introduced to others. For example, if you see a LinkedIn connection is connected to someone working at an organization, or in other words, one of your second degree 35:00 connections, you could ask your friend to introduce you to this individual. So I’m wondering if anybody has ever gotten a job or a project or something in the past through networking or a connection, and you can just drop that in the chat if you have. Oh, wow, great. So we have people who, oh, a lot of yeses.

  [REBECCA] Yeah, I would say if it worked before, it’ll work again, most likely.

  [EMILY] Yes. Good, good. And then we will ask you if anybody has any experiences in the past that have worked for them in terms of networking, please do type that in and share with us. I’ll go on to talk about informational interviewing, but feel free to type that in and then I’ll return to that and read it. Okay, so there are a few different ways to network. And that’s why we love hearing networking stories because there are different success stories and ways people go about it. But so some different ways of networking are conducting informational interviews, attending networking events in person. Sometimes it’s even just attending an event or like somebody said here, a professional seminar event where it’s, the main goal is not networking, but there’s just natural networking that happens. And then there’s networking online. Informational interviewing is one of the best ways to network. It’s essentially a brief meeting with a professional to gather career information and develop new relationships is not about asking for a job or internship directly, but rather it’s a form of conducting career research and starting to build a relationship. And these meetings typically are brief, lasting 20 to 30 minutes, and they happen, they can happen in person over the phone, via video call. And during an informational interview, you might ask questions about the individual’s specific career path, what a typical day is like, any recent trends and issues in the field. You could ask about, you know, how is AI impacting your field or related opportunities within the field. And informational interviews can be extremely beneficial for many reasons. It allows you to develop this new relationship with professionals in your line of work. You can learn about a field, industry, occupation, company. You can get a sense as to whether you might enjoy and fit with a particular career and organization. So sometimes the informational interviewing is actually to like even before looking for a job is just more trying to figure out where you fit. You get a chance to practice a form of interviewing in a low stress situation, and you could be referred to other professionals who might be helpful, which you can ask for at the end of the informational interview, which is always a great way to kind of continue, to keep the ball rolling and find the next professional, especially if you feel like you’ve kind of tapped out of who you can find on LinkedIn or other places. And I’m wondering if anybody’s ever conducted an informational interview, and then what was the result? If you want to type that in chat. And I have to say that, you know, when we conduct informational interviews, they may not always be the kind of success or result that we hope for, which is, oh, they’ll lead me to a job or they will bring up something. They will start talking about a job opportunity that’s open at their company. And that doesn’t always happen, but there are other benefits in terms of being able to connect with that person now. If you feel it went well, you might connect on LinkedIn. That person may come in handy or may be a great connection even further down the road. They may introduce you to somebody. They may suggest looking into a job somewhere else. So it’s not always immediately. It has an immediate result, I guess is what I’m trying to say, but they still are good. All right. So some people have said they have conducted them, but it didn’t really lead to anything. Somebody says same. Okay. Yes. So that’s what sometimes happens. I do have a really good quick story about a person who decided to conduct, spent a year because he was doing kind of a, he was doing a non-academic fellowship and for over a couple of years. And he had in the second year, or kind of in between before he would be job searching, he decided to 40:00 take on informational interviewing like a dissertation research project. And he conducted maybe 80 informational interviews, and he used the method of this, what says on the slide, snowball sampling method, where at the end of each interview, he asked, is there anyone else you would recommend that I speak with? And that’s how he kind of kept going and got to 80 informational interviews. Now, you do not need to do 80, but he found through that method that he was able, besides just kind of the general getting to know different fields and the world of work, he also discovered that he was able to better define what he was interested in. He was better able to communicate what his skills and background are, what he would like to do. So there’s other benefits there. And by the way, he did eventually secure a job, and it was through one of the first 10 people that he spoke with. So again, you don’t have to do 80, but he found a lot of my whole point for the story is that he found a lot of benefits through the process. Okay, so let’s move on. There are several ways you can find people for informational interviews. As mentioned on the earlier slide, you can start with those who you know. Would any of those people be good for an informational interview? Do they know anyone that they can introduce you to for this type of interview? You can also ask your EO or your APO of your department if they keep track of alumni from your program. Some do more than others. If yes, see if there are any alumni that have gone on to do what you would like to do. And then could you possibly reach out to them? And LinkedIn is another great source for finding people for these interviews. And one of the best ways to find specific individuals and expand your network on LinkedIn is to tap into the alumni tool. Some of you may have already heard of this. You can find this tool by searching for a specific school in LinkedIn’s general search box. So just type in the school name and then choose the school and the results. You’re navigating to a school page. And this is what the Graduate Center’s looks like. And then when you land on that school page, you’ll see these different tabs. You want to click on the alumni tab. And once on the alumni page, you can use this. It’s not on here, but there will be a kind of a specific search box in that tab. And then you can type in any keywords, which could be related to title, industry, position, department, company, whatever you can think of. And if your resulting list is too long to search through, you can add additional keywords. And the key here is to use Boolean search terms, quotes to kind of narrow it down. You can, of course, look for people in general by conducting a general search. Just type in these same types of keywords in the main search box on LinkedIn, which you find at the top of the page. And you can try searches based, again, on industry role, job title, department, company, organization, specific skills. You could type in a person’s name if you’re looking for a specific person, like if you’ve been referred to someone. And finally, you can use the company pages to find new connections. Just type in a company name in the main search box again. And then once you navigate to the company page, so kind of like the schools have their page, companies have their pages, you can then choose who would be the best person to reach out to. And if you don’t have any first degree connections working at the company, LinkedIn will also show you alumni from the schools you’ve attended who work there. And you can even click on the people tab on the company pages in this section, and then you can use filters to find who you want. So that’s just a very brief overview. We do have a whole webinar on using LinkedIn to network and apply for jobs. So that might be a good one to review as well. Here’s a sample of a message asking someone for an informational interview. Note that there is no mention in this note regarding a specific job, but rather it focuses on just gathering career information and just being very open to being flexible with time and respectful of that person’s time, noting that they are a very busy professional. And I won’t read this out loud, but we’ll be sending this to you so you can read it more in depth. And then as examples of questions you could ask in an informational interview, there’s a few here, or more than a few. And you can see that, again, that there’s no mention of asking about job openings. However, there are some questions related to what 45:00 this person might look for in a new hire, where they find people, how best to transition into the field, and so on. So it’s okay to ask general questions about that, but there’s not going to be, oh, do you have any jobs? Can you help me get a job? Can you help me get an internship? However, if that person just on their own brings up, oh, we have a job here that you might want to apply to, then by all means follow their lead, and you can ask them more about it. And, of course, after you follow up, which is the next slide, we recommend you follow up with a thank you message via email or LinkedIn, ideally within 24 to 48 hours. You could also, if you send an email, you could also request to connect on LinkedIn, personalize the message. There’s not a whole lot of room there when you do send those messages, so it can be brief. And on the email part, if you think of any other questions, you could include those in the email. If you notice that there is a job posting that the person didn’t bring up, you didn’t bring up during the informational interview, you could say something within that thank you email along the lines of, you know, thank you so much for meeting with me. You really helped confirm my interest in this area and your organization. I noticed the data analyst role that’s open, and I’m going to go ahead and apply for it. Please let me know if there’s a better way to go about this process or express my strong interest in this role in your organization. And that way it gently puts the ball back in that person’s court. If they want to help, which they hopefully do, they will reply and give you some tidbits, hopefully, you know, oh, please send me your resume and cover letter, and I’ll make sure the hiring manager gets it. But let’s say there wasn’t a job. You could later on, if you do see one, reach out to that person in the same manner. Or also later on, if the person had given you advice that you followed, it resulted in a good outcome, you can follow up with them to let them know. If you spoke to someone that they referred you to, also let them know that as well. And, you know, you could stay in touch, especially if you decide, you know, this is a key person, and this organization is a key organization that I’m really interested in. You can kind of create your own private VIP connection list, and where every few months you might reconnect with those people, let the person know where you stand in your job search process, if you already did one of these informational interviews and they know you’re searching. If you, you know, you could look for articles, you can note when there’s something going on at their company, send a message, a holiday note, whatever it might be. Okay, that was our networking overview. And let’s go over the other method that a lot of people like, and that could be helpful in many ways, too, is finding jobs reviewing online job postings, which is probably, as we mentioned, the most popular method. And although only 5 to 20% of jobs are secured this way, it is an excellent way to determine who’s hiring, what employers are seeking. It’s good for collecting those keywords. And you can increase your odds of landing a job through this method by looking for a connection to the organization after you apply, or trying to figure out who the hiring manager might be. And then you could send your targeted person a quick note to introduce yourself, express how enthusiastic you are about the job opportunity. And in this case, you most likely will not get a response because some employers feel, you know, I’m not going to engage with people outside of the interview process until this job search is over. But you will make a positive impression that you went out of the way, you were resourceful, you figured out maybe who to reach out to, and you had a great worded brief note. And they will most likely remember your name, and perhaps will even pay more attention to your application. This has happened to students and alums, so it’s worth a shot. And I’m wondering if anybody has, well, we already went over favorite job search websites, but if there’s any others that have come to mind while we’ve been talking, you can throw those in. But we did kind of cover, we talked about Handshake, we’ll go over that in a minute, general job websites like Indeed, LinkedIn, industry specific ones, which we talked about, going directly to the company websites, 50:00 and of course, watching your department emails with links to job postings. And when alumni come to us, or employers with job postings, we do encourage them to post on Handshake. So that’s why Handshake can be really good. And with that, I’m going to hand it over back to Rebecca. 

  [REBECCA] Great. So do make sure to explore Handshake, all Graduate Center students and alumni have access. So Handshake is a career platform used by our office. First off, of course, you can find job and internship postings that are curated there. But some of the other interesting tools you can use, there’s an employer tab, and you can actively look at employers that have posted in Handshake before if you’re looking for a resource to put together a list of target employers. And you can also register for upcoming career events, not just the ones that we’re holding here in the office, but information sessions from employers. And there’s information about career fairs often in there as well. And actually the platform, it operates similar to LinkedIn, in that you can build your professional profile, and employers can actually contact you. And we’ve had students come to us and share that employers have reached out to them if their profile is quite robust, and it’s very clear as to what they’re looking for. Emily mentioned a list of sort of niche job boards relevant to your field, like NYFA for arts and culture, discipline specific association job boards. So I just put into the chat a little bit ago, both a link to Handshake and a link to our website, where we have some of the job boards and search engines that you have mentioned, but also a number of other ones. So we can maybe move forward, Emily. Great. And we also have a number of resources on finding jobs beyond academia. And that’s the link that I shared right there in the slide. Okay. We can go to company websites. You know, many organizations never post their openings on large job board or niche job boards. Sometimes they just receive enough candidates through referrals, and other times because they don’t have the staff or the budget to post so widely, right? So that’s why a good strategy is going straight to the source. I know many of you mentioned you’re already looking at organization websites. So if there are organizations or institutions you really admire, you’d like to work for, build that organization list, maybe of 10 to 20 or even more organizations, small, midsize, larger, anything that aligns with your interests and values. And then you can make it part of that routine, that weekly routine to visit each organization’s website and look for careers or jobs. Sometimes under about, you can just sort of bookmark them, right? Because many employers post roles there first or also sometimes exclusively, but also say on company websites or organization websites, you can often sign up for a newsletter. I’m, you know, subscribed to many newsletters and I’m always amazed. That’s one of the first places they’ll post if they have an opportunity. So it takes some of the work out of your hand and also helps you stay on top of what the organization is doing. And even if they don’t have any current openings right now, the process really helps you just stay alert to future openings, learn how they describe roles and qualifications more generally, and identify potential targets for informational interviews. Many small and midsize organizations, like their people are really their business, right? And so you’ll find like bios, you’ll find email addresses on there. So you don’t only need to be using LinkedIn or even like a web scraper like Rocket Reach or Hunter, which are ways you can find people’s email addresses if you want to reach out directly. Sometimes that information is just right on the organization website. So whether you come across a job posting you’re really excited about, you know, when you do, really that first thing to do is to check if you have any connections to the organization, as Emily already mentioned. So ideally you want to reach out to somebody either before or right after you apply to learn more about the role and to let them know you’ve submitted or plan to submit an application. So just keep in mind if that person is directly involved in the hiring process, as Emily mentioned, they may not be able to discuss the position in detail. But if your connection is someone you know really well, a past colleague, classmate, friend, you might be willing, you might be able to ask them if they’d be willing to tell you more about the organization and if they actually feel comfortable passing those materials on to the hiring manager. If the connection is someone you don’t know very well, maybe you’ve just met an informational interview or networking event, as Emily mentioned, you can take a little bit of a lighter touch. You can send that note, you saw the opening, you’ve applied or you plan to apply, 55:00 you’re really interested, and ask if there’s anything that they might recommend. So as Emily mentioned, sometimes in that best case scenario, they are willing to share that application internally or give you a referral link for which you can apply, and those are applications that are given special attention. And if you don’t have a connection yet, don’t worry, you know, you can still make a good impression. So you can try to identify the hiring manager or someone who might work closely in the role. Sometimes there’s clues in the job description, it will say, you know, reporting to the head of XYZ. And then you can, you know, head on to LinkedIn or the organization website and say, well, who is that person? Even if it’s not publicly, you know, listed in that job description itself. And you can send a really short, thoughtful note, introducing yourself and expressing some genuine enthusiasm for the opportunity. And if the posting was shared directly by a recruiter or an HR representative on something like LinkedIn, you can also message them directly to express interest. We know they get like hundreds of messages potentially, but if yours is really strong, it may stand out in that process, especially if you’re emphasizing your interest and really, really clearly why you’re a good fit. So as Emily mentioned, we’ll include some sample outreach messages in the follow-up email, and the next slide actually has a sample message to a hiring manager. And you can even, you know, strengthen this further by really addressing the experiences that you have that make you a good fit for the position, and, you know, wish them luck in their recruiting process. I’ll give you just a few moments to read through. Okay, I think we can move into the next slide, and you’ll have a copy of this later on in the week. So recruiters are sometimes called headhunters. They can be found in a pretty wide variety of ways through LinkedIn, career fairs, recommendations from people in the field, and they do typically work for larger companies or organizations, or they’ll only focus on some more specialized roles. So not every industry uses them in the same way. And about, you know, 5 to 20% of jobs are filled through recruiters. But when the match is right, it can certainly be helpful for getting your foot in the door. So if you find a recruiter that works in your area of interest or that organization you’re targeting, you can reach out with a short professional message. You can explain who you are, the type of work you’re targeting, and your key skills or experiences that align with their needs. You can also be really clear about why that organization is a target for you. And also remember, recruiters are people, right? So approach them in a, you know, friendly but professional way. You can really try to create maybe an introductory conversation with them. So ask if they may have some time to talk in the next week or two. Ideally, you want to get them on the phone and start to build a relationship, if not for that role, maybe ones in the future. And many recruiters, some of them are very busy and don’t have time, but some of them also like the career development component of the work that they do and are willing to do these conversations. Okay. Just keep in mind that recruiters ultimately work for the employer. They don’t work for you, right? So you have to think of that relationship sort of as a professional collaboration rather than any kind of personalized coaching. Fields where they can be particularly helpful are, you know, data science, communications, technology, healthcare, but you will find them in some other sectors as well. Outside of recruiters, I mean, you’ll often find recruiters at places like career fairs, right? So they’re virtual, they can be in person. We’ll be having a career fair this spring at the GC. These are great ways to meet recruiters and company representatives directly. So even if you’re not sure if you’re the perfect fit for a role, attending can help you meet people, give you some networking opportunities, and give you some insight into hiring trends. One other thing is that many organizations, you’ll find these on LinkedIn under their events, host information sessions or recruiting events. And whenever our office learns about them, we do include them in our outreaches and our emails. And just a tip on career fairs and info sessions, it is great to follow up. So if you meet a recruiter or a company rep, just send a short thank you note afterward, ideally 24 to 48 hours. And, you know, a simple note expressing appreciation, reminding them of who you are can just help them remember you next time a relevant position comes up. And lots of organizations keep a database of people that have come up to them at fairs and events and go to their information sessions, actually, that they use in their application and review process. Okay. Going to just share an example of a note to a recruiter. And again, you will get this in our follow-up email.1:00:00 Give you just a moment to read through, and then I will hand it back over to Emily. 

  [EMILY] It’s a long one. 

  [REBECCA] Yeah.

  [EMILY] Okay. Well, we can move on, and you’ll get that to read more thoroughly in our follow-up email. Okay. And then some other ways you can find jobs besides what we’ve already gone over is through the passive job search by optimizing your LinkedIn profile so that your name is more likely to come up when recruiters and hiring managers are conducting keyword searches on the back end of LinkedIn. They pay a lot of money for that back end. Oops. Sorry, my light went out. And they will then reach out to you directly about jobs, which we also call job search while you are sleeping. We do have one of the webinars. We talk a little bit more about this passive job search and optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Another method is through a project or just consulting with an organization. And these projects or consulting opportunities can be found through informational interviewing, connections, or sometimes actual postings on websites. In one case, quick example, a job seeker conducted an informational interview with an employer, potential employer that he was interested in. And through their conversation, they discussed a project he could actually work on, something they had a particular need. So he proposed to do this project. He worked on the project, was paid for it, and then he was hired full time. So it was a great way for them to test him out and for him to test them out. You could also find jobs through internships, which is another great way to test out an organization. And then sometimes those turn into job offers afterwards. But even if you do not secure a job with them, especially these smaller organizations may not have full time jobs to offer afterwards, internships can lead to new connections. You have new experience put on your resume. And this all can help you out with the next job search. Fellowships can be another path to jobs. One example is the ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship, which places PhD graduates in organizations for two years where they actually have a professional role with salary and benefits. And again, sometimes those turn into actual jobs at the organization. Sometimes fellows have proposed jobs after being there and realizing something that’s needed. Or it’s also helped them afterwards find something else. And then finally, you can create a job that you propose to an organization you know. We have a little bit more about that on the next slide. These are kind of outside the box strategies, basically ones that maybe you haven’t heard of before or that are just not always talked about as much. So first is a value added project or sometimes called a value validation project. And this is a custom deliverable you create for a person at a company you want to work for aimed at proving your ability and adding real value before you’re even hired. So you start by doing some research into the company’s goals, challenges, and initiatives. This could be done through informational interviews, having conversations with them. Then you package up a thoughtful solution. This could be via a slide deck, report, prototype, or whatever medium fits your role. And then send it to your contact to demonstrate your insights, skills, and potential contributions. And we’ll share an article that dives into this a little bit more and describes it and includes some good examples, since that could be a whole other webinar on just that. Another out-of-the-box strategy is search via “I’m hiring” on LinkedIn to see who is hiring or has an open role. You may have seen the purple banner on some people that says they’re hiring. And you can search by that banner, but you actually have to upgrade your LinkedIn account. So if you’ve already upgraded, you can do it that way as one way. But there are some ways around that. You can conduct a search for hiring announcements by typing in the string Boolean search terms as well as ”I’m hiring” variations that one article and expert suggested. And then you can filter. 1:05:00 So you just add that in the search box. Then you can filter by clicking on the posts or people tab in the results to see hiring updates shared by individuals. And then you can filter further by the specific field. If they’re first degree connections, you could sort by date to see the most recent job openings and announcements. Because now people are putting “I’m hiring” even in their headlines. They’re putting it in posts. So there’s lots of different ways to find these “I’m hiring” people. A third out of the box method is focusing on where your network works. So review your connections to see where they are currently working, especially if you have a lot of connections or you’ve connected with these people over the course of many years. As we know, people change jobs pretty frequently. So refresh your memory or see where they’re working now. Are any of those companies of interest? Are they hiring? Do they have any of the hiring hashtags or banners or whatever it might be? Also take note of when someone from your network has changed jobs. It could be that their job is available or they’re expanding or going on a hiring spree. You could decide if you want to conduct an informational interview with them to see if they have any thoughts for you and if you can get any inside scoop on what’s their new job and old job and all that. Fourth strategy is using venture capital firm lists and their backed job boards to identify where funding is going. So for this, you could start by focusing on venture capital firms that invest in your target industry or technology sector, such as education technology ed tech is a good example. So you basically could type in your favorite search engine, top ed tech VC firms, venture capital firms 2025, or use Crunchbase and then explore the portfolios by visiting each firm’s website and clicking on the portfolio or investment section. You can check if the venture capital has a job board. Some firms host centralized boards listing jobs across their portfolios. And you can also use funding news to spot hiring searchers when an ed tech company raises a funding round, it’s often followed by hiring sprees. And this goes for other fields and companies as well. So finally, you can post your expertise on social media so that hiring managers and recruiters can come to you. They may do a search for keywords and pick up on your posts. But also this is a good way just to brand yourself as an expert or somebody very knowledgeable in the field and kind of get the word out there that this is your background and this is what you’re doing. And I’m wondering if anybody has ever used any of these strategies or if there’s any others you have used that we have not touched upon in this presentation. I know we’re just about up with our time. And we’re also just about finished with this presentation. We always love to hear what students and graduates have done and what’s been successful for them or even what didn’t turn out to be successful or didn’t work for them. 

  [REBECCA] I was sharing with Emily earlier and times where I’ve posted blogs on LinkedIn or just been more active and shared more content and shared my own content. It’s always been returned with more outreach from recruiters, which is really interesting. So we’d have to look into the background. But I think that the platform also, for example, rewards people who are active in coming up potentially higher in searches too. 

  [EMILY] Okay, well, while everybody’s still thinking about that, if they have done anything else or come across any other strategies, we’ll go on to the final slide here, one of the final slides. This is a summary of next steps. Prepare yourself for the job search process. And even if you’ve already started searching, you can go back to those exercises and any of the tips we’ve shared. Create a job search plan if you haven’t already. Update your materials. Find and create job opportunities by using kind of mixed methods process, you know, networking, online postings, recruiters, any other methods we talked about for networking, you know, reach out to connections, conduct informational interviews, work on expanding your network in those different ways we talked about. Apply to job postings. And if you don’t have a connection, 1:10:00 try to reach out and find a hiring manager recruiter or someone else to reach out to increase your odds of being noticed, looked at, and gaining interviews. And connect with recruiters if they’re used in your field and attend career fairs when you find them. And then try out the other job search methods we mentioned. And then in terms of upcoming events, we mentioned the cover letter one. We have “The art of research, data visualization for academics and public policy.” There’s also an “Explore career pathways through your strengths.” We do have events that come up throughout the semester as well that weren’t planned way in advance. And we do have also alumni panels that we do. We’re planning for five for this over the course of this school year. The first one will be November 19th, focusing on careers in state and local government. We’ll be getting that up in the upcoming events shortly. And then stay tuned for more information on others as well. And we do recommend you come to these if they’re a career area of interest because it’s a great way to not only learn more about the field, but also connect with GC alumni or reach out to them afterwards. We also on our events page, we have partner events or any kind of partners or other GC or CUNY type events are listed there as well as any handshake events that come up that we think that GC students would be interested in. And then finally, you can register your job search with us if you haven’t already. And basically, it’s just filling out a form to say you are in the process of job searching throughout this next school year. And we keep in touch with you that way. We have a monthly newsletter that is going to start going out shortly that will be focused on any job seekers and any strategies, best practices, highlighted and featured jobs, articles, tips, things like that. So if that’s of interest, please connect with us that way as well. And we just want to pause and see if anybody has any questions or comments or thoughts as we wrap up here. Oh, yes, skill-based volunteering. That’s a great, great way to add additional skills as well as to make new connections and find job opportunities. Events for international students. Yes, absolutely. We do share the events that the International Student Services Office is offering, which they have a lot of. We also do have some joint kind of, we partner with them to do some joint workshops and events. Yes, we participate in International Student Week. We also will be focusing in on some specialized international student resources that we’ll be updating on our website and exploring some other kind of workshops focused on international students. Good question. And also, if you have any specific workshops you’d like to see, please let us know. If you think of any other questions, you can always reach out to us directly. We’ll be following up with our emails with the recording and everything else from this event today within this next week. So you’ll have those, but you can also reach out to us at any time. And we’re also happy to meet with you one-on-one if you haven’t been already to discuss your particular needs, career thoughts, concerns, talk about how best to approach your job search. Anything else? 

  [REBECCA] I think that’s everything. I don’t see anything else coming in on the chat. And I’ve been putting in a number of links as Emily has been chatting. So you’ll get those in the follow-up as well. If you didn’t catch all of them. We thank you so much for joining us today and we will see you in the office soon. 

  [EMILY] Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.1:15:00