Career Preparation Action Items
Engage NOW to become the most competitive candidate!
- Become familiar with the services and resources offered by the Center for Career Development.
- Use self-assessment tools to explore and/or confirm well-aligned career paths.
- Gain knowledge about any career preparation that occurs within your department at UConn or through your professional associations.
- Learn about the programs and services offered by the Writing Center.
- Connect with programs at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to stay current with best practices in the classroom.
- Read career-related announcements sent to you through the Graduate Student Soapbox Digest and other University communication channels.
- View the Center for Career Development’s and The Graduate School’s calendars to learn about career and professional development events and programs.
- Consider enrolling in a UConn Certificate Program to build an additional skill set and knowledge base.
- Keep an electronic portfolio of anything that you feel shows evidence of your accomplishments.
- If you teach, consistently compile student evaluation data of your courses.
- If embarking on an academic job search familiarize yourself with the content that is typically included in a Statement of Teaching Philosophy, Research Statement, and Diversity Statement. Periodically write down ideas about content to include in your future documents.
- Create drafts of outreach content that you can adapt when desiring to connect with others for networking, informational interviewing, and/or future job search.
- Ask people for recommendations while they still remember you (faculty, supervisors, etc.).
- Become acquainted with industry-specific job search websites. Identify employers of interest and view actual jobs, familiarizing yourself with the experiences, skills, and training needed to be a competitive applicant.
- Seek opportunities to develop career- related skills through campus and community involvement and workshops.
- Test various career paths through short-term career exploration activities, internships, or summer fellowships.
- Attend, network, and present at professional conferences.
- Conduct informational interviews with people working in career areas of possible interest.
- Consistently use LinkedIn to learn about peoples’ work and career paths.
- Identify funding sources for continued research if that is a career path option. UConn Library’s Pivot-RP resource can be helpful.
- Conduct an Internet search on your name and see what comes up.
- Create a robust LinkedIn profile and/or other electronic professional profile and get consistently active on the platform.
- Contribute to conversations within professional groups and forums on LinkedIn or Twitter, etc.
- Consider creating a blog or consistently contributing to one in your primary and secondary fields of study or career areas of interest.
- Consider creating your own website and include content that features/demonstrates your skills, knowledge, and experience.
- Add videos of your best presentations or job talks to your electronic profile.
- Explore using an electronic dossier service to organize and gather your professional materials.
Job Search Action Items
When to begin your job search is dependent on the:
- hiring rhythms of the fields to which you are applying;
- extent of preparation that you will need to be a competitive job candidate;
- amount of time you intend to dedicate to the process (think months before you seek to get hired, not weeks).
Note: For academic jobs in higher education, begin a minimum of two years out before the time you seek to be hired.
Many advise: “Begin your job search the day you begin your program.”
- Develop action plans for two to three career paths, outlining the:
- target employers;
- types of jobs of interest;
- job-search timeframes for paths of interest;
- job-search approaches you will use;
- action items;
- weekly/monthly next steps with completion dates.
- Finalize your job application materials, remembering to tailor them to feature ways that you match specific position requirements and your alignment with the goals of a company/organization/ department.
- Revisit your plans every couple of weeks to affirm what is working and to determine where changes need to be made and/or additional information needs to be gained.
- Engage career-knowledgeable individuals in conversation about your next steps.
- Learn about applicant tracking systems.
- Schedule an appointment with a career coach at the Center for Career Development.
- Attend the Center for Career Development’s career preparation and job-search presentations.
- Attend The Graduate School’s professional development offerings.
- Gather feedback on your professional documents and presentation skills through the Center for Career Development, Writing Center, and Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning.
- Attend campus events that feature speakers of interest and network with them.
- Attend job-search programming delivered within your department.
- Access job-search content often provided by the professional associations to which you belong.
- Become acquainted with job search sites that focus on posting jobs in the career fields of greatest interest to you.
- Identify and be able to talk about your work, research, teaching, leadership, transferable skills, training, etc.
- Inform people in your network, with whom you have a genuine connection, that you are job searching. Identify the types of opportunities you seek and convey your skills and knowledge.
- Reach out to UConn alumni to learn about their work and the culture of the companies or organizations in which they are employed.
- Educate yourself about the different styles of interviews that you might encounter and gain strategies to succeed.
- Schedule a practice interview with the Center for Career Development well in advance of when you think you might have to interview.
- When embarking on the academic job search, practice your job talk with people both familiar and unfamiliar with your research and field of study.
- Maximize your job networking at conferences you attend.