Career Corner: Start Now for a Spring Job Search

Late fall is a good time to get ready for the spring job search, and getting an effective research strategy in place is part of that process, says Cori Ashworth, career and professional consultant for the Alumnae Association.

As a first step, it’s essential to make your job search manageable by narrowing your focus in terms of location and industry. “When you’re doing research, start at the macro level and move to the micro level,” Ashworth says.

Select a city where you’d like to live and work your research around that place, she advises. If you’re recently graduated and clueless as to which fields are best suited to your major, Ferguson’s Facts on File Career Guidance Center gives lots of ideas on how to apply a particular major to the real world. It’s available on the college’s Career Development Center (CDC) Web site.

One of the best places to start your job search homework is by doing the self-assessments Ashworth has put up on her career service pages on the Alumnae Association’s Web site. Once you have a handle on your work identity, you can begin to research relevant industries by looking at the database Vault Online Career Library, also at the CDC site. It gives you overviews of industries, Web sites, associations related to particular fields, and salary and hiring information.

Another useful site available through the CDC is CareerSearch, which contains millions of profiles of employers from the business and academic worlds. It enables a job seeker to do a geographical sort of companies by industry.

Armed with all that information, you then can make use of LifeNet, Ashworth points out, which is the Association’s networking tool that enables you to find alumnae working in particular fields and contact them for informational interviews and insights. —M.H.B.