Career planning and development can help you explore and prepare for a diverse range of careers. Alumni report that the ideal timing for professional development is early in your program. Research indicates that this time is well spent and does not affect time to completion or productivity. Below are online resources to help you go through the five steps of career planning: Assessment, Exploration, Connections, Skill Building, and Applying. You can also make an appointment in Handshake with a Graduate Career Consultant in the Graduate Center's Career Services Office. To make a career consultation appointment, please follow the directions below:
To schedule an appointment on Handshake, follow these steps:
- Click “Here”.
- Choose "Graduate Center Career Advising."
- Select either "Career Support with Graduate Career Services" or "15-minute Quick Appointments."
- View available appointment times
Job Application Materials
The following resources cover the job search, application materials, interviewing, and more.
Each position you apply for requires job application materials such as a Curriculum Vitae (C.V.)., resume, and cover letter. They should be tailored to highlight how your transferable skills match their job requirements. You can read about the differences between a C.V. and resume here. You can also make an appointment to review your materials with a Graduate Career Consultant in the Graduate Center Career Services Office via Handshake.
APR Method for Resumes: Bullet points help a potential employer efficiently determine your relevant skills and experiences. The bullet begins with an action verb (A), followed by the project/ problem (P) you worked on, and the result (R). These bullets are known as accomplishment statements. When writing accomplishment statements, it is important both to explain what the task required and to highlight your successes.
Cover Letters - If a job allows a cover letter, consider it an excellent opportunity to further showcase your skills and experiences as they relate to the specific job.
For examples of Job Materials :
- Resume Template
- Sample Humanities and Social Sciences resume
- Sample STEM resume
- Sample Humanities and Social Sciences CV - Research emphasis
- Sample Humanities and Social Sciences CV - Teaching emphasis
- Sample STEM CV - Research emphasis
- Sample STEM CV - Teaching emphasis
- Harvard University’s Samples of Resumes and Cover Letters
For resources on faculty positions, see the University of California San Francisco’s Sample Materials for Faculty Positions and the Burroughs Welcome Fund. In addition, leverage your department’s expertise.
Government resumes require a different format than the traditional resume. Check out “What to Include in a Federal Resume” and Federal Resume Tips. Go Government is a great resource that guides you through various opportunities within the federal government.
Searching for Jobs
- University of Arizona (UA) Handshake: This is the official University of Arizona career management tool. It has a job board and includes university positions as well as outside employers specifically recruiting UA students. Be sure to update your profile for employers who conduct personalized search information.
- Academic Job Boards: Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Ed Jobs, and Inside Higher Ed Careers. Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC) has a useful dual academic career job search tool.
- General Job Search Engines: LinkedIn and Indeed have extremely large databases of jobs and powerful searches and filters. Video: Searching for Jobs on LinkedIn - This short (15 min) video will walk you through searching for jobs on LinkedIn.
- Governmental Jobs: Federal government jobs can only be applied for at their web site, https://www.usajobs.gov/. State and local governments also maintain their own job websites.
- Be sure to check your professional society’s website career pages for job listings.
- Job Search Strategies For International Candidates: Useful strategies and important considerations for international candidates as they conduct a U.S. job search.
- Video: Searching for Jobs on LinkedIn - This short (15 min) video will walk you through searching for jobs on LinkedIn.
Deciphering Job Descriptions
Job descriptions range from being very specific in their requirements to being very vague. It can be challenging to understand what they are looking for so that you can clearly present how you fit their requirements. The skills you have developed in graduate school can transfer in many ways and to many different positions. This handout can help you organize the information you find in a job description and note how it fits to your skills and experiences. It can also be helpful to make an appointment with a Graduate Career Consultant to review jobs ads and tailor your job materials.
Interviews can occur in many different formats, from virtual asynchronous or synchronous to in-person, and different types such as screening, individual, panel, structured or unstructured, behavioral, technical, case, or fit interviews. Below are some resources to help you prepare. You can also make an appointment with a Graduate Career Consultant for interview preparation via Handshake.
Video: Maximizing Your Interview Experience - Brief 10-minute video covering important considerations for you to be aware of as you prepare for an interview.
Interview Guidelines: Use these guidelines to prepare for the interview process. Remember, in-person career counseling sessions are available for interview preparation and practice as well.
30 Sample Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers: "The Muse" provides a great list of questions and answers that you can use to prepare.
Big Interview - When preparing for a job interview, it's not enough to only read advice; you need to put that advice into practice! That's why Big Interview isn't just a training course. You'll also get hands-on practice with mock interviews tailored to your specific industry, job, and experience level.
Career Assessment
Assessments allow you to evaluate your interests, values, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and temperament. They can help you identify the components of your graduate education you enjoy, the diverse careers associated with those experiences, and what you are looking for in an employer. Below are some free, time efficient resources to help with the assessment process. We encourage you to make an appointment with one of our Graduate Center career consultants to review your assessment and discuss how this new information can help you in your career development plan. You can make an appointment in Handshake in the Graduate Center's Career Services Office.
ImaginePhD is a free online career assessment and planning tool embedded with resources for discovering diverse career paths. It is an extremely useful career exploration tool that can be used for any discipline and can help you better understand how to use your transferable skills in any job sector.
myIDP Science Careers Individual Development Plan is a free web-based career planning tool that helps doctoral students and postdocs in the sciences define and pursue their career goals.
InterSECT Job Simulations is an online platform that allows PhD-level scientists and humanists to explore future career options by completing a job simulation exercise. There are simulation positions available in industry, academia, and government sectors.
Big Five Personality assessment can increase your self-awareness and give you information regarding your own personality traits.
The O*NET Interest Profiler helps you decide what kinds of careers you might want to explore by guiding you through an interactive program that links your career interests with the workplace.
Career Exploration
Explore and research the diverse array of careers available to you. Becoming better informed about careers helps you create your graduate career development plan.
Visit your professional society’s career web pages and the analogous industry organizations' career information. Look up schools, companies, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies, and review their work and job postings.
Alumni Career Spotlights: Our alumni career spotlights and panels are a great way to learn about different career paths. Enjoy some short biographies from graduate alumni across many different disciplines and employment sectors to learn about diverse ways that you can use your degree.
Alumni Career Panels: We invite graduate student alumni to share their diverse career paths and engage with graduate students about their journey and preparation.
Connections
One of the very best ways to learn about a career is to talk with someone in that profession. Create career connections by scheduling a short informational interview with someone working in a field of your interest to find out about their career journey, how they navigated into their field, and translated their graduate student skills and experiences into a new career.
Alumni are a great resource to connect with through the Bear Down Network, Wildcat Career Connections, and the University of Arizona’s Alumni LinkedIn page. You can use our Creating Your LinkedIn Profile guide to learn why LinkedIn is important for your career development and how to showcase your skills and experiences.
The first step in networking is Creating your Professional Self-Introduction.
Our Informational Interview information will guide you through the process of making professional connections which are critical to help you learn about specific career areas and develop your professional network.
Build Skills
There are many ways you can develop the skills and experiences required for diverse careers during your graduate program. Check out our list of on-campus and off-campus resources that can help you develop your technical, project management, communication, and interpersonal skills as well as how to share those skills with potential employers and collaborators.
The University of Arizona offers many online resources to gain skills through Badges and Certificates.
Internships can be a great way to gain experience with an organization or company. Check Handshake for internship postings or meet with a Graduate Career Consultant to learn more. You can make an appointment in Handshake. There are many additional online resources where you can gain a variety of skills through the massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera, edX, Udacity, LinkedIn Learning, etc.