Having a strategy is key for a successful career search. Employing the right tools will help keep you organized, set goals, and identify your various paths forward.
Here are some career search and research tools to help you get started with building a strategic plan.
- Blog post: 10 Easy Ways to Organize Your Job Search
- Video on networking during the pandemic: Re-calibrating your networking in these turbulent times
Career Tools
The Career Marketing Plan is a tool to connect your skills, competencies and experiences with your career objective. It also serves as a foundation from which you’ll prepare for interviews and career conversations.
The LAMP List is a tool from The 2-Hour Job Search by Steve Dalton that helps you to efficiently create a target list and find connections to expedite your job search.
Deep research on the company and industry allow you to communicate as if you were already part of the team. In preparation for applications and interviews we recommend you spend time familiarizing yourself with recent news, financial reports and other statistics.
- Long Library Research Library – Access to various databases to help you research industries and companies.
- Harvard Business Review – For some interesting conversation starters and current business practices
- Your ultimate tool is a POV conversation, it’s the conversation that allows you to demonstrate your fit, capabilities and alignment to your target (role/company/industry) – don’t impress them, be them
Reviewing job descriptions to understand the criteria and competencies required or desired for your target roles can help frame your search. Creating job search agents for LinkedIn, CMG BEARS, Indeed and other job aggregator sites, that target different roles, industries, or geographies, is a way to conduct a passive search, with results delivered to your inbox.
- create a Job Search Agent on CMG BEARS
- create Job Alerts on LinkedIn
Search Strategies
Certain industries, functions, and roles rely on the on-campus recruiting (OCR) process to target and hire MBAs for summer internships and/or full-time roles. There is a set process, which varies slightly by industry. You can review recruiting timelines and roadmaps in the Industries & Functions section. OCR encompasses campus visits, presentations, coffee chats and all activity that sees a company directly engage with students on campus.
More information on On-Campus Interviews (OCI) can be found here. OCI is a part of OCR, and has set timelines and process steps. Fall OCI is for full-time, post-MBA roles that typically start after graduation. Spring OCI is for summer internship recruiting.
Increasingly, networking and referrals are used to hire MBA talent into organizations. This is especially true of tech firms in the Bay Area, and smaller companies that have no campus presence, but are still attractive targets for MBAs.
Here are key resources for a network-based search:
- LinkedIn, and our online training course to optimize your profile for increased networking success
- @Cal, the alumni database to help identify Haas and UC Berkeley grads in target firms and locations
- Haas networking lists of current and former students
- Networking hints and tips
A clear and actionable strategy is essential when you are not currently located in your target job market location. It is not impossible to network effectively from a distance, but it does require extra effort and fully leveraging all available resources.
Here are key resources for a long-distance search:
- LinkedIn, and our online training course to optimize your profile for increased networking success
- @Cal, the alumni database to help identify Haas and UC Berkeley grads in target firms and locations
- Haas Alumni chapters, an excellent resource for connecting you to local experts and opportunities