My name is Theresa Murphy, and I’m starting my second year in the Office of Graduate Career Development as a Ph.D. Career Advisor. My role is to provide master’s and doctoral students with career advice specifically tailored to their experiences as graduate students. I’m also starting my second year of my doctoral program in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. I host one-on-one meetings, design workshops, help run programs, all while doing my own Ph.D. courses and research.
When meeting with students, I’m continually blown away by the wealth and depth of students’ past experiences. The Harvard-graduate army wife who decided to get a Ph.D. because of her passion for educating the next generation of educators. The international student coming in for advising because he didn’t want to mess up immigration status but really wanted to get experience providing music services working at local churches. The Ph.D. whose timeline was messed up by extenuating circumstances and COVID-19 and who is finishing up their degree right now and looking on to next steps. Students come to graduate school for research interests, self-improvement, job needs, and many other reasons. They leave having learned more than just their content knowledge. My office’s job is to make sure you’re set up to start the career you want at the end of your experience.
There are many resources across campus dedicated to supporting graduate students – all of the offices in the Graduate School, CAPS, and the Writing Center, to name a few – but, from one graduate student to another, I want to offer you some practical advice on how to capitalize on MSU’s resources and your experiences while here. My suggestions should help alleviate some of the anxiety around the eventual job search, whether it be for jobs in industry or academia.
Make a LinkedIn. Connect with people.
We are living in the 21st century. Whether we like it or not, technology and social media are here to stay. LinkedIn is made for job searching and it is made for networking. Capitalize on that. Make a LinkedIn in the first few weeks of school if you haven’t already. Connect with everyone; your professors, your classmates, the people you meet at conferences, that speaker who came in and talked to your class during the first week of school.
Find people in your field, find people with interests like yours, even find people whose interests are completely different, but you’d like to learn more. Connect with them. Voila, you’ve just started networking. You know, networking, that scary thing that everybody hates to do unless they’re extremely charismatic. It starts by simply connecting with the people you know.
Pro Tip: Make your LinkedIn QR code your phone’s background during conferences or networking events. That way, you don’t have to fumble to find it.
Make a master resume/CV document. Maybe make more than one.
You’ve probably already done a lot of cool stuff. That’s why you’re here. But you’re going to do a lot more cool stuff before you’re done. Half of the stuff you won’t remember you did unless you write it down. So write it down!
Start with a blank word document. Put your name and contact info in the header of the document. Write down all the education you’ve done. Write down all the jobs that you’ve done. Write down projects and presentations and research and leadership opportunities and fellowships and grants and professional memberships. Write it all down on that same document so that you don’t lose track of it. And then, eventually, come in to meet with me. If you’ve got all the content there, it’s easy to put it into correct formatting.
Pro Tip: If you have diverging interests in terms of what job you might want (e.g. I have English degrees and education degrees), it might be good to create two master documents, one for the one field and one for the other (I have an “English” resume and an “Education” resume).
Sign up for trainings.
IT has trainings for all sorts of technology. The library has trainings on all sorts of technology. Most of them are offered virtually at least some of the time. All of them should be included in the fees and tuition you already pay as a student. Go to the trainings, learn a new skill that is vaguely related to your field, and then figure out how to continue to use that skill as you go through your program.
Am I just starting a quantitative research methods class for the first time? Yes. Am I going to have to learn R and SPSS for that class? Yes. Am I going to lean into it by trying to actually learn enough of it to say I understand it, even if I don’t plan on doing much quantitative research? Absolutely. You never know when that skill will come in handy.
Pro Tip: Put those testable skills in the “Skills” section on your resume or CV.
Talk to that speaker after their presentation.
Networking is key in today’s modern job market. A good place to start practicing your networking skills is with people in your department. But don’t be afraid to reach out to people outside of your immediate circle of faculty and classmates.
On-campus speakers are particularly great people to connect with and great places to start expanding your network within your field because they’ve already said yes to speaking with students. Go up to them after their presentation and introduce yourself, or make sure to reach out and connect with them via email or LinkedIn after the presentation.
Pro Tip: Keep a notepad or computer handy during presentations so you can write down questions as they come up. That way, you can pay attention to content of the talk rather than worrying about coming up with a question to ask at the end. If all your questions aren’t answered during the presentation, use that as an excuse to set up an informational interview and make that connection.
Getting your graduate degree is exciting, but at times it can also feel overwhelming. Hopefully by utilizing MSU’s many resources and starting early, you’ll feel prepared to make the most of your time here and feel prepared for what comes after!
