A third-year PhD student asks—

I’m currently thinking about pursuing internship opportunities over the next year or two to help broaden my career options. However, I’m having some difficulty figuring out exactly what I want to do and how to go about finding these opportunities effectively. I was wondering if you have any advice or tips you typically share with students who are in the early stages of exploring their career interests. What’s the best way to start identifying suitable internships and gaining relevant experience?

I don’t think there’s one typical approach that works for everyone (or even most people), so I definitely recommend approaching your exploration knowing that it might be messy and have a bunch of false starts. Oftentimes, the way you ultimately narrow down what you want to do comes from trying something out (just for the experience) and then discovering (from that experience) that you don’t want to keep doing it. 

Here are a few low-cost entry points that might get you started in narrowing down your career interests:

• You can conduct informational interviews with professionals in areas you may be interested in or with professionals who have a similar training, background, or both can be a great source of information and give you an opportunity to ask questions specific to your situation.
• You can experiment with new job tasks that you already have access to, by getting involved with a student group, participating in a hackathon, or even just asking to shadow someone in your lab doing different work than what you typically do.
• You can focus on reading, listening to, and watching information on different careers, roles, and job tasks. The OCPD website has a career paths page where you can read up on a variety of career directions, or, for a more in-depth view of individual tasks and responsibilities, you can look at the InterSECT job simulations hosted by Washington University in St. Louis.

For different people, any one of these could be overwhelming, unpleasant, or just generally not useful. It is very common to start with one approach and abandon it quickly if it isn’t working for you, and it can be very useful to debrief your experience with someone else (OCPD offers scheduled 1:1 appointments and regular office hours, if you are so inclined) for perspective on what you learned and what to do next, whether that is identifying the right kind of internship opportunity, or even deciding whether an internship makes sense as the next step for you. 

-David Blancha, Assistant Director, Career Development Team for Researchers