A fifth-year PhD student writes—

I'm getting ready to job search, but I don’t really know where to start. I guess I'm just looking for some structure for the process.

Job searching can take a lot of different forms, and the best way to start is going to depend a lot on your personal preferences and the level of confidence and knowledge you have about your next step. Some people like to start their job search in conversation with other people, conducting informational interviews to learn about different career options or specifics about different organizations. Or, you can try to get similar information reading from various sources online, like company press releases, recently published papers, and so on. Sometimes, it is a useful reflective exercise to put together a quick resume or CV a get a sense of your professional brand (but don’t spend a ton of time on it, since you’ll need to revisit and revise your materials for any position you apply for later on anyway!). If you already have a pretty clear idea of what you’re looking to do and where you’d like to do it, there’s nothing wrong with diving in and looking at job postings from the companies you are most interested in.

Ideally, the most effective job search is going to involve all of these elements, and the order isn’t terribly important. You just need to eventually get to a place where you know which positions it makes sense for you to apply to, given your interests, qualifications, and time available. We don’t recommend going into your job search planning to apply for hundreds or even dozens of jobs; just apply for the ones that are the best use of your time. Even though it would feel good to progress through a clearly delineated 1) informational interviews -> 2) research companies -> 3) view job postings -> 4) prepare materials -> 5) apply sequence, most of the time your search will involve a blend of all the steps as you see new interesting opportunities at different times.

One thing you might notice that I didn’t recommend is starting by doing a general search of large aggregator sites like LinkedIn Jobs or Google Jobs. While I understand the temptation to look at a big list and choose your favorites, and I know some people will eventually find success this way, in my experience this is the least efficient approach, as you’ll almost always spend more time looking at things that aren’t a good fit than ones that are. It can also be very psychologically draining, as the list is endless (new postings are added every day) and non-exhaustive (there are many jobs that may fit your criteria that are never posted there), so it isn’t really living up to the promise of letting you choose your favorites from all available options.

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