Most of us know we should spend time investigating our future career options, but we find a thousand reasons to delay. MIND's Career Exploration Road Map (copyright Jennie Dorman 2018, and updated as an interactive pdf in 2021) was designed to alleviate the stress and overwhelming experience of career exploration by breaking down the process into manageable and actionable steps shown in a gameboard-style schematic. The MIND Career Exploration Road Map has been featured in Inside Higher Ed and Science Careers.

The MIND Career Paths Starter Kit provides an introduction as well as sample job titles, organizations, and UCSF alumni for 14 career areas:

Getting Started on LinkedIn is a checklist for building your online profile on LinkedIn, the default social platform in the U.S. for professionals. A LinkedIn profile is useful for:

• Communicating who you are and what you do
• Learning about different careers
• Expanding your network

The Informational Interviews and Building Your Professional Network webpage offers the following resources:

• Two video series on how to approach networking conversations and the networking process
• Ground rules for contacting professionals
• A guide to designing questions for an informational interview
• Samples and strategies for how to follow up after a networking event
• Resources for making professional connections

Win Win Scientific: InterSECT is an online collection of interactive job simulation exercises for various career fields in the sciences and humanities, including but not limited to:

The MIND InterSECT Overview walks you through how to access job simulations on the InterSECT website.

The POT for Career Exploration handout guides you to reflect on your vision for your future work along these considerations:

• External (People, Organizations, Tasks)
• Internal (Preferences, Opportunities, Time)

It also gives you space to reflect on your experiences after trying job sims and what aligns with your vision.