Expanding and Exploring in the Real World

How can you Explore?

We strongly suggest that before you look for internships and/or jobs that you do a lot of Informational Interviewing. This process is talking with real people to both investigate options and start building your “Tribe” of people to help you and take risks on you in the future. It is a process of thoughtfully connecting with alumni from your school and industry execs who are just out of school or another 5-10 years older to talk about their paths (NOT about looking for a job or internship).

Many people are challenged by the daunting task of making first contact with someone they don’t know; affectionately known as “Fear of Reaching Out” or FORO. This is one of the biggest hurdles in career work for a lot of individuals. Some may not want to talk to you, and that’s okay. You may need to reach out to a decent variety in order to make the right connections for your path.

There are many resources about Informational Interviewing…

• You can find nuggets of directions in the What Color is Your Parachute book, listed at the end of this program. This is the granddaddy of informational interviews — where it all began.
• You can get a good summary list and outline of how to set them up at the UCLA Career Center site: https://career.ucla.edu/undergrad/career-planning-and-exploration
• There also is a LONG list of suggested questions at https://www.livecareer.com/quintessential/informational-interview-questions, though I like the ones that start around #90.
• Cal Berkeley also has some good resources at https://career.berkeley.edu/start-exploring/informational-interviews/.

Seeking resources for companies and ideas?

• You can find trade associations at http://www.directoryofassociations.com.  Trade associations have conferences, YouTube channels, often free newsletters, and sometimes job boards.  You can see who speaks at their conferences and find their words and work stories on YouTube or LinkedIn.
• If you went to college or are in college, look through your university alumni in your sectors on LinkedIn — and see who knows who.  For example, you could look at Cal State Fullerton alumni by searching and finding the School page at https://www.linkedin.com/school/california-state-university-fullerton/.  On the tabs below, you will find an Alumni tab at https://www.linkedin.com/school/california-state-university-fullerton/people/.  You there can search by title, keyword, year, employer, and other categories.  You might not know people in common via LinkedIn, so can’t reach out directly unless you subscribe to one of their services.  However, you might find them additionally on Instagram and can kindly direct message them . . . and then move the conversation to email as a follow-up.  You also can look at what types of jobs alumni have to see where they have worked in the past, where they also will know people.

Seeking ideas for U.S. companies more broadly?

• Use Career OneStop’s (US Dept. of Labor) Business Finder: https://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/jobs/find-businesses.aspx (a gigantic search tool)
• BizJournal List of companies: https://www.bizjournals.com/profiles/company 
• Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
• Press releases sent by companies: http://www.prnewswire.com/
• Dun & Bradstreet: https://www.dnb.com/site-search-results.html
• Crunchbase for recent investments, headquarters, sectors, and articles: https://www.crunchbase.com/ 
• Chegg CareerMatch and search by Keyword, Company, and/or Location: https://www.careermatch.com/candidate/app/search 
• Wall Street Journal Company Lists: https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/company-list
• Industries in Alphabetical Order from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag_index_alpha.htm