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Your Job Search

Job Choices Magazine-NACE's digital magazine

How Employers Hire

  1. They hire in-house, tapping current employees, volunteers, and interns.
  2. They network through colleagues and professional organizations.
  3. They post openings on their own web site, through professional organizations, and advertisements or job listings web sites.
  4. They partner with specific colleges and universities (like UMass Amherst!) as they have great results and really like the caliber of our graduates. Ask us about our partner employers.
  5. Ultimately, employers hire who they know and who they like. Your task during a job search is to get known and to be liked!

How Most People Actually Get Jobs

  1. They are hired or promoted from within the company. They already work onsite in some capacity, as full-time emplyees, interns, volunteers, or in part-time positions.
  2. They talk to everyone in an effort to make connections (networking).

Structuring Your Job Search


Job searching will consume a lot of your time and energy. Knowing how to best use your time will help you to be successful and avoid burn-out.

  • Develop Experience: This is where roughly half of your time and energy should go. Gain experience in your field through internships and co-ops, volunteering, campus groups, and professional organizations.
  • Network: This goes hand-in-hand with developing experience. Spend a quarter of your time contacting the people you know for professional contacts, support, and advice.
  • Research: This should take up less than a quarter of your time. Research five to ten organizations or companies for whom you would like to work. Bookmark their Web sites and check their job postings frequently.
  • Use General Career Web sites: Bookmark five to ten job listing sites, and spend some of your remaining time checking them for new postings.