Career Development Checklist

UMass wants you to enjoy a great career!

The following is timeline of things you can do to ensure that you reach your goal for a career in the sciences by the time you graduate. Starting in your first year, tend to your professional development across the five action categories below.

FIRST YEAR

Course Selection

  • Explore interesting courses to investigate possible majors.
  • Get to know your undergraduate advisor and major requirements.
  • Participate in classes and establish the best GPA you can.

Networking

  • Talk to your professors and TAs during office hours, and before or after class. Be visible. In a big school, it’s important that faculty know your name and your face—this will help with getting letters of recommendation in later years.
  • Ask older students in your major what they wish they knew as first years.
  • Attend the meetings of any two student organizations.

Using Resources

Online Presentation

  • Double-check your privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. All of your personal content should be visible to your friends only.
  • Google yourself in quotation marks, i.e “Firstname Lastname,” and look at the content results from an employer’s point of view. Clean up your digital dirt as needed.

Occupation Research 

  • Check out What Can I Do With This Major?
  • Explore the website for your intended major and read about each faculty member’s research to find your “most interesting” faculty. See what they study and teach.

SECOND YEAR

Course Selection

  • Reevaluate your major. If you’re undecided, narrow your choices to one or two majors that you would like to complete. Then see your undergrad advisor ASAP to discuss, and then declare.
  • Make an academic plan that accounts for any prerequisites for advanced classes and whether courses are offered in fall, spring, or both.
  • Consider adding a small internship or lab research commitment of eight hours/week.

Networking

  • Introduce yourself to students in your classes. They could turn out to be great networking contacts in the future.
  • Read a published article by a faculty member whose work interests you. Approach them in person and use this knowledge to start a conversation about potentially applying to work on their lab or research project. At UMass, 65 percent of students complete an internship or research project with faculty before graduating.
  • Talk to older students in your major. Learn what they do. Ask for advice on courses to take, as well as research projects and clubs to join.
  • Attend meetings for at least one student organization regularly, and be involved, not just a member. It’s what you do that matters, not where you sign your name.

Using Resources

  • Get your resume reviewed by a career peer advisor at the CNS Career Center, Morrill II, Suite 321. No appointment needed.
  • Make an appointment with your professional career advisor at the CNS Career Center. Bring a printed internship description, your resume, and your cover letter for an advisor to review before you submit them.
  • Visit the CNS Internship Database and read student reviews of internships for your major.
  • Use Handshake to find and apply for an internship in a following semester. You must plan a semester ahead to do an internship.
  • If interested in research or a TA-ship, go to UMass Amherst BUA (Biology Undergraduate Apprenticeships) and start a profile. These opportunities are open to all CNS students, not just Biology Majors. The application window opens very briefly in the week prior to each semester. Be ready for the rush by completing your profile, browsing projects, and talking with faculty directly, well in advance of that week.

Online Presentation

  • Google yourself in quotation marks, i.e “Firstname Lastname,” and look at the content results from an employer’s point of view.
  • Start or update your LinkedIn page.

Occupation Research

  • Use Handshake to search by major for open opportunities. Search related majors as well. Print the five most interesting jobs you find, whether or not you currently qualify for them. Finding interesting future jobs is a sign that you are in the right major.
  • Meet with your career advisor and ask what different kinds of careers extend from your major. Check out our Resources for All Majors to see lists of careers and companies that hire that major.

THIRD YEAR

Course Selection

  • Consider a second major or a minor, for which you may already have taken some overlapping courses. Discuss with an undergraduate advisor in CNS.
  • Browse courses of interest at Hampshire, Amherst, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke Colleges on the Five Colleges website. These courses are free for UMass students, and so are the buses that take you there.

Networking

  • Approach and re-approach faculty with whom you hope to gain research experience. Make sure you have read their website thoroughly so you know what their research is all about, and why you are interested in working in that particular lab.
  • Participate professionally and politely in LinkedIn group discussions. This gets people in your field to notice you and to look at your LinkedIn page.
  • The most career-minded students are often in student organizations related to their major. Find them and join them.
  • Learn the career and research interests of juniors and seniors in your classes and tell them your interests in turn. Make an explicit deal to be on the lookout for opportunities that might benefit your friends, and vice versa.

Using Resources

Online Presentation

  • Update and develop your LinkedIn page. Upload evidence of your work (e.g. PDF writing samples, lab reports, PowerPoints, data tables, microscopy images, AutoCAD videos).
  • Compose a LinkedIn summary paragraph that establishes your professional identity and how you are different from others in your major. Update your professional photo.
  • Search for LinkedIn Groups matching interests within your field (e.g. wildlife conservation, genetic medicine, cell division, addiction studies, insulation technology, pharmaceutical development, etc.), and ask to join.

Occupation Research

  • Search online for your major/area and either “job board” or “professional organizations.” Find and bookmark some websites more specific to your field than Indeed, Google, or Monster. The CNS Career Center can help.
  • Find websites of 10 companies where you might someday work. Bookmark the page that actually shows open positions, and check it every two weeks.

FOURTH YEAR

Course Selection 

  • Where you have extra credits to fulfill, stretch into areas that interest you from other majors, take a Five College course, or a course in GIS software. You needn’t complete a minor to benefit from taking courses in that area. Also consider a full-time, semester-long 15-credit internship, working 40 hours/week.

Networking

  • Who will write your recommendation letters someday? Gather their full contact info now, make a connection on LinkedIn, and ask each person if they would be willing to write you a letter “in the future.” Get their “Yes” today, so you can cash it in when the time comes.

Using Resources

  • Talk to your faculty and the CNS Career Center about the value of graduate school for your given career track.
  • Prepare to take the GRE, or other appropriate exam, shortly after graduation. Your GRE score is good for five years. This gives you time to decide about applying to grad school. But if you delay taking the GRE, you may not get as strong a score as you would get closer to your graduation.

Online Presentation

  • Prepare your LinkedIn page for heavy viewing by potential employers and others in your professional network. Reconsider your headline, summary paragraph, and list of skills. Join additional groups for your profession and participate.
  • Create an online landing page that establishes your professional brand at About.me. Have it link to your LinkedIn page and any other professional site of relevance for you, such as where you interned or worked during college.
  • Recheck your Google results and all social media platforms. Clean and lock them down so your LinkedIn professional profile shows in a Google search before your personal profiles on Facebook or other platforms. 
  • Start a blog, covering your professional life with one picture and one paragraph, once per month. Wordpress is a good place to do this affordably.
  • Order business cards that direct people to your LinkedIn page or About.Me landing page. Vistaprint is a good place to do this affordably.   

Occupation Research

  • Create a spreadsheet to centralize information on the jobs you’ve applied for, including the date you submitted your application, dates on which you will follow up, and contact info.
  • Organize a computer folder system with a folder for each company to which you apply and a subfolder for each job within each company. In each folder should be a resume and cover letter customized to that job at that company.