How To Open Your Eyes To Career Opportunities

Ask Your Friends To Keep Their Ears To The Ground At Their Jobs
Yes, it's nice to have friends who are outside of your professional sphere, and you should take all the joy you can in the non-your-industry's-jargon type of company they provide you, but you can ask them to keep a look out for career opportunities that might be right for you. Doing so does not mean that you have to start talking shop all the time with them. If you simply let your friends know what type of career opportunities you're interested in now, or will be in the future, you can trust that if they hear of something good coming up at work that you'll be among the first to know. Friends help each other out, right?

Contact Your College and/or Grad School and Let Them Know You're Seeking Opportunities
A great way to ferret out to job opportunities is to build on the opportunities you've already created for yourself -- even after you leave school, it can continue to be a resource for you. Contact the places you attended -- your college, your graduate school, even your high school if its network of alums is active and strong. Once you've established contact, there are number of ways to use these resources.

Find An Alum Who Has Your Dream Job And Have Him or Her Tell You How He or She Got It
The most direct route to career advancement and opportunities through your alumni associations is to ask to be put in touch with one or more alums who currently hold the type of job you've been dreaming about. Get in touch with that alum and let them know you're interested in picking his or her brain about how to enter the field he or she is in. If you can, set a date to have coffee if you live in close proximity to each other. If you don't, try to set up a time to talk by phone. Although e-mail is the easiest on everyone in this situation, you won't get as much exposure to the alum and your dream job that way. When you have your meeting, in whatever form it takes, ask the alum how he or she got to where he or she is. Ask his or her advice about the best way for someone with your particular experience to enter that field.

Join the Alumni Association and Attend Its Meetings
Although some alumni meetings are put on purely for the purposes of reliving the glory days of undergrad or the doctoral program, there is usually an undercurrent of networking taking place. Prepare some business cards for yourself, and prepare to be bold enough to interview the people who share your alma mater about what they're doing now and if you might be able to do the same one day.

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