An Annotated List of Career Resources
(and some tips on how to approach the job search)
Two of the hardest things about a job (or internship, or scholarship) search are determining the sheer range
of positions for which you are likely qualified and figuring out where and how openings are posted. The other
challenges come later—writing a decent cover letter, honing your resumé or CV, working with a critical eye to
whether or not something will suit you in the long-term—but the best applications begin with information,
and the healthiest applicants are those who know their resources, needs, and aspirations equally.
Career Services counselors and other advisers available to you both within and outside of the university can
be excellent sources of information and assistance once you have a list of specific positions or programs to
which you would like to apply and a comprehensive set of materials representing your experience, education,
and skill sets. Likewise, faculty and mentors can give your application weight and depth (in the form of
recommendations or references) once you have decided which applications you are undertaking and have
deeply familiarized yourself with the requirements and environments specific to each. However, most people
(even those with credentials or in official advisory roles) are not in optimal positions to tell you what careers
you, specifically, should pursue, or even where and how to look for potential careers of interest. The more
you can determine about your own interests, abilities, and potentials—the more precisely you can, of your
own accord, research and articulate these things—the better your chances at seeking out helpful, targeted, and
motivating advice.
What follows is a list of functional first-step career resources I’ve compiled from the websites of Berkeley’s
peer institutions, from Berkeley itself, and from my own sleuthing. They are broken down into research aids,
job search sites, scholarship and financial aid search sites, and residency search sites (for writers and artists).
The annotations are my own, and are not meant to be definitive assessments of the links supplied. I
encourage you instead to take this list as a springboard for forming your own opinions about search tools,
and as a way of remembering that you can form opinions (and should). If, over the course of your search, you
encounter other sites or resources that feel useful, please let me know (serena.le@berkeley.edu)—I’d love to
grow this list and keep it as current as possible!
——
Initial Research Aids
What Can I Do With This Major?
http://whatcanidowiththismajor.com/major/majors/
This may seem like a pretty silly website on the outset, but given how often the question it poses comes up in
every classroom (and especially in English classrooms), it may be important for you just to see how long, and
how inclusive, the answer can be. What I love about the site is that, once you click on a field of emphasis (and
their list of fields is extensive!), it doesn’t just give you a list of skills associated with a general job category (i.e.
for English, one general category is the ever-mentioned field of writing/editing). It also gives you a list of the
kinds of employers for whom such skills are especially key (so if you scroll to the field of publishing, for
instance, you’ll see a list of publication categories, some of which you may not yet have considered), and it
follows this with a list of basic tips for preparing yourself to be a qualified applicant. The tips are very basic,
but they may spark more nuanced lines of thinking for you. If, for instance, the suggestion is “obtain an
internship,” you can use one of the other sites on this handout to help you carry out that search.
One Day One Job
http://www.onedayonejob.com/
This site takes a really interesting approach to the job search—instead of linking you directly to job or
internship openings, it profiles the kinds of organizations and companies that match your search interests.
While this does mean you might end up reading about companies with no current openings, it's great for
seeing what's out there and keeping certain places and jobs in mind as you move into the world. There are
also links in each profile to the pages of company websites that post job listings. Sometimes the best ideas for
how you can use your experience, interests, and training can come from just realizing a certain kind of
organization exists. Whether or not they have immediate openings, you can always get in touch and ask
questions that might help you make choices about how you use your time at Berkeley, or how you plan for
the years after graduation.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Outlook Handbook
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/
This government-run website may be rickety as far as design and navigation go, but it is an important
database of information about occupations. I would use this site to look up information by job title or
category, and to get a sense of larger trends, nationwide, in employment and hiring practices. Information
provided includes written summaries of work environments and obligations, as well as hard facts like median
salary, entry-level education requirements, necessary skill sets, and the kind of training that occurs either onthe-job or prior to hiring. This site is especially good for developing a more comprehensive sense of a
particular career, and planning out the initial necessary steps in your education and work experience in order
to become a qualified applicant. Similar resources, which the Bureau will frequently link you to (and which are
frequently linked to each other), are these:
O*NET Online
http://www.onetonline.org/
This site contains a lot of overlapping information with the Bureau, but also serves as a hub
to additional resources. One of its features, which other sites will often link to, is its “Interest
Profiler,” which asks you questions and can be of help in narrowing down and articulating
your career interests.
My Next Move
http://www.mynextmove.org/
This site has a bit of a cheesy interface, but it is an excellent way to get quick information
about potential careers through interest keywords. You can generate lists of job possibilities,
as well as links to overviews about work environments and skill requirements.
Career One Step
http://www.acinet.org/
Career One Step, in addition to providing job descriptions and breakdowns by salary and
benefits (like the other sites above), has some decent step-by-step guides for building and
writing a resumé and preparing for interviews, as well as a comprehensive network of links
to other organizations which are dedicated to lending job search assistance.
American Job Center
http://jobcenter.usa.gov/
Another government-run site that primarily serves as a link hub to other sites on this list,
and promotes information circulation.
Chegg Career Center
http://www.chegg.com/career-center/explore
Chegg is a company that specializes in textbooks and other educational supplies, but it has branched out into
providing career services. You might consider it a sleeker and more intuitive take on some of the
government-sponsored and affiliated resources listed above. You can search career profiles by major, read job
descriptions, and follow links from job descriptions to current openings within that field.
——
Free Job and Internship Search Tools
Glass Door
http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm
A superbly designed website which combines job listings with specific information about companies
(including reviews and interviewing practices) and the ability to search by salary. These features are especially
helpful when you have narrowed down the kind of work you’re interested in pursuing, and are looking for
information on particular employers. It’s important to remember that different organizations can boast widely
varying work environments, benefits, potentials for creativity and growth, and records of employee treatment.
As you develop a sense of what field you might consider working in, this website can help you get a sense of
which aspects of employment are specific to the field (generally true from organization to organization) and
which are flexible. The information on interview practices, meanwhile, can help you tailor your application
and self-presentation more thoroughly to the positions you want.
idealist.org
http://www.idealist.org/
I love this website, which is dedicated to posting and promoting job, internship, and volunteer openings in
the nonprofit sector. If you’re at all interested in nonprofit work (a really excellent direction to take an
English degree—many nonprofits are in dire need of strong writers and creative thinkers), this should be your
go-to site for the job search. It’s thoughtfully designed, and it posts listings from over a hundred thousand
organizations, which you can search by location, area of focus, salary, function, and lots of other useful
metrics.
Career Overview
http://www.careeroverview.com/
This is a clean, useful site that works best as a database of links to more career-specific job search tools. For
instance, if you click on “Writing” as your field of interest, it will send you to a page of annotated links to
writing-specific job search tools like mediabistro, which is a great site that lists jobs for those interested in
media and communications.
Career Bliss
http://www.careerbliss.com/
This is a straightforward job search website. As with Glass Door, you can search by job, company, or
keyword, follow salary breakdowns, and read crowd-sourced company reviews. They also publish blog posts
with career and application advice, as well as job descriptions.
internships.com
http://www.internships.com/
Sponsored by Chegg, this is a well-designed and intuitive website dedicated specifically to internship listings.
You can search by category, location, or company, and you can also access all sorts of informational materials
(application and interviewing tips, thoughts on the nature of internships, and personal accounts). What I like
about the information they provide is that they often solicit personal narratives from recent interns and
people who have been successful across a wide variety of industries. As you collect tips for your own process,
you also get a sense of the sheer range, usefulness, and possibility of internship positions.
Internship Programs
http://www.internshipprograms.com/
This is a very simple interface for your internship search. You can search by company, keywords, and
location, and you can also see lists of recent or popular searches performed by other users. They additionally
publish articles dedicated to clarifying or critiquing the internship search process.
——
Paid Job Search Tools
Vault
http://jobs.vault.com/JobSeeker/Jobs.aspx
Vault is a lot like LinkedIn, but tends to be recommended more frequently by career counselors and centers. I
think the main reason for this is just that it appears fancier; some employers use the pay barrier as a way of
vetting potential employees. However, you can still access many of its features (namely, its research tools,
which include internship rankings and other statistical reports and data) without being a paid member, and
the benefits of paid access remain fairly dubious given the sheer number of employers perfectly willing to use
free recruiting sites. In my opinion, don’t fork over the $125 Berkeley charges recent alumni for one
additional year of access to this service (bundled in with access to Berkeley’s fairly outdated and proprietary
job search portal Callisto). You should absolutely use Vault while you’re here—be sure to note down any
important connections it might provide you—but there’s no reason you should be paying for it after
graduation. At $9.99 per month, it may even be cheaper for you to pay Vault directly for its services than to
pay Berkeley.
——
Scholarship and Financial Aid Search Tools
Peterson’s
http://www.petersons.com/graduate-schools/graduate-school-scholarships.aspx
This is a very clean, accessible website—probably my pick for ease of use and clarity when seeking funding
for further education. You can search available scholarships based on the degree you’re hoping to fund and
whether or not you expect to be enrolled full or part time.
FinAid
http://www.finaid.org/
This website looks pretty hokey, but it contains lots of important information about filling out various types
of financial aid forms and seeking out reputable scholarship sources. They publish a lot of articles on the
process, and they also profile types of financial aid (loans, grants, savings), which can be very helpful for
figuring out what sort of money is out there, as well as how to manage what you already have. It’s important
to keep track of how many kinds of aid you’re eligible for, and what responsibilities or obligations each kind
requires. Navigating the world of loans can be especially tricky; I would recommend doing your research
especially attentively and reading as much as you can before applying to programs that carry hefty price tags.
Scholarships.com
https://www.scholarships.com/scholarship-search.aspx
This is a no-frills website with very advanced search metrics that returns highly specific results once you’ve
signed into their system. They do embed lots of ad-like features, however, so you have to be careful not to
click on anything you don’t specifically want, and make sure you’re not unwittingly authorizing your
information to be shared. If you’re vigilant, the site gives you access to plenty of useful information, and a
great search and matching tool.
——
Writer’s Residency Search Tools
For those of you who do creative writing, one short-term or stop-gap option that may be worth pursuing is to
apply for writers’ residencies, some of which are fully funded, and some of which will charge you the
equivalent of room and board to live in a sheltered community of fellow writers or artists for a period of
time. These residencies range anywhere from one or two weeks to several months or a year, and they take
place all over the world. You apply for them as you might apply for graduate school or for a job—you’ll
usually need letters of recommendation (especially for free or subsidized residencies), writing samples, and
either a statement or a cover letter, though the writing sample will be by far the most important component
of your application. The following resources can help you look for residencies and research their
characteristics. A residency can be a way of experiencing an MFA-style environment without committing
yourself in the long-term; alternately, it may give you the time you need to build up a portfolio that would
allow you to apply more competitively for graduate creative programs.
Poets & Writers
http://www.pw.org/conferences_and_residencies
This is an excellent, fully searchable (by location and whether or not the residency is free) database. You can
also search for conferences, which are short-term (usually less than a week) gatherings featuring
presentations, lectures, symposiums. Conferences will usually require you to pay a fee out-of-pocket, but may
also be a good networking tool if you’re at a point in your writing career that would benefit from talking to
other writers.
ResArtis: Worldwide Network of Artist Residencies
http://resartis.org/en/residencies/
A great database that includes writers’ residencies as well as other creative and artistic residencies and
resources. It’s highly searchable, and they are gradually building their archives of supplemental information
(including other funding search tools—though currently the information they’ve collected here is very thin).
Alliance of Artists Communities
http://www.artistcommunities.org/residencies/directory
Another highly searchable residency database for writers and artists. They also provide some useful tips for
choosing appropriate programs and applying.