Natty Leach, Associate Director
As of just last week, Penn students have a new resource for their networking toolkit—CareerShift. With ways to search for companies, contacts, and keep everything organized, CareerShift can be a useful way to keep track of the networking side of your job search. Since it’s a new tool, I wanted to highlight just one key part of the system that can be particularly useful.
Whether you’re in the midst of applying to positions now or gearing up for positions that will open later in the Spring semester, having an informational interview with a Penn alum can be a great way to learn more about the company culture, job function, and overall industry you might be interested in. In addition to LinkedIn and QuakerNet, our alumni database, CareerShift has a great contact search that let’s you look at contacts within the organization by school attended, position, or location:
This can be useful for discovering new contacts or following up from a conversation you had at a career fair or information session. You can also organize all of your contacts by company or job to help keep track of who you’ve contacted so far.
If interested in informational interviews, take a look at the guide on our website with sample questions to ask or ways to craft an email to request a meeting.