A lot of students are very good learners. A teacher explains a concept, and you understand it, do the problems, and carry it over to questions you haven’t seen. But in a job search, when nobody tells you what to learn or where to find the material, you don’t know where to begin.
That’s what I mean by the ability to go out and get information: whether you can spot what you’re missing, find the information you need, judge whether it’s reliable, and apply it to your own situation.
In school, most information is organized first and then handed to you. In a job search, that part of the work is yours. Two students can prepare equally hard. One keeps going over what she already knows; the other keeps finding opportunities and requirements she never knew about. Give it some time, and the difference is obvious.
Start with What Your School Already Offers
Your school’s job board, the career center, company info sessions, and guest speakers at clubs are the easiest sources of information to reach. Start by signing up for the relevant platforms and subscribing to recruiting and event emails, then find out exactly what resources your school has. If you don’t know any of this, ask your academic counselor or the career center directly instead of guessing.
There are a lot of emails, and they really are easy to ignore. But job postings, events, and application deadlines are often right there in them. By the time you hear about an opportunity from someone else and dig up the two-week-old email, the program may already be closed. Reading your email seems like a small thing, but it affects whether you get the chance to start at all.
Go to Plenty at First, Then Get Selective
Early on, when you don’t know much yet about industries or recruiting, go to quite a few events and build a basis for comparison. Gradually you’ll notice which events mainly introduce the company, which put you in touch with specific teams, which suit first- and second-year students better, and which are already part of the application process.
Once you know your way around, you need to be selective. These are the things to weigh:
- Whether the industry and role are relevant. Is it a direction you want to go in, or one worth learning more about?
- Whether you meet the hiring criteria. That includes graduation year, experience requirements, and the employer’s specific requirements around work authorization.
- Whether the timing works. Which year’s internship or full-time class is being hired, when do applications open, and do you still have time to prepare?
- What the people there can answer. Recruiters can explain the process and eligibility, people who do the work can describe the job itself, and team leads may know more about what the team needs.
Don’t judge an event’s value only by how senior the speakers are. If you haven’t even figured out the application process, a recruiter who can answer those questions is very helpful. For understanding a specific team, talking to someone who actually works on it is usually more direct.
A little preparation beforehand changes what you get out of it. Look at which roles the company has open and which are relevant to you, then check the speakers’ backgrounds on LinkedIn to find anything you might have in common and to work out what you really want to ask.
For an industry you know nothing about, first ask what it does and what abilities it needs, then decide whether you want to keep learning about it. For an industry you already want to enter, check your understanding for gaps. Once you narrow your focus to a target company, get more specific: divisions, teams, interview formats, and what they look for in a hire.
After the event, two things are enough to write down: what you learned that’s new, and what you’ll verify or do next. A note that says “great company” won’t help much later. A note like “this team mainly does X, and I can contact so-and-so to learn more” is what lets you keep moving.
Take the Career Center Piece by Piece
I’ve seen plenty of resumes revised by career centers. Some only fixed the formatting and swapped out verbs, without solving the real problem, which was that the experience itself wasn’t explained clearly. So I don’t tell students to accept every edit wholesale.
But the alumni, recruiting events, and employer relationships your school has are still worth using. Ask directly: which past students went into this industry, whether any alumni would be willing to do an informational interview, and which events fit where you are right now.
One weak part of a resource doesn’t make the whole thing worthless. Figure out what it’s good at helping you with, and go in with specific questions.
Then Find the Resources That Don’t Come to You
Apart from public events, some opportunities live inside the connections of professors, clubs, and alumni. Without contact with them, you’re unlikely to hear about these.
Start with professors. They may have research projects and partner organizations, and they know other professors and former students who are now working in industry. One of my students got into a US national laboratory through a professor’s connections, and I once met a company’s CFO through a professor myself.
Experiences like these taught me early that professors aren’t just people who teach and grade. Start by taking their class seriously, going to office hours, and discussing a real question, so they gradually get to know your interests and abilities. If you only show up at the end when you need a recommendation, it’s hard for a professor to work out from one email how to help you.
Relationships take time. Sometimes it takes a semester or two before a professor really knows you, so don’t treat a single office hour visit as a test of whether you “got the resource.” You also don’t need a deep connection with every professor. Finding a few whose work relates to your interests and direction, and staying in touch with them, is already very valuable.
If there’s no project available right now, ask when they’ll next be taking on students, what to learn ahead of time, or who else is doing related research. Even if this professor has nothing for you, they may point you somewhere to keep looking.
Next, clubs. Beyond running events, some clubs keep up long-term relationships with alumni and employers. They may organize company visits, invite alumni to speak, or compile members’ resumes into a resume book and send it to recruiters.
The finance club at my undergraduate school had exactly this kind of channel. It collected members’ resumes and passed them to HR at investment banks, which got some students seen more directly. What that gave you was more exposure. It didn’t mean that joining the club let you skip formal applications and screening.
When you’re choosing clubs, ask a few specific questions: what events they’ve run in the past year, which alumni come back, where members have interned, and whether any projects involve companies directly. Hearing “we have lots of resources” isn’t enough. Once you find out how things work, you’ll know whether you can use them.
Before You Take Advice, Find Out Where It Comes From
I once talked with a student who had applied to 2,000 data analyst jobs without getting an offer. She assumed she just wasn’t good enough, or that she still hadn’t gotten her resume right. As we kept talking, it turned out that the job-search agency that had picked her direction mainly handled coding-related roles, so it had pushed her down that path too.
But parts of her background could have led toward business roles or the middle and back office at investment banks. She had worked hard. What she had never done was go back and check whether the direction she’d chosen suited her.
Cases like this are why I care so much about where information comes from. Someone who’s strong in one field can give you great advice about that field. But if that’s the only path she knows, it’s easy for her to fit everyone into it. Paying for advice, and getting it from someone who seems very professional, doesn’t mean that person knows all of your options.
Another case that stuck with me: a student who wanted to go into finance or accounting was torn between School A and School B when she transferred. I recommended B, because its ties to her target industry, its alumni, and its recruiting support suited her better. But A was a little more prestigious, and in the end she chose A.
My worry at the time was that the two schools’ recruiting channels were very different. One relied mainly on huge career fairs; the other gave more direct access to her target industry. The effects of a choice like that only show up when you’re job hunting, and since you can’t live your life twice, she has no real way of knowing how the other path would have turned out.
So when you’re taking advice, I’d suggest checking three things first: where the person’s experience comes from, how far it extends, and how much your background and goals overlap with hers.
Having worked in an industry and having helped many people from different backgrounds get into it give you different kinds of knowledge. A recent graduate can tell you what the interviews were like lately, but may not be able to judge how someone with a different background should make the switch. Someone who has worked in the field for years may understand the job itself, but not necessarily what changed in campus recruiting this year.
You don’t need to find one person who knows everything. Put together what different people tell you, tell apart firsthand experience, personal judgment, and secondhand information, and then decide.
Don’t Let Your Familiar Circle Become Your Only Source
It helps a lot when Chinese students share what they know about classes, labs, and internships with each other. But if you only ever talk to people with the same major, nationality, and background, you’ll keep hearing about similar paths and can easily conclude those are the only options.
STEM students are especially prone to copying what older students did: the same classes, the same labs, the same direction for applications. That path may really suit you, or it may just be the only one you know about. The only way to tell is to take in information from outside it.
Get to know classmates, alumni, and people in the field from different backgrounds, and go to events you wouldn’t normally attend. Keep your friends. You’re just adding information your usual circle doesn’t have.
When you borrow from someone else’s experience, ask about the conditions, too. Did she have different work authorization, a relevant internship, an inside connection, or just good timing with a particular recruiting round? Copy what she did while leaving out that context, and you can end up with the wrong expectations for your own results.
Search, Verify, Then Apply It to Yourself
There are many places to look online. You can Google whatever you don’t know, read interview experiences on Glassdoor, and use forums like Wall Street Oasis (WSO) to see what finance candidates say about processes and timelines. Chinese-language platforms have experience posts, too.
But platforms and materials are only leads. Interview write-ups have to be read with the role, region, and year in mind, and dates in old posts can’t be taken as this year’s schedule.
AI can help you organize your questions, explain terms, or suggest where to search. But when it gives you a link, that doesn’t mean the page actually supports what it said. Click through and read what the source says, especially about eligibility, timing, and numbers. Confirm application requirements on the company’s careers page. For questions about work authorization, go back to official sources and check them against your own situation.
I read forum comments too. Someone who’s been through a process will sometimes fill in steps the careers page doesn’t mention, but her experience is still just one data point. Comparing it with other sources is more useful than treating it as a rule for everyone.
The Snowball Method: Use the Leads You Have to Find New Ones
When I was looking into startup resources at Cambridge, I used a very simple method. First I asked students and alumni which programs they knew about, then went online and on LinkedIn to find people who had been part of those programs.
Say someone mentioned three programs, A, B, and C. I wouldn’t just write down the three names. When I found the next person who knew the scene, I’d ask, “I’ve already looked at A, B, and C. What else is out there?” That might turn up E and F, programs I had no idea existed.
As the list grew, I went through the official websites one by one. Is this program for founders, for co-founders, or for students who want to learn about startups? What does it require? Does it fit what I’m doing right now? First widen what you know about, then narrow down to the few that really matter.
Use the same approach for job search information. The first time you talk to someone about an industry, your questions may be broad. The second time, you already know a few divisions, so you can ask how they differ. Only after that do you get to a specific team’s requirements and how to prepare.
A practical way to do it:
- List the roles, programs, or resources you already know about.
- Take that list to someone who knows the area and ask what’s missing.
- Look into the new leads and sort out which fit you and which aren’t relevant for now.
- In your next conversation, use what you’ve already looked into as the starting point for your follow-up questions.
When the new leads start repeating a lot, stop expanding and turn to verifying the most relevant directions. Later, when you reach a new stage or have new questions, pick it back up.
Searching works the same way. If you read that “there are programs for first- and second-year students,” go on to search investment banking freshman program or early careers program, or combine a company name, class year, and location. When you hit an unfamiliar term like externship, find out what it means first, then look up specific programs at the relevant organizations. A program’s name can be a way in, but it can’t stand in for checking whether you’re eligible.
Being “good at searching” just means that when you see an unfamiliar lead that might be useful, you know how to keep digging. You don’t need to find the perfect answer in one go, but each search should ideally make your next question more specific.
Following an Industry Over Time: Start with What Already Holds Your Interest
Many students ask me where to start with the news, and why they don’t understand it even after reading it.
Start with something in your life you’re already interested in. If you like cosmetics, learn about the companies behind the brands, their sales channels, and their competition. An electric car you bought can become your way into product updates, the supply chain, and the different choices automakers make.
When you hit a concept you don’t understand, look it up and pair it with an explainer video. As you get more familiar, you’ll be able to read companies’ public filings, industry reports, and related news. On the technical side, you can go further into papers and technical product documentation, but also judge whether the material matches your level.
I’d suggest sticking with it for a month or two and seeing whether you start to connect scattered pieces of information. You don’t have to read all the news every day. Just keep asking questions about one area: why is this company doing this, who does this change affect, and how does it connect to what happened before?
After you read something, try explaining it in your own words. If all you can do is repeat the headline, and you still can’t say what happened or why it matters, go after one more key question. Input like this turns more easily into judgments you can use in an interview.
In the end, gathering information is supposed to help you make decisions. When you find a new role, decide whether to apply. If you learn about a requirement, plan your learning around it. And once you meet someone who can answer your questions, prepare for a specific conversation. Piling up more and more saved material won’t move your job search forward by itself.