Third year
- Plan for a summer or school-year internship - Now it's really important to get some real-work experience. Find that internship
- Set up a LinkedIn account - Get out your achievements file and set up a LinkedIn account with whatever information you want to share about your career goals and your skills. Keep this strictly for business, no social stuff. And don't forget to link to me.
- Consider blogging - If you feel comfortable doing it, set up a personal blog (like at www.blogger.com). No, you don't have to put up daily words of wisdom, but you should have some career interests by now and as you troll around the web looking at interesting companies, why not post links to the better stuff on your blog? Don't post anything that criticizes a particular company - you might end up interviewing with them. Next year when you begin interviewing, someone in HR is going to look at your web presence and see that you have been actively searching for career and industry information and that will be good.
- Get business cards - I mention this again later when you really start looking, but even in this electronic age, business cards are still the currency of business introductions. Some universities (and lots of grad schools) will provide them free. Even if you can't get free ones, you can get cheap ones at the local copy store.
- Assemble a list of target companies - Start thinking about the places you'd most like to work. Go to their websites, and check up on them at least every month to find out what happening with their products, market, management and industry. See whether you can arrange a phone interview with the HR depts. You want to find out (1) What kind of jobs do they have, and (2) What skills are they looking for?
- Continue networking - Use LinkedIn and your family and friends network to try and find contacts at your target companies. Set up one-on-one meetings to find out as much as you can about the company and industry.
- Visit your college career center - See what resources they have to offer.
- Begin building an argument for being hired - How are you going to demonstrate the skills your target companies are looking for?
