Identifying Your Top Organizations/Degree Programs and Create a Tracking System!

Overview

In the last few lessons, you were able to explore your personality, interests, values, potential majors, and potential job tasks/titles. In this lesson, you will explore and track organizations - including potential employers and prospective graduate education programs - that align with your career goals.

Preview image of tracking sheet Tracking documents can be specific to you. Here are ideas for various fields to include:

Name of the organization
Job titles of interest
Values that align
Network connections
Contact information
Date of application if applicable
Whether/when you spoke to a recruiter or connection
Funding availability/salary
Location
Website/links
Requirements for advancement (grad or promotion)
Mission /Vision/Values

Researching Organizations

Now it is time to start researching organizations that are of interest to you. There are several resources for researching organizations:

Go to the company website and read about the company and its mission, vision, and values. See how they market themselves.
See what positions they are hiring for. Do they have an internship program?
Go to the company's LinkedIn site and read about them.
Read reviews on sites like Glassdoor. You can also find information about a company like brief description, owner/contact/CEO, number of employees, salary, frequently asked questions, and common interview questions by job title.
Complete a Google search of the company to see if there are any news articles on the company.
Plan a Career Conversation with an Industry Professional within that company. See Module 2 to see how to complete a career conversation.

Making Sense of the Research

Utilize the tracking document in the next activity to track some of the research progress that you have made. You will start to see some companies rise to the top for you. This may be because their values match yours, because you like the job descriptions they have posted, or because they have great reviews.

Activity: Let's Create Your Tracking System!

If you're searching for a job or an internship, we recommend creating the following areas to start your tracking document. We've created an example for you at the bottom of this section, but you can also use a web-based tool like Notion or Teal.

10 Networking Contacts

These can be individuals you have already started a networking relationship with (i.e. career conversation contacts, past supervisors, faculty, professionals you've met at Tulane, etc.)

5 Future Prospects

Entries of interest for your next career goal, whether it is an internship, service, part-time job, or professional job. At a minimum, include the link to the posting or organization's website.

5 Dream Organizations/Businesses/Academic Institutions

Profile 5 organizations that you would be interested in volunteering/working at in the future. At a minimum, include the company's name, website, geographic location(s), size, and mission.

Example Tracking Document

Job-Internship Search Spreadsheet

Graduate School Tracking System

If you are contemplating graduate school in the future, you can fill out this document instead.

We recommend that you find 3-5 Schools/Programs of Interest in the following areas:

5 Future Prospects

Entries of interest for your next academic goal, including professional, master's, or doctoral programs. Here you can include the link to the posting or organization's website, the application requirements for schools you have selected, and the funding requirements.

5 Networking Contacts

Could be current faculty members, recruiters, department administrators, or current students and alumni affiliated with your chosen institutions. Also could be people who you would reach out to get information about grad school in general who are not necessarily connected to your selected schools.

Example Graduate School Tracking Document

Graduate School Tracking Model_Sample.

Changing the Tracking Document Over Time!

Often you will learn new things as you continue to do research, it is okay to add things as you go! Keep a tracking document to help in future job or graduate school searches. You can always save this document for later and return to it as your career develops. Follow companies on LinkedIn to keep up-to-date with their initiatives/changes/openings/etc.

Overview

Researching Organizations​

Making Sense of the Research​

Activity: Let's Create Your Tracking System!

10 Networking Contacts​

5 Future Prospects​

5 Dream Organizations/Businesses/Academic Institutions​

Example Tracking Document

Graduate School Tracking System

5 Future Prospects

5 Networking Contacts

Example Graduate School Tracking Document

Changing the Tracking Document Over Time! ​

Researching Organizations

Making Sense of the Research

10 Networking Contacts

5 Future Prospects

5 Dream Organizations/Businesses/Academic Institutions

Changing the Tracking Document Over Time!