What’s the best strategy for finding a job or an internship? Is it applying on Handshake, networking with alumni, or going to job fairs? There may not be “one weird trick” to landing a job or an internship… but some methods are more fruitful than others.
The CLS surveys each graduating class to find out where they end up after Grinnell and what kinds of experiences—internships, research, civic engagement, and more—they had during their time here. We ask those graduates not just where they’ll be employed, but also how they found their jobs. Here are insights from the last several years of these surveys.
Internships
The importance of networking for internship searching can’t be overstated. More than a third of surveyed graduates’ internships were obtained through networking with alumni, family connections, connections made at conferences or other professional development opportunities, and campus visitors (speakers, recruiters, etc.).
Another 21% got their internship position by reaching out directly to an organization of interest. If you’re dreaming of working somewhere specific but they don’t have a posted internship you can apply to, try getting in touch anyway! Often you can create an opportunity by being proactive in this way.
Another third of these Grinnell grads got their internship by applying to specific posts, either on Handshake or other job boards. Remember that one of the benefits of Handshake is that it’s targeted specifically at college students, so there are lots of internships and entry-level jobs posted.
Post-Graduate Jobs
Networking is even more key for Grinnellians’ post-grad job searches: over 40% of grads report landing their first job after Grinnell via personal connections.
A key difference between job searching and internship searching is the relevance of job boards. While Handshake is still a source for 10% of grads’ jobs, other job boards provided almost a third of these opportunities. Don’t discount Handshake—again, it’s the biggest platform targeting college students specifically—but be sure to incorporate LinkedIn and industry-specific job boards into your search. The CLS’s Career Communities will have the key sources for opportunities in your target field.
Many organizations use their internship program as a pipeline to full-time jobs: 5% of surveyed grads leveraged their internship experience into a full-time offer following graduation.
Finally, don’t forget the resources you have right here on campus: CLS staff and faculty. This is especially relevant if you’re aiming for work in research or academia. Ask your faculty mentors for connections!
The CLS is here to help you with all of these job-searching techniques. Check out our networking resources and schedule a meeting with a Career Community adviser to learn about the industry-specific search strategies for your area of interest. Good luck out there!
Notes on the data:
- Graduating classes 2020 – 2024
- Jobs data: n = 466
- Internships data: n = 835
- “How did you find this internship” is asked for each experience. A graduate who completed three internships during their time at Grinnell will contribute three data points to the internship dataset.
