The Ambassador's Top 5 Favorite Job Sites

To my fellow senior class, this is it. This is the last time we’ll be students before entering the career-world abyss, the one we keep hearing about, but never actually thought would come. But I swear, this isn’t meant to be a depressing,” let’s mourn the loss of our college-youth” post. Sure, we can’t help but think about everything in terms of “lasts”—our last first day of classes, our last winter bash, our last time(s) sprinting to the Joey. But there’s a whole lot of exciting perks about graduating and moving on, too, most of which we can’t even name yet.

For most of us, this semester will probably be focused on finding that coveted first job. The problem? There’s at least a zillion places to start. To prevent brain-overload, I find it helpful to hone in on a few particularly helpful career resources. Here’s a list of my top five favorite career sites:

1.Tufts Career Connect: Tufts Career Connect is valuable because it connects us to job listings, companies, and employers directly linked to the Tufts name. I’ve applied to my fair share of jobs through Tufts Career Connect—some I heard back from, some not—and each time, I felt comfortable in a way I couldn’t on a totally-random job site. I also suggest making a Job Agent, a handy feature that alerts you to new opportunities based on the qualifications you’ve selected. But it’s always wise to check out this website (updated daily) on your own, too.

2. Career Services introduces the Tufts Career Advisory Network, the revamped, new-and-improved version of its past Alumni resource. Along with mere lists of graduates, this resource offers detailed profiles of an alumni’s entire educational and career path. This new search engine is comprehensive and user-friendly, and it generates a much more satisfying feel of community. What’s more—students can shoot an email (professional and carefully worded, of course) to alumni directly through the site itself.

3. Glassdoor: For those of you that haven’t visited the ever-helpful Glassdoor, I recommend it. Search any company or employer, and you’ll be faced with an all-you-can-ask-for list of background information, statistics, salary trends, interview questions, and more. I’ve personally used Glassdoor to prepare for a few nerve-racking interviews. One of my friends darted the awkward “salary question” by skimming the site’s list of statistics. Whether you’re looking for a specific piece of information, or simply trying to familiarize yourself with a company and its trends, Glassdoor is probably the place for it.

4. Vault: I’d heard about this search engine before, but I had no idea how relevant it might be to the job-hunt until probably three days ago. When you think of the word vault, you probably think of some sort of big, endless, underground storage space; that’s what this is, really. Covering everything even remotely career-related, Vault is known for its seemingly limitless series of detailed profiles and guides—on companies, employers, job industries, everything. It combines up-to-the-minute facts with broader, well-researched information. You might visit Vault before an interview to familiarize yourself with a company and its industry-specific lingo. Or, you might want to get a panoramic feel for a less-familiar job sector. Or company. Or employer. Simply put, it has everything.

5. A final word of advice: As far as job search engines, I suggest sticking to industry-specific job sites, which I’ve found more helpful—and less daunting—than all-inclusive job aggregators. As an aspiring writer/editor/publisher, I trend toward ED 2010, which focuses on jobs in magazines, as well as bookjobs.com, geared towards book publishing. But for all those future engineers, financiers, lawyers, doctors, and save-the-world advocates out there, there are plenty more. Click here for our carefully-compiled list of industry-specific job-search sites. I promise you’ll find something there.

I hope you find this compact list of career resources helpful. With the overwhelming surplus of job sites out there, it’s often refreshing to relax, choose a few easy-to-navigate ones, and hone in on what’s really important.