It is important to be proactive and not wait until your last year to figure out what you want to do or to start contacting people. Start as early as possible by researching career paths that interest you, gain tools (e.g. lab techniques, programming languages, data analysis methods) and experience (e.g. teaching, policy work, internships) that will make you a more marketable candidate. Also, set up informational interviews with people in your network (e.g. alumni from CEE, from Princeton in general, from your undergraduate institution, family and friends) where you can ask them, for example, what their job is like, how they got there, and what skills they normally look for in candidates.

LinkedIn

Join the LinkedIn group for CEE Graduate Students, Postdocs, Faculty and Alumni. This is a space to connect with and seek advice from current and former CEE members. Many of our alumni are in top positions both in and out of academia, so it is worth reaching out to them.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile we strongly encourage you to create one (even in its simplest form), given that it is an important professional tool. Here are some tips from Career Services on how to do it.

EEWR/MMS Brown Bag Seminars

Each program organizes weekly seminars during the academic year where graduate students and postdocs have the opportunity to present their research. This is an excellent opportunity to practice your public speaking skills and your ability to communicate your research work effectively. These are very important skills that you will need throughout your career, whether you stay in academia or not, and the more you practice them the better you will get at them.

Listservs

There are several professional-oriented listservs that periodically send out information about summer and full-time positions in a specific field, so it is worth to subscribe to them. Here we list a few that we are aware of, but it is by no means an exhaustive list:

• CLIMLIST: summer and academic full-time positions around the world on topics related to climate (very broadly speaking).