Welcome to Friday Faves! Each Friday we’ll spotlight one of our favorite resources for students.
There are many, many Tufts-affiliated groups on LinkedIn, and the largest is the Tufts University Career Network. Once you join this group, you’ll be able to see where fellow Jumbos are working and going to grad school and contact interesting people to request career conversations. If you’re new to LinkedIn, check out this information about using LinkedIn and joining LinkedIn groups.
After you join a group, try selecting “See All” in the top right corner (the group members). You’ll be able to find people who are working in industries and living in locations that interest you. And if you’re messaging another group member, e.g., you both belong to the Tufts University Career Network, you’ll be able to do that for free (as opposed to selecting any random person on LinkedIn and paying to message them). Hooray for free!
We encourage students to reach out to Tufts alumni + others via LinkedIn and The Herd (our flash mentoring database), as well as any other channel you might think of! Talking to classmates or professors, aunts or uncles — it’s all good! You never know what you might learn or where it could lead.
A few quick tips for your outreach:
- Use Career Center resources to help you! After you find someone interesting in The Herd or LinkedIn, draft your message to them. Here’s a handy reference with templates for reaching out to people, wherever you may find them. And this page has a list of sample questions you can consider asking in your conversations.
- You may not hear back from everyone, and that’s to be expected. Sometimes people are busy! In your email or note, you can acknowledge this by saying something like “I’m sure you’re very busy, but I’m wondering if your schedule in the next few weeks would allow for a 15-20 min. phone or Zoom call.” The implied message here is that you understand that they probably can’t talk to you for an hour on the very next day, but that you’re flexible about scheduling a conversation and grateful for their time and assistance.