Career Options

EXPLORE CAREER OPTIONS that best fit your personality, skills, values, interests and goals to find best fit industries, occupations, and employers. As you learn about career paths of interest, make sure to connect with professionals and test out opportunities to develop a deeper understanding of what you enjoy. Utilize a variety of resources to learn about industries, career fields and occupations through different lenses including pay, work environment, qualifications, and more.

• Career Paths Image
• Career Path Profile/Planner Template

Self-Reflection and Targeting Careers

• ♣ Pathway U: Includes assessments focused on interests, values, personality, and workplace preferences as well as tools to discover what career paths and job positions you best align with.
• ImaginePhD: Geared toward (but not exclusive to) Humanities and Social Science graduate students, this brand new tool offers interest, skill, and values assessments, as well as the ability to connect your results to information about 15 relevant "job families". Significant resources are also available for learning about each job family (Career Exploration Worksheet)
• MyIDP: Focused on science and other STEM careers, MyIDP provides exercises to help you examine your skills, interests, and values; a list of 20 scientific career paths with a prediction of which ones best fit your skills and interests; a tool for setting strategic goals for the coming year, with optional reminders to keep you on track; and articles and resources to guide you through the process

Trends in Career Outcomes 

Research where others in your field/discipline and Notre Dame alumni have secured employment. This can be done through a variety of resources including:

• Your academic department/program placement data (ex. ND Political Science)
• Campus Career Services Office outcomes information often referred to as "First Destination" data (ex. ND 2010-17 Top Hiring Employers)
• Data from other schools (ex. University of Toronto 10,000 Ph.D. Project) 
• Professional Organizations (ex. American Historical Association - Where Historians Work, American Political Science Association, and Modern Language Association Connected Academics)
• Employers who have given H1B Sponsorship to ND international students (last 5 years)
• Find and connect with alumni through resources such as the Alumni Association Directory, Irish Compass, and LinkedIn

Academia and Higher Education (Faculty and Staff)

School Directories:

• Carnegie Classification System: United States higher education directory that allows users to search for schools based on a variety of criteria such as research activity, size, culture, location and more. Search by specific codes such as IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System)
• World Higher Education Database: Provides up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive information on global higher education systems, credentials and over 18,400 higher education institutions in 196 countries and territories 
• World University Rankings: Reviews and rankings of higher education institutions worldwide based on a variety of criteria
• College Scorecard: Federal reviews of US higher education institutions 

Jobs and Postdocs - In addition to leveraging faculty contacts, conferences, and professional organizations, consider setting up email alerts within job posting sites:

• Higheredjobs.com
• Higher Education Resource Consortium
• Chronicle Vitae
• Academic Keys
• Inside Higher Education
• PostDocJobs.com 
• The National Postdoctoral Association
• Career.edu 
• Student Affairs Jobs
• Notre Dame Postdoc Opportunities: Overall ; 5+1 Program (Arts & Letters Students Only)
• Notre Dame Job Boards: Faculty, Staff

Structure of Higher Education Institutions (Organizational Chart Examples from ND)

• Campus (Includes Academic/Provost Chart)
• Academic College (ex. Arts and Letters)
• Student Affairs 
• Human Resources
• Centers and Institutes 

 Outside Academia

• Top non-academic careers for graduate students
• Beyond the Professoriate: Helps grad students and PhDs leverage their education into meaningful careers, whether in academia or beyond. We have resources to support individuals and partner with institutions to help PhDs and grad students land jobs in: Industry, Non-Profit, Higher Education Administration, Faculty, and the Private Sector.
• Versatile PhD: Oldest and largest online community dedicated to non-academic and non-faculty careers for PhDs in humanities, social science and STEM
• ♣ "What Can I do With this Major?": Broad brush of information for career fields and occupations that categorizes professional organizations and job boards by area of study
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: The BLS is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System 
  • Career Clusters and Pathways - There are hundreds of careers in the economy and multiple ways to group them. Organizing career information makes it more accessible to counselors, program planners, and others exploring jobs and occupations. Developed from the National Career Clusters Framework (Interest Survey)
  • Occupational Outlook Handbook - Overview of positions including salary, qualifications, work environment, and more
  • Standard Occupational Classification System
• Occupational Information Network: O*Net is a free online database that contains hundreds of occupational definitions to help students, job seekers, businesses and workforce development professionals to underst and today's world of work in the United States. 
  • Content Model - Provides a framework that identifies the most important types of information about work and integrates them into a theoretically and empirically sound system
  • Occupation Directory (Occupational Codes)
• ♣ Vault Career Insider: Online guides to take a deep  dive into career fields and occupations
• ♣ Candid Career: Thousands of informational video interviews to get an insider's view from industry professionals

Informational Interviewing and Job Shadowing

Connect with Notre Dame alumni, as well as other professionals, through events and online resources to gain more in-depth information about career fields and occupations of interest through informational interviews and job shadowing:

• Informational Interviewing Guide
• ♣ Irish Compass: Notre Dame's official online community driving powerful professional connections within the Notre Dame Network. Connect with alumni, discover career fields and positions, and apply to jobs
• LinkedIn: Online professional networking all over the globe (User Guide). Discover people, groups, employers, positions, Notre Dame alumni and more
• ND Alumni Directory: The most comprehensive list of alumni contact information
• ♣ Career Shift: Get inside contact information immediately, including email addresses, for millions of companies