It is our hope that this series has helped you to identify where you might be in your search process (Gaining Momentum, Stabilizing, or Troubleshooting) and have a clear sense of steps to take and supports available.

Searching for internships and jobs is HARD, not only because of the necessary time commitment when you are already so busy, but also because of the uncertainty, lack of feedback, and vulnerability required when doing something new and with high stakes. Please take advantage of the career coaches and the full range of supports we and the Duke career center offer. Here’s a reminder of the basics:

• Use Duke Career Hub, a one-stop Online Career Center for engineering master students in Microsoft Teams. Staff share posts with opportunities and advice to keep you updated; there are valuable tools and reference materials to support your job or internship search; and you can see relevant jobs, internships, and upcoming events.
• Chat with a Career Coach using Microsoft Teams, or schedule an appointment for career exploration, individual feedback, uninterrupted attention, or if you get stuck. (Our services have no extra cost and there is no limit to the number of visits.)
• Use Duke Handshake to see all career events, employer activities, and upcoming application deadlines.

 I also want to highlight two additional options the coaches have created:

• Join Coaches for Friday Online Office Hours. Login details will be listed in the Handshake events calendar. 
• Take full advantage of the depth of resources in the reference guides we’ve created for you: The Eight Steps for Search Success | Associations, Communities, and Events 

Finally, while this entire series has focused on executing a search, we know that it’s only a piece of your professional path as a person and master’s student. Did you know we help with career and personal exploration to help you discover and define what might be a good next step for you? Here are four useful options if gaining clarity about your future path is what you need right now:

Understand what you want, like, or are good at.
Your identities, values, skills, interests, and priorities are all different and overlapping aspects that influence a meaningful next step. This guide provides definitions and suggests a few action steps for each.

Understand the possible opportunities.
We recommend differentiating opportunities by field, organization, role, and location. Your future path will be guided by strong preference in some of these areas, flexibility in others, and any constraints that factor in. This is the guide with definitions and action steps for understanding opportunities.

Find people, communities, and events.
Separate from any internship or job offer, you can test out different options by participating in their communities to get exposure and see what people are working on, talking about, and generally like. Here is the guide for finding people, communities, and events.

Spend time with news and trends.
Another way to explore fields, organizations, roles, locations, or your constraints is to keep up with current events. Beyond Google, alerts, and social media, the guide has an introduction to some high powered tools you have access to as a Duke student.

Finally, be sure to take good care of yourself during this time! You may want to participate in the Duke Anti-Resume Project or check it out to read about the dreams, disappointments and failures of others at Duke. I just did, it was wonderfully uplifting and a brilliant reminder to make time for and keep doing the things I love. I think you’ll enjoy it, too!