Goals
- Consistently engage graduate students in career and professional development activities
- Increase communication, networking, and resource/knowledge sharing amongst graduate students
- Advance students’ career preparedness and skills, including career awareness, professional narratives, informational interviewing, networking, and more
- Provide a format that is both flexible and effective
- Increase the awareness of the career resources around campus
Outcomes
- Self-assessment of skills, interests, and values
- Identified career interests and goals
- Abilities and opportunities to build up your peer and professional social networks
- Interview and job application skills
- Confidence to tackle the non-academic job market
How it Works
- One Topic of Focus for each meeting, through September to December during the fall semester
- Meeting schedule and content are both flexible based on the career interests of groups
- The Topic of Focus is released on this webpage, and simultaneously through emails and OCS Yale uConnect
- ~1 hour of individual activities related to each topic, to be completed before peer group meetings
- ~1 hour peer professionalization group meeting with additional group activities and discussion
- Attend at least 2 additional workshops, career lab, panels, treks, or other career-related activities per semester, preferably with group members
How to Sign Up and be Matched in a Group
- Sign-ups on Yale uConnect.
- Group members will be matched based on the following criteria in order: career interest, time preferences.
- A point of contact person is designated upon group formation. The point of contact is mainly responsible for scheduling small group meetings and logging activity.
Tips
- Scheduling group meetings: the best practice is to set a recurring date monthly that works for everyone (e.g. 4-5 pm the last Monday afternoon every other week).
- Group leadership and cooperation: point of contact is responsible for holding the group together, but definitively every group member’s commitment and enthusiasm is the key to make the most out of this program.
- Group communication: Zoom is recommended to facilitate small group meetings.
Voices from PPG Members:
“Having a small group of like-minded individuals to bounce things off of was the best part of this program. It made not knowing what I want to do after Yale feel more okay.”
“Our group is very supportive and I feel very comfortable sharing confusion, experience, questions, and thoughts with my group members.”
“We were very well matched in terms of interests. In fact, we formed a team for the YGCC (Yale Graduate Consulting Club) case competition (with 2 other people outside our group) and won!”
After completing the program, ALL members who participated in the satisfaction survey said they prefer to work in a group than individually!
