Gaining Skills and Experience

During your time at Yale, seek out experiences that will help you test careers and workplaces, or build marketable skills that will enhance your professional success. Be sure to consider your goals carefully; doing a self-assessment can help frame your thinking.

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Try out Career Options

• Research jobs and workplaces: Informational Interviewing with Yale peers and alums are a great way to learn.

• Try out different work environments: Consider the range of experiential learning opportunities, including job treks, job shadowing, part-time work, project-based assignments and internships.

• Gain experience on-campus: Working in a leadership or administrative position for a student organization can support your professional development, provide insight into career functions, help develop project management and communication skills, and engage in productive teamwork. 

Professional Skill Building

Many campus organizations offer skill-building workshops open to students. Sign up for their newsletters, or investigate other opportunities in your areas of interest.  For more ways to develop your transferable skill set while on campus, click here!  

Tip:  Are you a GSAS student?

Be sure to review the extensive list of additional professional development opportunities available to graduate students on the GSAS website!

FAQ: Teaching

• Graduate Student, Professional Student, and Postdoctoral Teaching Development, Center for Teaching and Learning

FAQ: Communications

• 3-Minute Thesis Competition, Office of Career Strategy
• The Graduate Writing Lab 
• Yale Science Diplomats
• Yale Toastmasters Club
• English Language Program | Center for Language Study
• The Art of Science Communication

FAQ: Design, Art, Media

• Center for Engineering Innovation and Design
• Center for Collaborative Arts and Media

FAQ: Business and Entrepreneurship

• Yale Center for Business and the Environment
• Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale
• Yale Graduate Consulting Club
• Yale Greenlight ideation workshops
• Healthcare Hackathon | Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology
• Canaan-Yale Fellows and YCCI Fellows, Office of Cooperative Research

FAQ: Digital and Public Humanities 

• Yale Digital Humanities Lab
• Museum and Collections Opportunities and Internships | Public Humanities

FAQ: Statistics and Programming

• StatLab workshops
• Research Data Management: Education & Training

Tip: Consider online resources to develop skills and boost your knowledge on a particular topic.

• Lynda.com Yale Portal: An online library that teaches the latest skills through videos taught by recognized industry experts. This resource is free for current Yale students and postdocs
• Coursera: Over 2,000 online courses taught by professors around the world. Join for free and check out offerings by Yale professors:
  • Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator, by Barry Nalebuff, Milton Steinbach Professor at SOM
  • Financial Markets, by Robert Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale
  • A Law Student's Toolkit, Ian Ayres, William K. Townsend Professor, Yale Law School
• iBiology Courses:  Two online training courses in a self-paced format - Planning Your Scientific Journey and Business Concepts for Life Scientists.  These courses, which are free and accessible at any time, can help individuals become more effective scientists and plan for future careers.  Advanced undergrads, graduate students, and postdocs are encouraged to participate!
• PreScouter.org: Opportunities for GSAS students, postdocs and engineers in academia to work as a Global Scholar remotely with corporate clients on part-time research or business anlytics project.