Careers, Life, and Yale Resources
Careers, Life, and Yale (CLY) programs and events are developed by alumni volunteers in close collaboration with YAA staff. Programs and events cover alumni-to-alumni (A2A) and alumni-to-student (A2S) career exploration and life skills. CLY programming and events are also developed in coordination with Yale’s Office of Career Strategy (OCS) and Students and Alumni of Yale (STAY) to innovate, develop, and expand impact programming and career resources for Yale alumni and students.
Below you can find information to help you navigate through various life and career stages after you leave campus. This curated list of resources includes books, organizations, online communities, and podcasts across a wide range of fields and disciplines.
Please note: Alumni volunteers and staff gathered these resources from varied sources, including Yale websites, referrals by fellow alumni, and online searches. Listing resources here does not imply an endorsement. This is intended to provide a convenient starting point as you navigate career and life transitions.
We will periodically review and add to these resources. Would you suggest additional resources? Would you like to provide feedback? We will periodically review and add to these resources. Would you suggest additional resources? Would you like to provide feedback? Contact the group administrators at our closed LinkedIn group: Careers, Life, and Yale A2A Alumni to Alumni.
Career Panels
Through the dedicated efforts of Peter Young ’74, Yale alumni can view an online trove of archived career panels. If you would like to view past career panels, search Yale Career Panels on YouTube.
There is also a Yale career panels web page where you can find links to past panels.
Additional Yale Resources
Careers, Life, and Yale A2A Alumni to Alumni LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the leading professional-network social media platform. This closed group is open to any Yale alumni interested in discussion about career and life transitions and provides a vehicle to exchange ideas or ask about resources with fellow Yale alumni. Although this is not a place for promotion or solicitation of services, Yale alumni who offer career-related services are invited to join this LinkedIn group.
Cross Campus: Interested in connecting with Yale alumni but hoping to avoid spending hours seeking their email address? Looking to find fellow alumni working internationally? Seeking an alum who is in your ideal location or working for an employer you want to learn more about? Cross Campus can help with all of this and more. Cross Campus is Yale’s networking, community-building, and mentoring platform. It facilitates relationships among Yalies – whether alumni to student or alumni to recent alumni – and is open to all Yale students and alums. As a member of the Yale community, this community will allow you to search and connect with Yale alumni to discuss career objectives and explore career interests. As an alum, you can also serve as a career resource to others by sharing your experience, skills, and expertise.
Jackson Institute for Global Affairs: The Jackson Institute for Global Affairs is the university's focal point for encouraging and coordinating teaching and research on international affairs, societies, and cultures around the world (and is soon to become its own school). Its website contains information and links to various international resources and events.
YaleWomen webinars: Check out the very latest from the shared interest group YaleWomen.
TedxYale: See the TedxYale talks for ideas worth spreading.
Career Transitions
These selected books might help with your career transition:
“The Career Within You - How to Find the Perfect Job for Your Personality” by Elizabeth Wagele, Ingrid Stabb ’99 MBA
To be successful and fulfilled, your work life must reflect your true self, including calling upon the strengths you already possess. “The Career Within You” helps you achieve just that. The book’s individualized approach helps determine your career type, then helps you forge the career path that best suits you, making it the ideal guide for job hunters and career changers of all stripes.
“Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career” by Herminia Ibarra ’89 PhD
Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that includes experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities.
“Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader” by Herminia Ibarra ’89 PhD
This book contains advice to help you redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions; diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a bigger range of stakeholders; and become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar — and possibly outdated — leadership style to evolve.
“How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations” by Marc Freedman ’83 MBA
In “How to Live Forever,” Encore.org founder and CEO Marc Freedman tells the story of his 30-year quest to answer some of contemporary life's most urgent questions: With so many living so much longer, what is the meaning of the increasing years beyond 50? How can a society with more older people than younger ones thrive? How do we find happiness when we know life is long and time is short? The secret is through mentoring the next generation.
“Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi ’88
Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success? The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered in early life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins. In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his contacts list, people he has helped and who have helped him.
“Pivot: The Only Move that Matters is Your Next One” by Jenny Blake
Pivoting is a crucial strategy for Silicon Valley tech companies and start-ups, but it can also be a successful strategy for individuals looking to make changes in their work lives. This book will introduce you to the Pivot Method and show you how to take small, smart steps to move in a new direction, now and throughout your entire career.
“Business Model You: A One Page Method for Reinventing Your Career” by Tim Clark, Alexander Osterwalder, and Yves Pigneur
This global bestseller introduced a unique, visual way to summarize and creatively brainstorm any business or product idea on a single sheet of paper. “Business Model You” uses the same powerful one-page tool to teach readers how to draw "personal business models," which reveal new ways their skills can be adapted to the changing needs of the marketplace to reveal new, more satisfying, career and life possibilities.
“Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay at Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work” by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin
Women revolutionized the workforce by entering professions in record numbers, but many stepped off the career track to care for their families. Now, these same women are forging new career paths by proving that they can return to challenging, meaningful careers after a break, and so can you. “Back on the Career Track” shows you how they are doing it and helps you learn from their successes and challenges.
“Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.
“The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career” by Alexandra Cavoulacos and Kathryn Minshew
People in previous generations tended to pick one professional path and stick to it. Switching companies every few years wasn’t the norm, and changing careers was even rarer. Today’s career trajectories aren’t so scripted and linear. Technology has given rise to positions that never existed before, which means we are choosing from a much broader set of career options and have even more opportunities to find work that lights us up.
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And here are websites and online communities to help you do the same (click company names to go to their websites):
This company, founded by current CEO Johanna Heermann Wise '84, organizes regular conferences called the Return to Work You Love Conference, which is targeted at professionals interested in changing careers or returning to the workforce after a career break.
Established in 2007, iRelaunch is the pioneering company in the career reentry space. iRelaunch runs career reentry conferences and events for employers and individuals returning to work after a career break. It also works directly with more than 60 blue chip companies to introduce, implement, and expand career reentry programs to engage with and hire from the return-to-work talent pool.
This company offers a robust assortment of job postings, helpful articles on career transition and working while parenting, community forums, and advice on brushing up your resume and interviewing skills in a quickly changing economic environment.
Upwork is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely.
FlexJobs is an online platform where freelancers can find remote, part-time, freelance, and other flexible jobs in 50-plus career categories.
Business Talent Group, LLC provides independent consultants and professionals for project-based consulting and work to corporations, private equity firms, and their portfolio companies, and nonprofits and foundations. The company provides custom-built consulting teams and talent for various projects, including corporate and business unit strategy, marketing and sales, interim executives, operations and performance improvement, mergers and executive, and project leadership.
FlexProfessionals provides job solutions matching part-time professionals with employers seeking flexible staffing services in Boston, Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
Entrepreneurship
General Resources
- Entrepreneurship.org: Run by the Kauffman Foundation, this site has a good resource center with information organized neatly by subtopic (e.g., Accounting & Finance, Marketing & Sales, etc.).
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner: More than 2,000 free online videos, organized by topic, with many high-quality discussions.
- Startup Nation: More tools and tips on how to get your business started.
- Entrepreneur.com: Many good articles from several print publications.
- U.S. Small Business Administration: The go-to site for research and statistics related to small business and entrepreneurship.
Social Entrepreneurship
- Global Initiatives: Led by the Haas School at Berkeley, Global Initiatives has a great resource center for social entrepreneurship.
Women Entrepreneurs
- National Association of Women Business Owners: An excellent resource center targeted toward women but with numerous resources that would be useful to any entrepreneur.
- National Women Business Owners Corporation: This organization can help you get certified as a woman-owned business, which can be useful in contract bidding, and particularly in public-sector contract bidding.
- Online Women’s Business Center: Has some potentially useful leads on start-up financing that target women entrepreneurs.
Under-Represented Entrepreneurs
- The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE): Entrepreneurship association specifically targeting entrepreneurs of South and Southeast Asian descent.
- BlackEntreprise.com: Entrepreneurship association specifically targeting the African American community.
- HispanicBusiness.com: Entrepreneurship association specifically targeting the Hispanic community.
- Minority Business Development Agency (U.S. Dept. of Commerce): One key service that this group provides is that it helps minority-owned businesses obtain government contracts.
- Inc., magazine: Articles on how to get certified as a minority-owned business.
Early Career Advice
A few books for those looking for early-career advice:
“You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now” by Tiffany Pham '08
“Indispensable: How to Succeed at Your First Job and Beyond” by Meredith Whipple Callahan '05
Other Resources
Sample Professional Associations
Professional associations are an excellent source of both industry-specific and functional networking opportunities. The most developed associations have numerous events and other resources that can aid in job searches. A representative list of major associations is provided below. Alumni should also check online for local or regional associations in their areas.
- American Marketing Association
- American Wind Energy Association
- National Society of Hispanic MBAs
- Association for Corporate Growth
- Biotechnology Industry Organization
- Emerging Markets Private Equity Association
- Institute of Management Consultants USA
- National Venture Capital Association
- Public Relations Society of America
- Society for Human Resource Management
- National Black MBA Association
- Solar Energy Industries Association
- Association of Financial Professionals
- Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals
- Project Management Institute
Sample Global Resources
Devex: Devex hosts a robust job board in the international development industry and provides news, expert advice, and other resources to people interested in the development sector. Devex is a social enterprise bringing efficiency to international development through recruiting and business information services. Members find development projects, business and career advice, jobs, and professional connections.
Going Global: Career and employment resource including worldwide job openings, internship listings, industry profiles and country-specific career information.
MBA-Exchange: An international career and employment resource for MBA students and alumni, connecting them with employers around the world. MBA-Exchange includes job and internship postings, online recruitment events, company information, etc.
MyVisaJobs.com: This site has information on U.S. employers that hire international students and lists the companies that petition/sponsor the most H-1B Visas. You can search companies by industry, geography, function, etc.