Regular readers know that I’m a full-time MBA student. I haven’t had much time to post mainly because I was spending a lot of time looking for a summer job. With the economy being as bad as it is, it’s been quite hard to get a paid job this summer. Unpaid internships are a dime a dozen and I was able to procure a few of those, which I turned down.  Eventually, I was able to find three paid gigs. One was in the IT department of a large cruise line company which didn’t really excite me.  Another was an online marketing analytics job that was very tempting. However, I turned that down in order to research distressed commercial real estate at Marcus & Millichap. Finding any sort of paid real estate job is tough in this environment and I figured that spending 3 months over the summer was a good way to gain some experience in the field of commercial real estate.

But landing these jobs was very tough. It probably would have been easier if I had looked for product management jobs, since i have a programming background, but I really wanted to do something different over the summer. If I’m spending all this time and money getting an MBA, I might as well do something that doesn’t just slot me as another techie.  My first preference would have been a job in investment management but despite having several interviews that didn’t pan out.  I think if I had networked a lot more, that could’ve become a reality but that’s probably true of any field. If you network hard enough, you’re bound to land a job sooner or later.

One thing all students should do is contact alumni in their fields of interest and offer to buy them coffee to learn about the industry. It’s much easier to do as a student otherwise you’re just some weird random dude who wants to meet them! You never know who will be able to help you get a job. And it probably won’t be the friends you hang out with all the time. You’re all part of the same network and if there were an openings, you would have known about them already. So go out and expand your network!

Check out this funny video for more job finding tips.