Networking is a key strategy to tap into full-time and internship opportunities on all three pathways, particularly the Dirt Road and Jungle. It can be the most powerful way for you to advance your career goals and build momentum in your search. You can use CDO tools to find contacts in your target industry and location. Combining these tools is a great way to expand your list of networking contacts in more niche areas of interest.
Here are the top seven tools we recommend you use to find alumni and other warm contacts directly in industries and/or geographies you are interested in. Feel free to book an advising appointment in Career Central if you would like to talk through your networking strategy!
Here are seven resources to leverage:
1. Summer and Full-Time Directories
The summer and full-time directories are great ways to find where recent class years interned and joined full-time roles. Filter and sort by organization, industry, function, and title. A student interested in healthcare, for example, would find a few dozen students over the past several years whose internship or full-time role post-MBA was in pharma/biotech/healthcare.
2. Student PhotoBook Directory
The Student PhotoBook Directory on My Sloan can help you find fellow students across MIT Sloan degree programs who have worked at a company of interest by searching by previous employer. Connecting with fellow students can be a terrific way to get initial information about a company prior to having higher-stakes conversations with alumni.
3. Resume Book within Career Central
The Resume Book within Career Central can also help you start the networking process right here at Sloan. The database includes students from all MIT Sloan programs who are currently matriculated and have opted in. You can search for other students who are or have been in a function, industry, or company you aspire to be in, see what their career path looked like, and reach out to chat.
4. MIT Sloan School of Management LinkedIn Page
The MIT Sloan LinkedIn page is another great resource to find alumni contacts. On the LinkedIn page, toggle to the Alumni tab. From there, use keywords to search for alumni in your target roles or industries. For example, a search for “impact investing” shows 161 alumni. You can then narrow it down by location, company, function, and more. Note: You could also search for your undergraduate institution or Massachusetts Insititute of Technology in the same way to find additional contacts. Or, if you have a specific company in mind, another way to use LinkedIn is to go to that company’s page, and search through “People” where you can further filter by school to find MIT Sloan alumni.
This is the full MIT alumni directory and is a robust resource for finding networking contacts. Let us say you are targeting an internship in renewable energy. Use the keyword search and filter by the MBA program to find results. You could then further filter (e.g. by location) or check out their LinkedIn profiles for more details to determine the best people to reach out to.
6. MIT Sloan Industry Advisors
The MIT Sloan Industry Advisors (SIAs) are Sloan Alumni who have volunteered to talk with students and hope to hear from you! If you are interested in CPG/Retail, for example, there are five SIAs within that industry, whose bios you can find on the CDO website. You can then look through their profiles to find the best match for outreach. Typically more senior, the Sloan Industry Advisors are great to speak with about broader industry trends and perspectives. (Appointments are booked within the Alumni Advisors Hub.)
Alumni Advisors are MIT alums across the Institute who have volunteered to speak with and help students in their job search. In the Alumni Advisors Hub, you can search using keywords and narrow them down by function, industry, geography, and more. Interested in urban transportation/mobility/planning? Do a quick search for “urban transportation” and find 168 advisors. Or want to speak with someone who will do a mock case interview? Select “case interview” under the career tab and sign up with one of the nearly 60 advisors who are available to do mock case interviews!
