Winter break is almost here! Remember that while it’s a great time to de-stress from a busy quarter and celebrate the start of a new year, it's also the perfect time to get a head start on your career to-do list. Fine-tune your résumé or cover letter and reach out to UCLA alumni for an informational interview. Here are some ideas for things to do during your break:
Set up a UCLA ONE account to start connecting with UCLA alumni in interesting career fields.
Set up informational interviews with alumni, mentors or family members (use UCLA ONE or LinkedIn to identify people).
Shadow a family member, friend or alumnus at their job for a day.
Create or update your résumé (then have the UCLA Career Center review it after break).
Start applying for internships and jobs.
Set up a LinkedIn profile (this tutorial is a great start).
Research interesting graduate programs and create a prospective list. Map out your timeline for applying for jobs, internships and graduate programs.
Doing just one of these things over break will ensure you have one less thing to worry about when you come back to campus for winter quarter.
John Mapes ’90 is a partner at Aurora Capital Partners and is on the firm's investment committee. He has spent his entire 26-year professional career in the financial services sector. In addition to leading Aurora’s private equity practice, Mapes is a member of Aurora’s executive committee. Mapes played varsity tennis at UCLA while earning his bachelor’s degree in economics/business. After graduating, he spent two years with Salomon Brothers, Inc., in both New York and Los Angeles, in their corporate finance group. He left Salomon Brothers to join Aurora in 1992 and then rejoined Aurora after attending and graduating from Harvard Business School in 1995. At UCLA, the Mapes family endowed five student‐athlete scholarships — two in men’s tennis and one each in football, men’s basketball and women’s beach volleyball. Additionally, they funded a gift to support the construction of new beach volleyball courts at UCLA, which will be known on campus as Mapes Beach. Mapes currently serves as chair of The UCLA Foundation Board; he is a past chairman of the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame Committee and serves on the UCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors, UCLA Technology Development Corporation Board and UCLA Centennial Campaign Executive Committee. To learn more about Mapes and his advice to students, check out his Excellence in Action interview.
Looking for a new productivity hack to help you close out the quarter? The Pomodoro Technique encourages you to work with the time you have—rather than against it. Using this method, you break your work into 25-minute segments separated by five-minute breaks. After at least four 25-minute segments, take a longer break of about 15 to 20 minutes. Read more about the technique here.
