Researching Any Industry

Our industry pages offer examples of resources that focus on the careers most of our students are interested in. However, you needn’t be limited by our lists. If you want to pursue a different type of career, use the following strategies to find resources on anything from aviation to zoo keeping.

Use Search Engine Strategies to Identify Industry Resources

Use multiple search engines (such as Duck Duck Go, Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile, and Google) and perform multiple searches.

Use Boolean Search Operators

“Your field/industry/job AND professional organization” or “field/industry/job AND trade publication.”

For example, you could enter “airline pilot and trade publication” and find Airline Pilot Magazine, the official publication of the Air Line Pilots Association, International.

Use multiple variations on your search terms. For a list of additional terms, see Refining Search Results.

Exercise Caution

Be alert to search results that are actually ads and scroll past the first couple of pages–Google results in particular have become ad driven and no longer provide the best links to the best sources.
Note that Google’s “AI Overview” tool often makes things up or draws answers from satirical or simply incorrect web content and avoid relying on it.

Search the Library for Journals about Your Industry

Go the the library journal search page.
Use key words related to your target industry.
Evaluate the type of resource you find to determine whether it is trade, popular, or scholarly.

Search General-Audience Publications

Use key words related to your target industry and “search within” strategies to see what different publications say about it.

Analyze Job Descriptions

O*Net. Read O*Net job descriptions to find out more about different sectors. Data on O*Net is drawn from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and contains a wealth of information about all different types of job duties.

Job Ads. Read current job ads in your target industry from sources like LinkedIn, Handshake, or Indeed.

The website Glassdoor, too, contains job ads but also salary ranges for different roles as well as ratings and discussions of workplace culture issues at different companies or organizations.

Conduct Informational Interviews

Interview someone in your field or future workplace and ask them about information resources they use regularly. Use LinkedIn and Badger Bridge to search for prospective interviewees.

If you are lucky enough to have family members who work in the field you’d like to join, ask them to connect you with their colleagues. It’s important to expand your network.