Industry and Government Careers

Learn about Industry and Government Careers

Jobs on Toast - Resource hub where researchers and university careers staff can find web pages, articles, podcasts and books to help them overcome common career challenges.
Versatile PhD - Resource to help graduate students, ABDs and PhDs identify, prepare for and excel in professional careers.
From PhD to Life - Read a selection of transition stories in their Transition Q & A series.
We Use Math - List of careers and industries that use mathematics.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) at Illinois
Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) at Illinois
Talk with people and ask questions! Talk with alumni online and at the departmental reception at the AMS Joint Math Meetings (JMM), talk with the Director of Graduate Studies about your interest in industry or government careers, talk with as many people as possible among your friends, family and academic network. Many people will help and offer advice if you explain what you want to know.

Handshake - upload your resume, view job postings, and register for campus career fairs
BIG Math Network - career resources for students
College Grad - resource for post-graduate jobs and resources for resumes and interviewing
Graduate College Career Development

Acquire basic coding and statistical skills – take some courses on campus at whatever level gets you started. Possibilities include:

STAT 200 Statistical Analysis
STAT 207 Data Science Exploration
STAT 425 Applied Regression and Design
STAT 440 Statistical Data Management
STAT 448 Advanced Data Analysis
STAT 542 Statistical Learning (highly recommended). Theory and proof of popular machine learning algorithms, with practical implementation homework. The end-of-semester project is good for your CV.
CS 307 Modeling and Learning in Data Science
CS 446 Machine Learning
CS 512 Data Mining
CS 598 Machine Learning for Signal Processing (topics course)
Machine learning courses in the CS department

For students who need numerical methods:

CS 101 – Intro Computing: Engrg & Sci (tools course, scientific computing, C, Matlab, Unix/Linux)
CS 357 – Numerical Methods I (theoretical, Python, Mathematica, Matlab, course for large scale programming)
CS 450 – Numerical Analysis (theoretical)
CS 555 Numerical Methods for PDEs

For students who need programming exposure and not numerical methods:

Online training options include:

“Programming Foundations with Python” and “Design of Computer Programs” at Udacity. These free, self-paced courses are extremely well-structured and interesting. Highly recommended!
Free courses through Coursera, EdX, Udacity; search for courses on coding, algorithms, machine learning (e.g. the course by Stanford's Andrew Ng is highly recommended), and data science.
Math/coding problems at ProjectEuler.net - form a group with other graduate students to tackle some of the problems.
LinkedIn Learning - free to University of Illinois students.
Data science training programs (most charge fees)

Summer internships get you experience and recommendations from people working in industry.

Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) - ORISE connects the most talented college students, recent graduates, postdocs, and faculty to STEM internship and fellowship programs closely aligned with the interests of a variety of research facilities, including those managed for the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies.
Master Government List of Federally Funded R&D Centers - List of national labs collected by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) internships and PNNL job board - If you apply, please alert our department’s contact at PNNL, Dr. Emilie Purvine.
Sandia National Laboratories internships and postdocs. Contact Prof. Lee DeVille, so that you can tap into the Department's pre-existing contacts at Sandia. Prof. Lee DeVille is a point person for the institutional collaboration with Sandia National Labs.

Handshake - register, and update your resume for employers to see
SIAM Job Board
Federal Government employment
Presidential Management Fellows (high acceptance rate)
AfterCollege - browse current job postings
Indeed.com
ZipRecruiter
Note: Submitting resumes online to companies where you know no-one has a lower percentage rate of acceptances than working within your network. Put time into expanding your personal network through talking with friends, family, and professional contacts. This could be a powerful means of securing satisfying employment.