Benjamin Todd

To go back to Megan, when she was figuring out what to do after her master's,

In order to work backwards, she considered ways she might most rapidly advance in a government and policy path.

She put common options, like getting a job at a think tank, on her list of options.

But she also realized her current position, living and studying in China, could open up some additional opportunities off the standard path.

She saw an ad for a job working for the US Department of State in Beijing as a Chinese social media analyst, and got it.

She's since managed to find a role at the Department of Homeland Security, towards her vision of working on reducing the risk posed by AI systems.

When you're working forwards, it helps to make a big list of interesting jobs and training opportunities, even if they don't obviously feed into your current longer-term plans.

Here are steps you could use.

Earlier in the guide, we covered a list of next steps to gain general career capital, so you might have some ideas from there.

Ask your friends, colleagues, people working on pressing problems, and people you admire what opportunities they know about.

The best opportunities are usually found through people you know.

Check out the jobs listed on our job board.

Do any of them seem interesting?

Are there any opportunities, areas to learn about, side projects, or people you feel especially excited about right now?

Is anything you're doing right now going better than expected?

Could you spend more of your time on that?

Many opportunities also only emerge after you start looking.

So one of the most useful strategies is to simply pursue lots of specific jobs and make lots of applications.

We often come across people agonizing about different longer-term paths, whereas if they'd simply made applications, the next step would have become obvious.

We'll look at how to manage the job application process in the next chapter.