Shhh…this resource is so good, you might not want to give it away. Of course, your efforts would be in vain, since this exclu­sive web­site is free for all Prince­ton stu­dents, fac­ulty, and staff. Nev­er­the­less, there’s a cer­tain ele­ment of mys­tery as you tra­verse Vault, the Gringotts of job and intern­ship search engines. So when I stum­bled on Vault at the bot­tom of Career Ser­vices’ web­site, I was intrigued. I clicked on the link, set up a pass­word, and found myself in one of the job search’s best-kept secrets.

Here are some of the perks:

The Guides: Vault’s web­site con­tains an eye-watering 80+ career guides on indus­tries, employ­ers, inter­na­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties, interviews/resumes, and other career top­ics. I thought I’d never find infor­ma­tion on careers in music writ­ing, my rather nar­row field of choice. Did they ever have what I was look­ing for! From the cre­ative side to the busi­ness side, pos­si­ble inter­view ques­tions, the inside scoop (will I really be fetch­ing cof­fee?), pay rates, and job descrip­tions in the field. Also, check out Vault’s Guide to Top Intern­ships, co-written by senior edu­ca­tion edi­tor and Prince­ton alumna Car­olyn Wise.

The Search Engines: You can search by com­pany, indus­try, pro­fes­sion, or fil­ter­ing through job or intern­ship data­bases. I decided to search pro­fes­sions and typed in “lawyer.” Vault came back with a list of “uppers” and “down­ers” as well as per­son­al­ity “matches” and “misses.”  Among the uppers were “high salaries” and “Large-firm perks such as firm retreats and free meals.” Sounds pretty nice. The down­ers told the other side: “long hours, high stress level, and high level of dis­sat­is­fac­tion.” Hmm…maybe I’ll keep looking.

Blog and Career Advice: From their Career Advice page to their blogs, Vault has infor­ma­tion from every step of the way: the job search, on the job, career advance­ment, etc. The videos and blogs offer a nice, acces­si­ble alter­na­tive for stu­dents. Since sign­ing up for Vault’s emails I now wel­come the arrival of my weekly email with arti­cles on top­ics like unpaid intern­ships (very use­ful), cover let­ter mis­takes (very use­ful), and office romance (not at all use­ful for me, but very inter­est­ing nonethe­less!). I also read an arti­cle warn­ing against using the excla­ma­tion point! …there I go again.

Other Inside Scoop: Do you want to what it’s like to work for a spe­cific employer? Have you ever won­dered how much you’ll make with your prospec­tive job/company? Shhh…this is the secret part. Vault has a sec­tion all about Salaries and Reviews. I won’t tell you the reviews and rates that I looked up—check it out for yourself!