New Students: Welcome to Stanford!

Learn how to get started with our center. 

Stanford
Career Education
The Career Development Center set up a number of outreach points this quarter. In a meeting room in Munger Dining Freshman Helen Xiong, right, talks with career counselor Kristin Conner who works exclusively with freshmen and sophomores. Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service

Stanford Alumni Mentoring (SAM)

Our Stanford Alumni Mentoring (SAM) platform makes it easier to reach out to alumni for career conversations. SAM is a platform of alumni from a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and industries— and they’ve all volunteered to help students like you! These alums are eager to pass along what they’ve learned and engage in career conversations no matter where you are in your career journey.

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Student in main quad with Hoover Tower in background. Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service

Explore the Network

The SAM platform enables you to browse alumni profiles. Alumni profiles contain helpful details such as industry, identity, and major. Depending on your needs, you can select from a menu of help topics in each profile, such as job shadowing, mock interviews, choosing a major, and more!

From left, student John Lindsay, graduate student Doug Kuramoto, professor of chemistry Richard Zare, and student Amber Peden (Kalamazoo College), in Zare's lab. Credit Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service

Join a Mentoring Group

Join mentoring groups based on identity or industry. Once you’ve joined a group, you can browse alumni member profiles to identify individuals with whom you’d like to connect. All you need to do to initiate contact with an alum is to click the Message button on their profile.

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Get Started with SAM

  • Go to mentoring.stanford.edu (it’s accessible via Single Sign-on). 
  • Create an account and a short profile as a way to introduce yourself to alumni. 
  • Go to “Explore the Network” where you will find filters to narrow down your profile selections. 
  • Use our customizable email templates to get the conversation started. 
  • Send the message via the platform and await their response!
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For step-by-step help on how to have a career conversation, check out this short article on informational interviewing or make an appointment with a career coach.