Question: Career Planning: Researching Career Opportunities, Knowing the jargon and "hot button" issues in a particular profession or industry can give you a big advantage when it comes to writing your résumé and participating in job interviews. You can fi ne-tune your résumé for both human readers and applicant tracking systems, sound more confi dent and informed in interviews, and present yourself as a professional-class individual with an inquiring mind.

Your task: Imagine a specifi c job category in a company that has an informative, comprehensive website (to facilitate the research you'll need to do). Th is doesn't have to be a current job opening, but a position that you know exists or is likely to exist in this company, such as a business systems analyst at Apple or a brand manager at Unilever. Explore the company's website and other online sources to fi nd the following:

(1) A brief description of what this job entails, with enough detail that you could describe it to a fellow student.

(2) Some of the terminology used in the profession or the industry, both formal terms that might serve as keywords on your résumé and informal terms and phrases that insiders are likely to use in publications and conversations.

(3) An ongoing online conversation among people in this profession. For example, this might be a LinkedIn Group, a popular industry or professional blog that seems to get quite a few comments, or an industry or professional publication that attracts a lot of comments.

(4) At least one signifi cant issue that will affect people in this profession or companies in this industry over the next few years.

For example, if your chosen profession involves accounting in a publicly traded corporation, upcoming changes in international fi nancial reporting standards would be a significant issue. Similarly, for a company in the consumer electronics industry, the recycling and disposal of e-waste is an issue. Write a brief email message summarizing your fi ndings and explaining how you could use this information on your résumé and during job interviews.