Illinois Institute of Technology · Career Services
Job Simulations
Do the actual work of a job before you apply for one — free, self-paced, from employers like Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, BCG, Citi, and Goldman Sachs.
250+
Simulations Available
90+
Participating Employers
$0
Cost, Always
30 min–5 hrs
Typical Length
A job simulation is a short, self-paced program built by a real employer out of the tasks their new hires actually do. There is no application, no interview, no selection process, and no cost. Finish one and you will know whether a field fits — and you will have something specific to say the next time an interviewer asks what you have done.
This is the lowest-friction experience on the entire Elevate site. Illinois Tech simulations run on Forage, which hosts more than 250 simulations from over 90 employers. Length varies by program — some are 30 to 60 minutes, others run four or five hours — and every one of them can be paused and resumed.
If You Do Nothing Else
Finish One This Week
Pick a short one in a field you are curious about, block off an evening, and finish it start to end. A half-finished simulation is worth nothing; a finished one is a resume line, a certificate, and an interview answer. If your resume is thin, this is the fastest way to change that.
Step One
Browse and pick one
Filter by industry and sort by length. Choose something you are genuinely curious about, not something that sounds impressive.
Step Two
Write the bullet that night
While the work is fresh: what you built or analyzed, what tool you used, and what you concluded. Section 4 shows you exactly how.
Step Three
Bring it to a coach
Thirty free minutes turns a certificate into a story an interviewer remembers, and points you at the next experience up.
Every section below opens and closes. Nothing is hidden from you — open only what you need, and skip the rest.
1How It Works and What You Get
Free, open to every student, and it ends with a certificate you can actually use▾
Free and open to everyone
No application, no selection process, no fee, no enrollment in Elevate required. Any Illinois Tech student, any year, any major. First-years can do these, and should.
Self-paced, on your schedule
Length varies by program — some run 30 to 60 minutes, others four or five hours. Every one can be paused and resumed, so a busy week does not cost you the work.
Something to show for it
You compare your work against the employer’s own model answers, then earn a certificate of completion. It goes on your resume and your LinkedIn.
What Actually Happens
- 1You are given a realistic brief — a client problem, a dataset, a case, a piece of code — drawn from work the employer’s analysts and engineers really do.
- 2You produce the deliverable yourself — a memo, a model, a recommendation, a working function.
- 3You compare your answer to the employer’s model answer. This is the part most students skip and it is where the actual learning is.
- 4You earn a certificate, and you know something concrete about whether that job is for you.
2Find One in Your Field
Start from your career community, or straight from the Elevate listing below▾
Two routes in. Your career community lists the simulations its coaches actually recommend for that field, which is usually a better starting point than scrolling 250 of them. If you already know what you want, go straight to Forage and filter.
Start From Your Career Community
Consulting, Entrepreneurship & Business →the deepest bench of simulations — BCG, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and the rest of the strategy and finance namesSoftware Engineering & Information Technology →software, cyber, and data engineering simulations with real codebasesLife & Health Sciences →Johnson & Johnson and other health and biotech employers run simulations here
More Communities
Manufacturing, Energy & Logistics →engineering, operations, and supply chainArchitecture, Construction & Planning →design, the built environment, and real estate — CBRE runs oneEducation, Government, Human Services & Nonprofits →policy, public service, and mission-driven workSee all six career communities →free to join, and you can belong to more than one
Or Go Straight In
Forage — all 250+ simulations →filter by industry, employer, and length; sign up with your Illinois Tech emailElevate job simulation listings →the ones surfaced for Illinois Tech students, below on this pageNot sure what field yet? →take a self-assessment first, then pick a simulation to test the result
3Choosing Well the First Time
Four rules that decide whether you finish it or abandon it halfway▾
The most common failure is not difficulty. It is picking a five-hour simulation at a famous firm in a field you are not actually curious about, and quitting at hour two. These four rules prevent that.
- 1Pick the shortest one first. A finished 60-minute simulation beats an abandoned five-hour one in every possible way — on your resume, in your head, and in an interview. Save the long ones for after you know you like the work.
- 2Choose the task, not the logo. The point is finding out whether you like doing the work. A simulation at a household-name firm doing something you would hate tells you less than a lesser-known one doing something you enjoy.
- 3Do two in different fields if you are undecided. One simulation tells you about one job. Two in genuinely different areas tell you about yourself, which is the more useful thing at this stage.
- 4Always read the model answer. Comparing your work to the employer’s own solution is where the learning lives, and it is the part that gives you something intelligent to say in an interview.
A Note on Honesty
A simulation is not an internship and should never be described as one. On a resume it belongs under a heading like Professional Development or Certifications, not Experience. Employers know exactly what these are — many of them built the ones you will be doing — and overstating it is the one way to turn an asset into a liability.
4Make It Count on the Resume
The certificate is the smaller half — the bullet and the interview answer are the point▾
Most students list the certificate and stop. That wastes the work. What an interviewer wants is one specific sentence about what you produced and what it taught you — because that is a thing you did, not a thing you attended.
Weak Line vs. Strong Line
Weak: Completed a job simulation on Forage.
Strong: Completed a quantitative research simulation: built a discounted cash flow model from a company’s filings and wrote a one-page buy recommendation, then benchmarked it against the firm’s published model answer and revised my terminal-growth assumption.
Turn It Into Language That Works
Resume and cover letter guide →where to place it, and how to word it without overstatingInterview preparation →how to tell the story when they ask what you have worked onWrite the bullet with a coach →bring the simulation and we will draft it together — free, year round
Add the certificate to the Licenses & Certifications section of your LinkedIn profile as well. It is a small signal on its own, but it shows a recruiter scanning your profile that you go and do things without being asked — which is most of what they are looking for at this stage.
5Free Practice That Pairs With It
The employers publish their own case prep, and the skill platforms cost nothing▾
A simulation shows you the work. These show you the hiring process around it, and the skills the work assumes you already have. Everything here is open access unless noted otherwise — and the case-prep material comes straight from the firms themselves, which is the version worth reading before any paid course.
Practice the Case Interview
Consulting and finance run the deepest bench of simulations, and every one of these firms publishes its interview material free.
McKinsey case practice →four full practice cases and the firm’s own guidance on the personal-experience interviewBCG case interview preparation →three interactive practice cases, plus an explicit list of what they are grading you onBain interview guide →behavioral, case, coding, and written formats, with two worked practice casesDeloitte case and scenario tips →a five-step framework and interactive practice tools aimed at entry-level candidates
Build the Underlying Skill
If a simulation exposed a gap — SQL, a modeling tool, a cloud platform — close it here rather than paying for a course.
IBM SkillsBuild for university students →free AI, data, and professional-skills courses that end in a shareable credentialMicrosoft Learn Student Hub →free beginner tracks in AI, data, and cybersecurity, plus Azure credits and the GitHub Student PackSalesforce Trailhead →free badges and trails, and the on-ramp to more than sixty Salesforce certification pathsKaggle Learn →free short courses in Python, pandas, visualization, and machine learning, with runnable notebooksAutodesk Education software →free one-year renewable licenses for Fusion, Revit, AutoCAD, Maya, and fifty more tools
Check the Field Itself
Before you build a plan around a field, look at what it pays, what it requires, and whether it is growing.
Occupational Outlook Handbook →federal pay, entry requirements, and 2024 to 2034 growth projections for hundreds of occupationsCISA Cyber Career Pathways Tool →maps every cybersecurity work role to the skills and adjacent jobs that feed into itNIST NICE workforce program →the framework behind those roles, plus the CyberSeek labor-market mapFederal Reserve economic research →working papers, the FRB/US model, and how the Fed describes its own research-assistant rolesFINRA Securities Industry Essentials →free study materials and practice test; the exam itself costs $100 and needs no employer sponsorship
Two Things Worth Knowing
Not every credential platform is free, and some are free only through the university. Google Career Certificates, for instance, run on a paid monthly subscription if you sign up directly, and AWS Academy is available through your institution rather than to individuals. Before you pay for either, check whether Illinois Tech already covers it.
6What Comes After a Simulation
The next rung up, ordered by how much it asks of you▾
A simulation is the first rung, not the destination. Whichever way it went — you loved the work or you ruled the field out — you now know something, and the next step gets easier. Here is the ladder.
A Little More Commitment
Job shadowing →a day with someone doing the job you just simulated — the natural next stepParker Dewey micro-internships →5 to 40 paid hours on a real project — the first thing that puts money in itFree industry certifications →AWS, Google, IBM, and Salesforce — deepen the skill the simulation exposed
You Could Have One Done Before Class Tomorrow
Free, no application, and the shortest ones take under an hour. There is no version of this that costs you anything but an evening.
elevate@illinoistech.edu · MTCC Suite 106 · 312.567.6800
Browse current job simulations below ▾
