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Reflections Blog

Highlighting Online Resources to Support Graduate-level Career and Professional Development

5/26/2022

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Tools & Resources, Career Exploration, Career Development, Job Search, Academic Job Search
This post originally appeared as part of Inside Higher Ed's Carpe Careers column on May 9, 2022.
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The community of professionals supporting graduate student and postdoctoral scholar career and professional development is one of the most sharing I have been a part of. So many individuals and organizations have contributed resources and programming online, accelerated by the need to pivot to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This has resulted in an explosion of online tools, resources, and videos focused on a range of professional development topics from navigating the faculty job search to informational interviewing and negotiation. In this post, I will seek to organize and curate some of these resources to better assist graduate students, postdocs, and those who support them.
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Resources for Postdoctoral Scholars (and beyond!)
The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) has a range of resources on their website including a growing resource library (note content is being updated as part of a website refresh in Spring 2022) containing guides on topics from mentorship to career planning. If you are an individual (postdoc, graduate student, faculty member) at an organizational member of the NPA, you can also access these resources and a wealth of webinar recordings for FREE using your institutional email address upon registration as an NPA member.
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​Another great program to be aware of if you are current or prospective postdoctoral scholar or individual supporting postdocs is the Postdoc Academy which organizes two different online courses, Succeeding as a Postdoc and Building Skills for a Successful Career on edX. 

The Postdoc Academy’s upcoming online course opportunities are as follows:
  • Building Skills for a Successful Career: July 11 – August 28, 2022
  • Succeeding as a Postdoc: September 19 – October 30, 2022
    • With optional Postdoc Academy Learning Sessions to facilitate discussion
  • Building Skills for a Successful Career: January 9 – February 19, 2023
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​ImaginePhD: An indispensable tool for career exploration
ImaginePhD is a FREE online career exploration tool created by members of the Graduate Career Consortium (GCC), a community of professionals working to support graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in their career and professional development. While this website is branded for a humanities and social sciences audience, I would argue it is one of the most powerful career exploration tools out there and useful to researchers in any discipline (myIDP and ChemIDP are also great resources). 

Some highlights from the ImaginePhD platform:
  • The general tip sheets are phenomenal! 
    • Topics include: writing a resume, cover letter, informational interviewing, using LinkedIn, and the art of negotiating 
  • Complete an interests, values, and skills assessment to learn more about yourself and job families that could be a good fit for you
  • Each job family within the platform has dedicated sections to:
    • Explore
      • Contains links to job simulations from InterSECT job simulations
      • Write-ups and Q&As on different careers available and personal perspectives from Ph.D.s who made the transition into those paths
    • Connect
      • Highlights LinkedIn groups and professional organizations to join to increase your ability to network with professionals working in certain sectors or career areas
    • Build Skills
      • Links to trainings and resources to learn more about in-demand skills 
    • Apply
      • Links to job boards PLUS analyzed job descriptions with tailored resumes and cover letter examples
    • In addition, the menu to the right-hand side of the screen displayed within any of the four sections (Explore, Connect, Build Skills, Apply) contains a LIVE Indeed job feed of positions being advertised in this job family. This serves as a great way to see what skills and abilities are being asked for in current job descriptions.
  • You can also build a career and training plan within ImaginePhD and export your various goals and deliverables to your digital calendar of choice to stay on track. 
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Amazing Content Available on YouTube
Many career and professional development offices have put their content on YouTube, making the excellent advice and resources they share accessible to all. I applaud their efforts and highlight a few of them below. 

University of Pennsylvania Career Services: Job Search Skills Series, many feature Dr. Joseph Barber, GCC Member
  • Strategies for a career pivot
  • Networking for novices
  • Making the most out of informational interviews
  • Resume tips
  • Cover letter tips
  • Interview tips
    • Answering the “tell me about yourself” & “greatest strengths/weakness” questions
    • Answering difficult interview questions
  • Finding data on salaries

​In addition, the Informational Interview Guide for Graduate Students and Postdocs from UPenn is an amazingly handy guide to perhaps the single most important action you can take to learn about your career options and build your network.
For the Faculty Job Search
University of Michigan School of Medicine’s Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies professional development team, led by GCC members Dr. Shoba Subramanian and Beth Bodiya, have an amazing “Faculty Corner” Series, which features recorded interviews and professional development talks from expert UM faculty covering issues surrounding academic job preparation, interview and negotiation, lab/time/project/personnel management, funding, publications, and work-life balance.

See also Penn Career Services’ Faculty Job Search Prep Camp YouTube Playlist

As a side note, during my time at North Carolina State University, we curated some tips and resources for navigating a faculty job search on our ImPACKful blog.  
A few other excellent YouTube Channels to follow for career & professional development resources:
  • NIH Office of Intramural Training & Education
  • Johns Hopkins University’s PHutures Program
  • Princeton University’s GradFUTURES
  • Duke University Postdoc Services
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Additional Online Resources 
The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Office of Career & Professional Development has a wealth of resources available on their website, organized by different training areas and career goals. Explore some of them at the links below. 
  • Start with the resources landing page
    • Basic & Biomedical Sciences resources
    • Social & Population Sciences resources
  • Presentation skills resources
  • Grant writing resources
  • Explore non-academic careers
  • Resources for the faculty job search
    • Example faculty job search documents

The Academic Career Readiness Assessment (ACRA) is a powerful resource for those seeking a faculty career after their training. It seeks to capture the minimum level of qualifications a search committee at a research-intensive, teaching-focused, or research and teaching-focused institution expects in a faculty candidate and the level of expertise most desired of candidates in different domains (teaching, research independence, experience working with students, etc). 

Learn more about the creation of the ACRA in this publication. 
I also recommend Vanderbilt University’s Office of Biomedical Research Education and Training (BRET)’s Beyond the Lab Video Series, featuring informational interviews with Ph.D.-holders who have pursued a variety of careers after graduate school or postdoctoral training. These serve as excellent resources to begin exploring available career pathways in addition to modeling some of the questions you may want to ask as part of an informational interview. 

And while the final online resource I am sharing is not from a university, iBiology, a non-profit organization funded by NSF and NIGMS, has an amazing library of professional development videos and self-paced online courses on topics including career exploration, planning your scientific journey (very relevant for early-stage graduate students), and how to give an effective presentation that you should definitely check out! 
Utilizing Online Resources in Career & Professional Development Programming
If you are an administrator or faculty member seeking to provide career and professional development support to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, how might you leverage the resources I’ve shared above? One approach is to have your students and postdocs watch a YouTube video on a topic of relevance and then spend your time with them discussing the topic in more detail and highlight institutional resources available to them. For example, you might have them watch a video on leveraging LinkedIn in advance and spend your workshop discussing how participants plan to implement the advice they received in crafting their profiles. 

In addition, online self-assessment and career exploration tools like ImaginePhD allow for trainees to do some pre-work before coming to a workshop to discuss career exploration in more detail. I find having workshop participants explore the ImaginePhD platform on their own and then share something interesting they learned with others in a small breakout room opens their eyes to the richness of information and resources on the platform. 

Using online tools and resources can really expand the bandwidth of a small office (or office of one) tasked with supporting graduate students and postdocs. In addition, resources like iBiology’s Mentoring Master Class: Peer Mentoring Groups overview empowers trainees to create their own groups to support one another in their training, job search, and beyond. 
I hope by highlighting these online resources in one place, you can become aware of impactful programs taking place across the United States. Furthermore, now that many programs have moved online and are being recorded and widely disseminated, access to great advice and resources to help you navigate your career and professional development and job search has never been easier. I encourage you, whether you are a professional trying to provide career and professional development support at your institution or a student or postdoc, to take advantage of these resources and join me in thanking the sharing, collegial community of professionals that have made them open for all to access and benefit from. Get exploring today!  ​
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Resources and Advice for the Academic Job Search

7/21/2021

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Job Search, Academic Job Search
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As we approach the fall, faculty job ads will begin to be posted. How can you prepare yourself for a competitive job market? I have 5 pieces of advice from my own experience applying for faculty positions and work supporting postdocs in their job search. 
  1. Self-assess & consider fit
  2. Gather intel & information
  3. Start early preparing application materials
  4. Cultivate peer support
  5. Consider diverse career options
Self-assess & consider fit
Before any career search process, you should spend time self-reflecting on your skills, interests, and values. Consider what types of roles and employers would best fit where you are in your life. Note that there are many roles in higher education beyond tenure-track faculty and there are many colleges & universities to work at beyond name-brand or research-intensive institutions.

For more see:
  • Career Exploration 101
  • Academic Career Readiness Assessment (ACRA) from UCSF
    • More on ACRA methodology 
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Gather intel & information
What does it take to successfully land a tenure-track faculty position? While the ACRA referenced above assessed the faculty search committee's perspective on hiring new assistant professors, other work that I have collaborated on seeks to present data from the applicant's side.

See A survey-based analysis of the academic job market for more info on our applicant survey findings and variables that were associated with applicants successfully landing faculty job offers as part of the 2018-2019 job market cycle. 

Updated 6/29/2022:
If you were on the assistant professor job market in 2020-2021 and/or 2021-2022 (regardless of the outcome - whether you received a job offer or ultimately accepted one), we would love for you to complete our surveys as we seek to better understand how a variety of variables influence one's ability to land a faculty job offer. Find links to the surveys and learn more about our faculty job market collaboration team, below.
Explore Faculty Job Market Collaboration Work + Surveys
While our survey data and ACRA provide some insights on what it may take to land a tenure-track faculty position, the best means to gain personalized insights from your discipline is to talk to individuals that have recently landed faculty positions in your field. Conducting informational interviews with newly-hired faculty at a variety of institutions can also help you better understand what being a faculty member looks like in different contexts as well as learn about these new faculty members' experiences on the job market. Some may even be willing to share their application materials with you to serve as models and inspiration as you construct your own documents. 
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  • For more see my Carpe Careers piece on using informational interviews to assist you in your faculty job search process. 
  • NEW publication from the Office of Training and Workforce Development at NINDS: 
    Myths and facts about getting an academic faculty position in neuroscience
Start early preparing application materials
Once you have a sense of the types of institutions and departments you are interested in working at, you can begin tailoring your application materials to highlight key attributes they value - research, grant-writing, teaching, service, working with undergraduate researchers, collaborating across units, etc.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to start early preparing your application materials. You are going to need considerable time to really make them shine but step one is to get your thoughts down on paper early. I would say having most of your initial drafts completed at least two months before the application season begins in August is a good goal. This will then give you plenty of time to revise and tailor as job ads are posted.  
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Arguably, the research statement is a good place to start for many STEM trainees as you probably have a good sense of what you have accomplished in your research and why it matters. However, a research statement needs to be forward looking and focused on what you plan to research as a new assistant professor. As such, you should think critically about where your field is going and how your training, skills, and interests can best be leveraged into a research program that is value-add to the department and institution you are joining. And if you are targeting research-intensive institutions, you must also seriously consider how your research will be funded and fit into funding priorities of key federal agencies and foundations.

  • More on How to Construct a Compelling Research Statement

It's important to really think about your vision for your research first before tailoring your materials to a particular institution. I believe you shouldn't try to present the research you think a hiring committee will be excited about but rather research YOU are excited about. You want to be hired based on who you are and what you aspire to be and be OK with the realization that many hiring committees won't see a fit between your interests and theirs. That is OK because fit is so critical in any job search and you want to find it so that you can thrive in your new role and be your true self. 


For additional tips and advice on other faculty application documents, see:
  • How to Write a Better Academic Cover Letter
  • Tips on Writing an Effective Teaching Statement
  • Diversity statement resources from UCLA & UCSD

And see the job search resources section of my website for documents I submitted on my own faculty job search, including a research statement for a research-intensive and primarily undergraduate-serving institution. 
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Cultivate peer support
If you are currently a postdoctoral researcher interested in a faculty career, you should join Future PI Slack NOW. This community of nearly 4,000 postdocs is AMAZING and a great place to solicit advice and feedback from your peers. There is a channel in the Slack group devoted exclusively to reviewing one another's job application materials (#jobapp_reviewers) that you can join to solicit and provide feedback. It is a truly great way to see a variety of examples of faculty application materials and get additional feedback on your own documents from individuals who will often be outside your discipline. This type of feedback is critical as asking your current supervisor or lab-mates for feedback may not give you a sense of how someone outside your research domain views your documents...and faculty search committees will almost certainly be composed of a diverse set of individuals lacking a deep understanding of your particular area of research focus. So, getting broad-based feedback allows you to refine your documents to convey your points effectively to a wider audience.

You can also form your own peer support group at your institution or amongst others in your network. Find trainees also planning to go on the job market soon to meet with regularly to discuss your experiences and share your approach to the job search (where did you find job postings?, how are you handling requesting letters of reference?, etc...). Ideally, having this group be composed of individuals going on the job market this year and those planning to go on the job market next year is a great way for trainees a year out from applying to learn from those going through the process this year. As the hiring cycle progresses, your group can think learn from those who have had interviews with search committees about their experiences and serve as a space for feedback on the job talk and chalk talk (and see this presentation or this one on YouTube for more) your group members plan to deliver at institutions who have invited them for a final round interview. Through this experience, you'll gain a wider perspective on navigating a job search as you learn and support one another. 
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Consider diverse career options
While a faculty role may be what you aspire to, it is always good to have options for the next step in your career. Consider using self-assessment tools such as myIDP, ImaginePhD, or ChemIDP to learn about the breadth of career paths that could fit your skills, interests, and values. Make plans to develop the skills and networks needed to pivot into careers beyond the tenure-track. There are so many amazing careers out there to pursue and remaining open to those possibilities will help you realize that there is no one path to "success" when it comes to your career. 
See my recent Standing Out from the Pack presentation for a summary of some of the resources and tools mentioned above as well as advice on navigating the faculty job search. 
Additional Resources
Standing out from the Pack presentation
We've also curated a variety of resources and perspectives on the academic job search and how to craft compelling application materials on the NC State Graduate School's ImPACKful blog under our "Academic PACKways" category. 
Academic PACKways Content
I also highly recommend this Faculty Corner YouTube playlist from Michigan Medicine's Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies to learn more about the faculty job search and hear from faculty on how they manage their work & responsibilities. 
Further Reading from the Blog
  • Tales from the academic job market
  • Conveying your value prior to and during your job search​
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Conveying Your Value Prior to and During a Job Search

2/25/2021

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Career Development, Academic Job Search, Job Search
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Last month, my blog post focused on growing your personal brand and network and the importance time plays (i.e., starting early) in experiencing compounded returns. This month, I turn to discussing the importance of conveying your value, especially as it relates to a job search.
Selling Yourself
Most scientists and scholars dislike the idea of "selling" themselves when on the job market. It feels a bit forced and disingenuous, right? Shouldn't good work and your abilities speak for themselves? The answer is, unfortunately, NO.
As all of us, including hiring managers, are bombarded with ever increasing amounts of information and content you need to work to ensure your brand and message can rise above the noise. For a job search, this relies on ensuring you as an applicant can convey a coherent value proposition of how your skills and abilities translate to an employer's needs clearly and succinctly. This fact applies whether you are seeking positions in academia or industry. There is data showing the average resume is viewed for only 7.4 seconds by recruiters. In addition, faculty searches routinely receive 200+ applicants per open position in the biological sciences.

How do you stand out from the masses? Through powerfully communicating who you are and the expertise you bring to solve problems an employer cares about. It starts and ends with effective communication in your conversations, on social media, and in your application documents. 
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The Academic Job Search - Building Impactful Documents
For those readers looking to pursue a faculty career, the quality of your research, teaching, and diversity statements is essential. But don't forget to craft a cover letter that provides a description of how you fit the department, institution, and role. The key across all of these documents is to convey the value you bring as a potential colleague to the department you are applying to. You should ensure throughout these application documents that your tone is written from the perspective of a colleague that has expertise and knowledge to add to the unit's teaching and research efforts. And please don't write these materials with a deferential tone, saying things like "it would be an honor to join your department" or "I would love the privilege of working at institution X". Words like honor and privilege convey the idea that you are asking for a job (that they are doing you a favor by considering your application). Rather, you want your tone and word choice in your application documents to speak to how you can add to their department and bring value through teaching needed courses or leading new research efforts (via particular techniques or areas of expertise you possess) at the institution (that you are doing them a favor by applying).
The distinction between asking a department to hire you and conveying why the should want to hire you seems minor but it isn't. The goal is to present yourself with confidence and demonstrate how you will immediately add value to the work of the department and institution through your teaching, research, and service. This requires a bit of research into core courses taught in the department, understanding the aspects of your research that are a funding priority by various agencies, and what the university values in their faculty (teaching over research, working mostly with undergraduate students, etc...).
The Value of Talking to Current Faculty Members, Including New Hires
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While you cannot completely network your way to a faculty position, you can certainly learn a lot about an institution and department prior to applying by talking with faculty, especially newly-hired assistant professors. Informational interviews with faculty can be immensely powerful in helping you understand the expectations for new faculty at various institutions. You can also use these conversations to learn from those who recently navigated the faculty job market in your field and get a better sense of what is valued in faculty applicants.
Ideally, you should start these conversations at least a year before applying as you are using them to gather information NOT to talk about a specific job opening. ​What you learn could then be helpful if the department has an opening the following year as you will know a bit about resources and expectations in the department and can speak to them in your application materials. 

You can also reach out to faculty at departments you know are hiring to talk more about their research and experience working there. These could be future collaborators even if you don't land the position. So approach the conversation with the goal of learning more about the individual, their research, and their experience working at the institution NOT about a single position, though the open position may come up in conversation and allow you to learn about hiring priorities for the department. 

For more see my Tales from the Academic Job Market post from July 2019.
Explore My Job Search Resources

Shifting back to discussing general tips for a broad job search outside faculty positions, informational interviews and networking are essential as many jobs are not advertised. Tapping this hidden job market will increase your odds of landing a position but building the relationships you need to accomplish this does require considerable time and effort. 
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Like an iceberg, most positions are not visible to you. You access this hidden job market through your network. A great way to start networking is via informational interviews.
Start Early to Avoid an Employer's "Front Door" 
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One way to immediately improve your odds of landing a position is not to apply to one in the traditional sense.

​Applications submitted online (especially for employment at large companies) are likely to be sifted through by an applicant tracking system that automates review of your materials. If you lack the keywords or experience the job advertisement calls for, you could be screened out before a human being even looks at your materials. And while there are certainly strategies to improve your application making it through such automated systems, why put your employment fate completely in their hands? 

How do you avoid being subject to the whims of an online system? You leverage your network. This is the piece of advice that job seekers typically don't want to hear as it requires advance "groundwork" and effort that needs to begin 6-12 months BEFORE you need a job.
Informational interviews are a powerful entry point to building a professional relationship with someone in a career field of interest to you. By talking with individuals with job titles you are interested in or who work at companies you think you would like to work for, you learn:
  • ​Whether a particular position fits your skills, interests, and values
  • Whether a potential employer fits the environment you want to work in
  • What an employer's future plans are - where they are growing, what types of positions may become open in the coming year
  • How individuals with similar backgrounds to you (Ph.D., postdoc) made career transitions
  • Advice on how to make a career transition yourself
  • Whom else to speak with in your career field of interest or at the company
  • And more....

Remember to treat these conversations as fact-finding missions and a chance to learn and connect. Be sure to take notes and follow-up with those you speak with as well as strategize ways to keep them updated on your plans and accomplishments as you progress toward the end of your training. Also, be sure to consider ways you can provide value to those you speak with by either sharing research (recent publications) or news that could be relevant to their work or by connecting them with individuals you know who could help them fill an open position, learn about a new technique or process, and more. You have more to "give" than you think. 

Read more on career exploration and informational interviews on the blog: 
  • Start Here
  • ​Career Exploration 101
  • Exploring a Variety of Career Paths
  • Post-PhD Career Plans: Consider the Possibilities
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​Build Your Narrative
As you speak with professionals about their career (via informational interviews) or attend networking events, you will certainly also need to be able to talk about yourself and your value in an effective way: your professional narrative. 

As human beings we are all working to construct narratives of others...it is how we make sense of a complex world. So, if you don't do a thorough job of crafting your own personal narrative and value proposition, one will be created for you.

When scanning your resume or LinkedIn profile, instead of "10+ years of experience working with leading genetic editing technologies including CRISPR-Cas9", someone may see career "student" focused on academic minutiae. Or, they may see you as just a scientist with a lot of great technical skills but wonder how you will do interacting with others or with clients who lack a full understanding of the technical details you take for granted. You must ensure you craft a compelling and clear narrative about your experience and expertise that is accessible. Less jargon and more focused on results and the impact of your work. 
Reframing
One of the largest challenges faced by graduate students and postdocs when describing their experiences and skills is ensuring they frame the work they have performed and tasks they have accomplished in an accessible way. Filling your application documents with technical jargon and listing out the papers you have published is fine when applying for academic positions. If you are looking for a career outside faculty or university research roles, however, you need to reframe and tailor your application documents. 

A resume should always be tailored to a position and be focused on how your contributed toward various projects, with an emphasis on the results and impact of your work.

For more advice on reframing and tailoring your experiences in a resume, see this Guide for CV to Resume Conversion from Yale University. 
Practice Your Messaging
A crucial step in conveying your skills, abilities, and interest in a particular career field is having your personal brand messaging honed and ready to share.

When at a networking event, for instance, you are meeting professionals that may work in areas of interest to you and your task upon meeting them is to efficiently and compellingly convey who you are, what you do, and your future interests in 30-60 seconds. You might have heard this referred to as an elevator pitch. Having this short description of you, your work, and your aspirations ready to share can really help those you meet understand who you are and where you may fit into the world of work.
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Ideally, this pitch touches on your skills and expertise but also how you are seeking to apply them after your graduate school or postdoctoral training. You can also condense and use this pitch in your LinkedIn headline and profile summary sections. 
Your professional narrative needs to be coherent and pervasive across platforms like LinkedIn, your resume, and in your communications with others.

Some other points to consider as you work to convey your narrative and value as part of a job search:
Believe in Your Value
It is critically important when applying and interviewing for a position to ensure you project confidence but not cockiness
You need to make clear to potential employers that you have valuable skills and experience to offer them. Sometimes this requires working to explain how your background and training fit aspects associated with the role. You will often need to "connect the dots" between your past experiences and the role for an employer.
Also, you must not view yourself as just a student or trainee but rather as a professional with valuable skills & expertise. See 
Reframing, above, for tips on this. ​
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Appeal to Emotion and Not Just Logic
While many believe they must appeal to concrete examples and data points that speak to their fit for a position, they often leave out the clear role "feeling" plays in most human interactions and decisions. Human beings are very good at rationalizing a decision based on "gut feeling" after the fact and the hiring process is not immune to this rationalization process. So, it is critical to ensure you are also making a reader of your application materials feel something​.

If you have successfully used your network to have your application materials elevated to the point that a human being is reviewing them (i.e., a referral), remember that a human being is influenced by more than just metrics and data. Why we often think of ourselves as logical beings, our emotions and "gut feelings" play a larger part in shaping our choices and behavior than we consciously realize. In terms of crafting your application materials, remember that a potential employer wants to hire someone who is qualified for the role (i.e., has made a good argument) but also someone who conveys interest and passion for the position and work it will entail. Going even further, people want to hire people they want to work with as colleagues. So, show a bit of humanity in your materials. 

​For example, it is sometimes worth using a few sentences in the cover letter to speak to why the role you are applying to is right for you as a human being. You might add details related to how the role fits with your personality or passion for working in a particular area...things that can't often be conveyed in a resume. This is certainly a personal decision but also mentioning you have family in the area or, after speaking with employees at the company/institution, really value the emphasis they place on work/life balance can demonstrate that the choice you are making is about more than just the job. It also emphasizes your priorities and shows you are thinking about the long-term prospects associated with working there. Remember a potential employer is also trying to surmise ​whether you will take the job if offered. So, be sure you convey why you are interested in the position professionally and personally. 
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Job Interview Narratives - Ensure You Hit Your Key Points 
When it comes time for a job interview, you will need to be sure you have a 
compelling career story to share and are ready to use narratives around your experiences to respond to the behavior-based interview questions that are certain to be asked. 
​

You have heard these behavior-based interview questions before:
  • Tell me about a time you encountered a set-back or failure and how you worked to overcome it.
  • Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?
  • Tell me about a time you were dissatisfied in your work. What could have been done to make it better?
  • Describe a decision you made that wasn't popular, and explain how you handled implementing it.

The critical piece of advice I want to offer here and one that you should remember if nothing else from this piece: Be the author of your own story.

By this I mean make sure you are speaking to key talking points you want to convey whenever you are interacting with someone professionally as part of your job search. Don't let behavior-based interview questions hem you in. Rather, be sure you have 5-7 great stories to tell that emphasize key aspects of your personality, work ethic, or expertise that you want to ensure a potential employer hears about. Then, it is your job to weave these stories into your response to an interviewer's questions. The goal is to leave a job interview with the sense you expressed what you can offer to the best of your ability and have few regrets that you missed a key talking point.

None of this is easy and practice makes perfect. While mock interviews can certainly help, nothing beats the real thing. As such, consider taking any interview you are offered, even if you aren't sure of the career fit. Getting experience telling your story is never a bad thing and you never know when talking with someone, even an interviewer, could lead to unexpected opportunities down the road. 

See the two Resources at the end of this post on tips for navigating a job interview, including a Story Circle activity that can help you frame your talking points in response to questions you might encounter during an interview.
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Caveats
There has been much mentioned in this piece and my previous post about the need to start early, network, and have conversations with professionals (informational interviews) well before you are on the job market to effectively uncover opportunities. I acknowledge that this advice might not be feasible with your current timetable, though. 

I completely understand many of us need a position NOW and cannot lay the networking groundwork referenced above to land our immediate next job. Certainly you may need to take the best position available to you right now. This doesn't mean the tips shared above can't be used once you have a job.

Maybe you want to explore how you advance at your new company? Maybe you are interested in learning about other roles at the company? Maybe after working in your new role for a few months you realize it isn't right for you.

In all these cases, you can use informational interviews and networking to learn more about your employer, coworkers, or other careers available to you. It is never a bad thing to work to expand your network and continue to learn about options available to you in your career. 

As a graduate student or postdoc, many of us have seen how an academic career path is quite linear and regimented:
Ph.D. student -> postdoc -> Assistant Professor -> Associate Professor -> Full Professor 

Most careers aren't that way, though, and most professionals don't stay with one employer or in one job family for their full career.

Thus, you need to be continually accessing your skills, interests, and values and how your current career fits with them. By continuing to have conversations and working to convey your current and future value effectively, you will keep yourself open to opportunities and be agile enough to take advantage of them. All this is crucial in a rapidly changing world where we can't even begin to imagine what career opportunities will exist in the near future. 

Finally, remember that no one will care about your career more than you. So empower yourself to take charge of your story and talk to people to discover what possibilities await for you out there.

​You can do it!
For Further Reading

A Ph.D. is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival In Science

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If Your Really Want a Job, Show You Have These 6 Qualities

How to Tell a Concise, Compelling Career Story in an Interview

How to Write a Personal Value Proposition

Interview Question: "Tell Me About Yourself"

Storytelling: The Secret Weapon To Wow A Hiring Manager
Contains excellent advice and tips to assist you in telling your stories during a job interview

Mirror Neurons: Why Good Stories Provoke Empathy and Connection

Go with Your Gut: Emotion and Evaluation in Job Interviews

Emotions in the Hiring Procedure: How ‘Gut Feelings’ Rationalize Personnel Selection Decisions

Emotion and Decision Making (from Annual Review of Psychology)

Resources

Informational & Job Interview Overview & Resources

Story Circle Activity Worksheet - a framework for crafting stories around your experiences and skills to use to convey your expertise and value during an interview (credit careercontessa.com)
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Tales from the Academic Job Market

7/31/2019

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Academic Job Search
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Image from freepik.com
As the calendar approaches August, it is that time of year again - the academic job search season is upon us. Faculty job advertisements start to be released in August and some application deadlines are as soon as mid-September.
Many bright and motivated graduate students and postdocs will be applying for these positions.

Landing a Faculty Job is Challenging
I think most know that it has become exceedingly difficult to land a tenure-track academic position (see a nice description of the process from one applicant here & see also). Data from the biomedical sciences estimate only ~20% of all Ph.D.s are working in tenured or tenure-track academic positions. In 2006, ~15% of US doctorates in biological sciences were in tenured/tenure-track positions within six years of completing their Ph.D.s with ~18% in untenured roles (postdocs, lecturers, research associates), this compared with ~55% in tenured/tenure-track roles in 1972.
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Figure from Schillebeeckx et al., 2013 Nature Biotechnology. Since 1982, almost 800,000 PhDs were awarded in science and engineering (S&E) fields, whereas only about 100,000 academic faculty positions were created in those fields within the same time frame. The number of S&E PhDs awarded annually has also increased over this time frame, from ∼19,000 in 1982 to ∼36,000 in 2011. In contrast, the number of faculty positions created each year has not risen substantially.
The aspiration of many Ph.D.s is to strive toward an academic position, though interest is declining. But what will make you more competitive on the academic job market?

Predictors of Academic Job Market Success
For some insight, see this nice piece on preparing for the job search. Quantitative studies have also begun to shed light on the hiring process. Perhaps not surprisingly, the number of first-author publications (particularly in high-impact journals) are strong predictors of who becomes a principal investigator, PI (i.e., faculty member running a research lab). In addition, making sure your research builds on but branches out from that of your graduate school and postdoctoral mentors is critical.

I am also working with a team from the Future_PI Slack group to better understand what metrics predict who receives academic job offers. We are still analyzing that data but what I can say is that the objective metrics of funding track record and high-impact publications are important but the effects are rather small. What that means is that what separates those who get job offers from those who don't is not such much the volume or quality of their work or their ability to attract funding. Rather, I believe, it often comes down to the more subjective measure of "fit."

UPDATED 7/28/20: See our eLife paper, A Survey-based Analysis of the Academic Job Market
UPDATED 6/29/22: Learn more about our faculty job market collaboration work and complete our faculty job market surveys for the 2020-2021 and/or 2021-2022 application cycles. 
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What do search committees want?
There are many pieces (see here and here and here) out there documenting the faculty search process from the point of view of the search committees themselves. FYI, these committees are composed of human beings making decisions and sometimes a hiring decision is about more than you as a candidate (i.e., politics and internal departmental power structures can come into play).

What is "fit"?
The illusive quality of "fit" is difficult to quantify and verbalize. How do you know if you are a good fit for a position and/or employer? It all starts with reaching out and speaking with people at the place(s) you want to work.
From my own experience on the academic job market, here are some points to keep in mind:
1) Leverage your network to find out what search committees really want (i.e., are prioritizing).
2) If you are in doubt regarding your fit for a position, reach out to the search committee chair.
2) And thoroughly research the department to see if YOU think you would be a good fit.

It is important to learn more about what search committees want as a job advertisement often doesn't tell the whole story. Sometimes, committees don't even know what they want.

I will give you an example: I was forwarded a job advertisement for a genetic epidemiologist faculty position at a large, research-intensive institution a couple of years ago. I don't consider myself to be an epidemiologist. Though, I did some behavioral genetics research. Nevertheless, the department where this position was located looked like a great fit: interdisciplinary, growing, filled with faculty interested in understanding complex problems such as drug addiction (which I myself was researching) at all levels. I figured it was worth inquiring with the search committee chair whether I would be a good fit. I emailed him, attached my CV, and asked if I should apply for the open position. He replied back that this was an interdisciplinary position and they were looking for researchers doing a variety of interesting work in relation to the study of drug addiction.
I applied and SURPRISE, this was the only position I applied to (out of 26) where I got an onsite interview that year.

LESSON: NEVER assume you aren't a potential fit for a position. Research the department to see if YOU think you could fit in there. If the answer is YES, I encourage you to apply and make the case in your cover letter. Also, reach out to the search committee chair for some guidance. Sometimes they will give you the blanket "we encourage all interested individuals to apply." If that is the case, doing your own homework to make a decision on whether to apply or not is critical.
Also, if the search committee chair can't give you more clarity on your "fit" and/or there is no chair mentioned by name in the job advertisement, reach out to members of the department doing work you admire and see as potential future collaborators. Set up a phone/Skype call to ask them how they like working there, what resources are available to faculty, what the typical teaching load entails, etc... You may be surprised what you learn from that conversation.

When I was interested in a position at another large, research-intensive university, I reached out to a faculty there doing work I found interesting to see if we could talk about the department. He graciously agreed.
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At the start of our call he mentioned that SURPRISE he was on the search committee for the position. And guess what? This was one of those places with no search committee chair contact information was listed on the advertisement. What luck! He gave me the inside scoop and told me the department was prioritizing a faculty candidate doing diversity research. That was not apparent to me at all in the job advertisement. So, I was glad I spoke with this professor. I tailored my application to reflect the fact that the work I did was focused on how reward and decision making behavior varied based on participant sex, age, and genetic makeup (i.e., biological diversity). I didn't expect to hear from this department, though, knowing their priorities for someone studying diversity as a construct. And, after I submitted my materials, I didn't hear back from them. Having the knowledge that my fit was poor for the position, though, made the rejection easier to process.

Do your research & connect with potential future colleagues
Hopefully these personal accounts show you the importance of not just blindly submitting your materials to as many open positions as possible. If you take the time to do your research and talk to faculty in the department, you can better prioritize where to apply and how to tailor your materials to make the best use of your precious time. Applying to faculty positions takes a lot of work and energy but putting in the extra effort to connect with the search committee chair or other departmental faculty is more than worth it.
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STOP, TAKE A STEP BACK, & REFLECT
If all these stats, amount of work required, and the apparent unpredictability of the job market has you questioning whether you should apply for faculty positions, that is more than OK. I think it is good to reflect on what you really want out of this next stage in your life. Faculty jobs have their PROS and CONS (see here & here & here) and there are MANY TYPES of faculty jobs, not just being a PI of a research lab at a research-intensive institution. You could work at a liberal arts college, community college (see also), or regional university (see also) - all of which highly value teaching. These types of positions are less focused on securing grant funding and the expectation to publish your work often (priorities when working at a research-intensive university) and may better fit your skills and interests.
Speaking of skills and interests, if you have some lingering doubts on whether a faculty job is the right fit for you but are unsure how your skills and interests translate to other potential careers, I highly recommend taking assessments through myIDP and ImaginePhD. These online tools (and see) will map your skills, interests, and values to potential career options and give you the vocabulary and references to further explore them. You will be amazed by the variety of careers out there for Ph.D.-trained researchers.

And what if you get that faculty job offer? First congrats! Second, reflect and ask yourself: Do you see the institution and department as a good fit? Will you enjoy living in the area? You shouldn't take a position because it is your only offer. You want to make sure it seems like the right place for you. And if you accept the offer but wonder if you can succeed as a faculty member or are afraid of "failing" while on the tenure-track, read this superb piece for some encouragement and inspiration.
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In closing, don't forget to also listen to your gut. What feels right in terms of a career for you?

I was barrelling down the road to a tenure-track position and got as far as an on-site interview and the dreaded waiting game to see if I was going to receive an offer. Looking back now, I am glad I didn't. It would have been hard to turn one down.

I couldn't help feeling during that time though, that being a faculty member at a research-intensive university might not be the best fit for me. Did I really want to have to constantly be thinking about and writing the next grant application? Always be drafting and revising that next publication? Did I want to have to develop a large research arc for my lab that was both practical but also innovative? I realized that I really didn't want to do all those things. They were what I had come to expect from myself over 10 years of graduate school and postdoctoral work but they weren't things I enjoyed doing.

During my time as a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow I also really enjoyed mentoring and helping others with their career plans. I got involved in the Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Association and now I work in Postdoctoral Affairs. It is a better career fit for me than the tenure-track. I am still in an academic environment but I get to spend my time mentoring and helping talented postdocs navigate their career search and support them in their professional development. The work-life balance is great and I have a lot of autonomy in my new role. I think it is the right place for me at this stage in my life.

I hope all those reading this piece find what that right fit is for you, too. And realize it may change over time and that is OK.

Happy hunting!

Further reading & resources:
Great resources are available on getting your faculty application materials in order:
The Academic Job Search (from University of California, Berkeley)
Academic Careers: Start Here (from the University of California, San Francisco)

You can also find examples of my own application docs on my Job Search Resources page.

Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty
resource from Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

See also my Inside Higher Ed Carpe Careers piece on The Importance of Informational Interviews in your faculty job search. 
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    A neuroscientist by training, I now work to improve the career readiness of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

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