​The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) is a member-driven organization, relying on volunteer efforts of its members to advance the mission of the NPA. One of the volunteer committees, the Resource Development Committee (ResDev), develops tools and resources for the postdoctoral community, including planning and implementing webinar series, and creating website content such as career development resources and guides for postdocs. Volunteering with ResDev is a fantastic opportunity for postdocs and postdoc administrators alike to provide essential input into the creation, curation, and promotion of these invaluable training resources while gaining leadership experience.

Anyone who is interested in getting involved with ResDev can sign up to volunteer via this weblink.

​ResDev has developed three new career guides for postdocs: A Postdoc's Guide To The Postdoc Timeline, A Postdoc's Guide To Career Development, and most recently, My IDP & Me.

​A Postdoc’s Guide To The Postdoc Timeline assists trainees in developing a research, professional, and career development plan for each stage of postdoc training, providing recommendations that start at the very beginning (first 6-8 weeks of the postdoc) through planning for transition (final 3-6 months). The timeline links to helpful resources and suggestions for incorporating the six NPA Core Competencies into an individual training plan.

The Career Development Guide introduces key concepts of the career development process, providing explanations and resources to assist in both career exploration and the job search. The guide discusses self-assessment, exploring various career paths, networking, and informational interviews, preparing job search materials such as CVs, resumes, and cover letters, interviewing, and negotiating. The guide has also compiled a list of helpful resources to get trainees started, including on-campus resources, books, online career guides, and other web-based resources.

My IDP & Me is a comprehensive guide for postdocs seeking to develop a plan for their training and career development that assists them in reaching their long-term career goals. Particularly, this guide was created to highlight the IDP as a self-directed process. So, regardless of whether your institution promotes and facilitates the creation and use of an IDP, you can use our My IDP & Me guide to walk you through the process independently or dive into it more deeply.

To develop an effective IDP, you will need to take the time to make an initial assessment of current values (personal and professional), skills/techniques (within and outside of the area of doctoral expertise), and goals for the future. The My IDP & Me guide links to a variety of tools and resources to help you throughout the process from initial self-assessment to informational interviews and having (sometimes difficult) career conversations with your advisor. Using My IDP & Me alongside our Postdoc’s Guide to the Postdoc Timeline and other NPA resources can help you create a comprehensive plan for how your postdoc should evolve, making time for training and career development, from day one.

Essentially, you should use an IDP as a living roadmap to achieve your career goals. Taking time to formally reflect, research, and plan will let you target skills and connections you need to develop during your postdoc to help move into your desired career path(s).

Furthermore, the IDP can assist you in mapping out the steps you need to take to be competitive for multiple career paths. Exploring and preparing for multiple career paths will help you see that there are many potential careers available to you. In addition, this process will increase your confidence in your future, that you can be proactive in your career and professional development to set yourself up to be competitive for a variety of post-postdoc careers.

By using our My IDP & Me guide and other NPA resources, you can begin to empower yourself with the knowledge you need to prepare for whatever career lies ahead of you.

More from the Blog

• Career Exploration 101
• Highlighting Online Resources to Support Graduate-Level Career and Professional Development
• Career Resources for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Additional Readings & References

• Yearly Planning Meetings: Individualized Development Plans Aren’t Just More Paperwork
• IDP tools:
  • myIDP (Science Careers)
  • ImaginePhD (for humanities and social sciences but a generally great tool)
  • ChemIDP (from American Chemical Society)
  • American Psychological Association IDP
• 2022 Postdoc Essential Skills programming materials from Virginia Tech
  • Topics include career exploration, informational interviews, crafting your LinkedIn presence, and leveraging an IDP to maximize postdoctoral training

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.

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.

​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

​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. 

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

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!  ​

The National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) held its first ever virtual annual conference April 15 & 16. By all accounts, it was a huge success with 900+ attendees (>2 times the largest previous attendance mark for a NPA annual conference). 

The online format allowed for greater accessibility for postdocs as travel and lodging costs were removed. I also appreciated that the conference platform allowed for attendees to easily download copies of posters that were presented as well as resources and materials provided by presenters.

The conference agenda was packed with great content relevant for postdocs and those who support them. An effort was also made to promote engagement during breaks through trivia and bingo games. The platform used to host the event, Big Marker, performed well and had many great features to promote exchange of contact information and content.
​
Below, I share some of the publicly available resources and tools highlighted during the conference in the hopes they are valuable to my readers.

​This is only a subset of resources and opportunities shared at the NPA Annual Conference. Recordings of all talks/sessions will be available to those who attended via the meeting platform soon. 

Science Policy Career Paths
I moderated a panel, Policy Career Paths for Postdocs and the Things I Wish I Knew
​Resources shared: 
AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships, Providing opportunities for outstanding scientists and engineers to learn first-hand about federal policymaking while using their knowledge and skills to address today’s most pressing societal challenges.

The List of SciPol Fellowships, a crowd-sourced list of science & technology policy opportunities through member societies, the federal government, state governments, foundations/non-profits, & more

Zintellect, Access hundreds of research internships, fellowships, and scholarships funded by the government and private sector organizations.
Powered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) & Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU)

Science Policy Fellowships for Non-US Citizens, a crowd-sourced list of science policy fellowships available to non-us citizens

Science Policy and Advocacy for STEM Scientists
An innovative program from the University of California, Irvine GPS-STEM in collaboration with the Journal of Science Policy & Governance, Union of Concerned Scientists, & Ridge 2 Reef Program.

This group offers an online course in science policy and advocacy for STEM scientists (PhD students & postdocs) with a focus on learning basic skills and concepts, as well as identifying concrete ways to transition into careers in these areas.

They will be offering the program online, open to any interested trainee, starting July 15, 2021.
Enroll in the Science Policy & Advocacy for STEM Scientists Certificate Program 2021 by June 1st via this Google Form.  

Building Peer Networks to Enhance Postdoc Career & Professional Development
​
Stony Brook University PhD Career Ladder Program (PCLP)
A peer-led career mentoring program for grad students and postdocs pursuing any career pathway. 
PCLP helps participants set aside a few hours each week to develop a framework for their job search. Biweekly meetings guide participants “up the ladder” of career exploration from self-assessment to career research and skill identification, to informational interviewing, to resume crafting.
The creators of PCLP have developed a Toolkit to assist individuals seeking to start a PCLP Group at their institutions. 

Leadership & Management in Action Program (L-MAP) at Washington University in St. Louis
The L-MAP, Leadership and Management in Action Program, is a new active-learning training program for graduate students and postdocs in the biosciences to build a leadership, management, and inclusive teamwork skillset. Trainees work in teams on experiential case studies and activities in the L-MAP curriculum, led by a facilitator with expertise in leadership training.

The WashU team has made their L-MAP Curriculum publicly available via a creative commons license and will be hosting a virtual Train-the-Trainer workshop on May 10th, 10 AM - 12 PM Central, to assist individuals wanting to launch the program at their institutions. You can register to attend the workshop when downloading the curriculum at the link, below. 

Volunteer Opportunities Through the NPA
Volunteering with the NPA is a great way for postdocs to expand their leadership and teamwork skills and contribute to improving the postdoctoral experience. You can write about topics or experiences that impact the postdoctoral community through The POSTDOCket, help the NPA in its advocacy efforts on behalf of postdocs, assist in the development and dissemination of resources for postdocs and postdoc offices, and more. 
​
It is so important for postdocs to get involved in things beyond their lab/work. I know writing for The POSTDOCket and taking on leadership positions in my postdoctoral association was critical in helping me develop into who I am today as well as transition into my current role in postdoctoral affairs.  

2021 NPA Institutional Policy Report Released
​As a postdoctoral affairs professional, the data the NPA collects and reports on postdoc policies, benefits, demographics, and postdoc office resources every few years is critical advocating for increased institutional resources to support postdoc affairs. In the most recent report, the NPA Institutional Policy Survey Taskforce and Data Analysis Team show trends in various metrics collected in the survey over time (from 2013, 2016, & 2019). It is nice to see progress is being made on a variety of fronts to increase postdoc & postdoc office support. More work is still needed, though, especially around the fact that the mode size of a postdoc office remains one individual.

While my background is in the biological sciences, during my time working in career and professional development I have learned about career resources for a variety of fields.

Here, I share resources and datasets I am aware of that speak to the career prospects of individuals working outside the biological and chemical sciences, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences.

General Career Resources for the Humanities & Social Sciences

​Modern Language Association Career Resources
​In particular, see their Job Market Data

American Psychological Association - Careers in Psychology Resources


Career Outcomes Data & Insights for the Humanities & Social Sciences

American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Humanities Indicators
​Humanities Indicators - Workforce Data

​American Historical Association
Where Historians Work Database

Closing Gaps in our Knowledge of PhD Career Pathways: How Well Did a Humanities PhD Prepare Them?
Publication from the Council of Graduate Schools' PhD Career Pathways Project

​See the Association of American Universities' PhD Education Initiative Activities Page for a List of Several Ongoing PhD Program & Career Outcome Data Efforts from Institutions, Multi-Institutional Efforts, & Professional Societies.

Despite its name, the Coalition for Next Generation Life Sciences data often contain humanities and social science programs (for example: Cornell Graduate School, Emory Graduate School PhD & Master's data, University of Wisconsin Graduate School, University of Toronto 10,000 PhDs Project). Explore all the data.

The National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates also has some data on general workforce trends for Ph.D. recipients by field of study.  

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. 

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).

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. 

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

​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. 

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:

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. 

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.

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

​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)