An earlier version of this piece was published in Inside Higher Ed's Carpe Careers column on May 15, 2023. 

​Let’s start off with a statement that may read a bit alarming to the science and engineering graduate students and postdocs who are reading this: there is no “formula” for career success. No combination of your skills plus talent plus hard work definitively guarantees success in your career or life. This is partly a fact of the world not being predictable or “fair” but also acknowledges something that seems obvious when examined deeply and holistically but shocking when first encountered by an individual socialized in a modern, capitalist economy: your success isn’t up to you.  

“Greatness is in the agency of others” is a phrase often used by Scott Galloway, a faculty member at New York University’s Stern School of Business and influential blogger/podcaster.   

​The crux of this argument is that no one succeeds alone. Rather, we live in societies where collectively we produce success and opportunity, even if it is only evident to have been realized by a subset of the population. In fact, the only reason our modern economies function is through the collective and specialized actions of many individuals contributing, yes, their unique skills and abilities to the world. 

​The key word there is collective…we succeed together even if many of us don’t realize or acknowledge it. A central example is childcare and education. Even the most naturally gifted individual must be cared for as a baby and young child to reach an age where their potential can be realized. Furthermore, they need schooling and access to information that was created by others to understand the world and how they can build off the foundation of countless individuals to create new “breakthroughs” and potentially make money doing it. And this action may lead that individual to be rewarded financially and touted as a genius, a disrupter, or successful entrepreneur but their success is not 100% theirs. 

In an increasingly complex world with technology advancing at a blistering pace, no one can know it all or be 100% self-made. For many decades leveraging one’s technical skills and abilities to produce value was paramount to having a successful career. You needed to offer skills that were in demand in the current economy to be recognized as providing value in a purely economical sense. While this seemed to be rational and efficient it was not necessarily good for human flourishing. We are more than our skills and physical outputs and the acceleration in generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology has left many wondering what are we “good for” in a future where AI can produce similar creative and practical outputs to our own more efficiently and effectively? 

The famous American poet, writer, and activist Maya Angelou has a quote that nicely embodies what we all should strive for as human beings today and always:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

​The enduring skills of the future of “work” are human skills…making others feel something: feel valued, feel heard, feel understood, feel important.  

Human skills or interpersonal skills include a variety of skills that help us work effectively with other human beings. Communication, empathy, emotional intelligence and other attributes fall under this larger umbrella. 

• Communication is critical to so many professional roles and ultimately facilitates (or hinders) teamwork and progress toward institutional goals. 
  
• Leadership and management center around how we understand the people who report to us enough to know how to motivate them and facilitate their success. 
  
• Compassion and empathy are critical to dealing with setbacks and challenges that are inevitable in life and demonstrate to others that we care and value them.  

​These human skills are essential to succeeding and enduring professionally. The fact of the matter is that while one’s skills and abilities can land you a job interview or often an entry level job, your interpersonal skills and other attributes of your personality will make someone want to have you as a colleague or work for you.

​Unfortunately, many individuals pursuing their graduate degrees or postdoctoral research dismiss the importance of these skills. They will often discuss a frustrating job search process with statements like “don’t my skills and abilities speak for themselves?” or “my work speaks for itself”. And while skills and abilities are surely important, they are often being assessed on more than their work. I think this is a good thing because we are all more than the skills, abilities, and accomplishments listed on a resume. 

​Even in research-focused roles at companies, someone with PhD-level training will often be hired with the intention that the company considers them to be a future project or program leader. Being placed in a leadership role might not occur right away but many employers will be looking for glimpses of these skills when interviewing candidates. 

More value is placed on transferable and interpersonal skills when a Ph.D. is transitioning into a non-research role. At that point, an employer doesn’t often care as much about your specific technical skills or research accomplishments but rather that by completing a graduate degree you showed the ability to think critically, problem solve, extract insight from data, and communicate your findings. Your Ph.D. experience provides a breadth of these transferable skills valued by employers.

How does one work to build interpersonal skills? 
Through putting yourself out there and practicing.

This is best accomplished when the stakes are low and could start out as simply as attending a graduate student or postdoctoral association event and chatting with a few people in attendance. Making “small talk” can seem trivial but it works to build connection with others. In fact, it may seem trivial to you to attend an event and listen to a fellow grad student or postdoc vent about their day or talk about their new dog but that doesn’t mean it is trivial to them. Sometimes people just need to be heard, to believe that what they have to say or share is worthy of another human being’s time and attention. For the introverts reading this (of which I count myself), I think we can all acknowledge we would most often rather listen than talk. The good news is you can go to one of these community events and mostly listen and affirm what you hear from others. 

​Busy graduate students, postdocs, and professionals will often cite the lack of time as a hurdle to making connections with others or engaging in organizations or activities that would benefit them professionally and personally. They see these social and community engagement activities as a combination of a luxury and distraction. Time is indeed a finite resource and while there will always be more work to be done than time to do it, time with others is time well spent. In addition, science shows you will feel better from having engaged in these “prosocial” behaviors. It feels good to engage with and help others. Importantly, by building these informal networks you can begin to have people you can rely on for help. This is essential as sometimes we are the helpers and sometimes we are the ones needing help. 

Human skills are more than just valuable to you professionally but also personally. This may go without saying but sometimes we can forget how important it can be to be a caring, compassionate human when interacting with others. Saying thank you and showing other signs of appreciation, remembering relevant personal information and milestones of your coworkers, and being willing to be helpful even if an ask is “outside your job description” go a long way. And our national loneliness epidemic could benefit from more human connection and compassion. Many people want more opportunities to socialize and bond with others but it often takes someone to be brave enough to initiate the process. Will that be you? 

​Embracing your humanity and honing your interpersonal skills through practice will allow you to better relate to and understand other human beings’ needs, hopes, and desires. This will in turn pay dividends in your work, life, and society as a whole. 

​No one succeeds alone and no one (consistently) succeeds on their skills and abilities alone. Rather, greatness is in the agency of others: engaging with others, listening to others, empathizing with others, and working collectively with others is essential not only for our own personal and professional fulfillment but for a functional and prosperous society for all. 

​Human beings are by nature risk averse. The field of behavioral economics has demonstrated unequivocally that loss aversion is a real and powerful force. Specifically, we have a loss aversion bias where we tend to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. When the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky presented this and other findings in their 1979 paper on Prospect Theory they challenged established dogma that human beings are rational economic agents. 

To summarize the loss aversion thesis: Losses Loom Larger Than Gains  
An equivalent loss is subjectively perceived as “worse” than the same amount of gain. 

Our aversion to loss makes sense in an evolutionary context as the loss of resources could be severely detrimental for survival. However, there can be severe repercussions to a bias of avoiding loss over seeking gains: we sometimes don’t take the chances we should. 

Kahneman and Tversky also found in their prospect theory research that people tend to over-weight both low and high probabilities and under-weight medium probabilities. We often perceive events with relatively low probabilities as more likely to occur than they are. So, any risk that is non-zero is perceived as risky, even when, objectively, risk probabilities vary quite a bit from the extreme ends of a distribution when compared to an intermediate level of risk. 

Combining human loss aversion with our over-weighting of low probability events, one can imagine that when the potential for loss intersects with an event with a <100% probability of success, human decision making becomes even more warped relative to what would be expected in a purely mathematically-based, objective world. Rationally, pursuing an opportunity with a 5% chance or failure is far better than if the chance of failure was 25%. Both are relatively low probabilities but the 25% failure rate is 5 TIMES that of the 5% rate. However, most people will perceive a 5% failure rate as HIGHER than it actually is. 

Taken together, then, potential losses that occur at relatively low probabilities are perceived as more likely to occur and, thus, avoided at a higher frequency than one would expect “objectively”.  

​What does all of this have to do with one’s pursuit of a career? 

Well, we can all get very comfortable with the status quo and what we “know”, often at the expense of venturing out and exposing ourselves to new experiences. This is especially true if there is a risk of “failure” or “loss” in pursuing new avenues or experiences AND even if the frequency of those losses are not high, we will perceive the risk of loss as HIGHER than it actually is. 

How this can manifest for graduate students and postdocs is that their current work and experience in an academic setting is a 100% “known” quantity (whether or not it is supportive, a good fit, or well-liked) and therefore may seem not to pose the risk of the unknown. Venturing out to even explore alternative environments can often seem relatively risky in comparison, and may feel disproportionately scary due to the element of risk introduced by the unknown. This can manifest itself in things as low stakes as attending workshops or events that are not “related” to their research/scholarship. 

​Why go out of one’s way to attend that networking event or workshop on a “transferable” skill? 
What if it is uncomfortable? 
What if I am made to do something I am not familiar with or that challenges my sense of self-worth? 

Growth involves pushing oneself beyond what you know or feel comfortable with. However, in many ways technology and the readily available amount of online information can lead one to think less risks are needed to map a path forward in your career. It is important to realize, though, that some of the most useful information and insights related to career progression cannot be found online but instead through human conversation, connection, and experiential learning - which may involve some level of risk or vulnerability. 

There will always be some uncertainty when pursuing something new. And given both graduate school and postdoctoral training are finite periods that will end…you will be pursuing something new when your time as a graduate student or postdoc is over.

So, how might one de-risk the next step in your career? How would you know you are pursuing an appropriate path? There is no substitute for doing the job…you can’t fully know what it is like to be in a role until you are in it. However, there are a few steps you can take to begin understanding what roles might be right for you and thus “de-risk” your career choice.

Perhaps one of the most difficult risks we encounter as humans is putting our faith in others. And our fear of the unknown gets ramped up another notch when it requires us to engage with programs and people completely new to us. However, it is critical to engage in broad communities. There is also data showing that “weak ties” are critical in one’s job search.

A very practical place to start when seeking connections and career conversations is via informational interviews with individuals working in areas you are interested in learning more about. The University of Pennsylvania Career Services team has a superb guide to informational interviewing for graduate students and postdocs and you can also find a great guide available through ImaginePhD (create a FREE account to access this and other ImaginePhD resources).  Informational interviews can also be helpful for your faculty job search. I encourage graduate students and postdocs to begin their search for potential individuals for informational interviews through LinkedIn, leveraging their amazingly powerful Alumni Tool in particular. These conversations will be immensely helpful as you learn more about potential roles and get a sense of how you might make a career transition. 

​A step beyond conversations with professionals though, is to experience what it is like to work in a particular role or on a relevant professional task first-hand through experiential learning. You can also engage in experiences to build transferable, “work” skills through volunteer and leadership efforts at your institution, in your community, or via professional societies. While not traditionally labeled as experiential learning, these volunteer experiences can also be extremely valuable on a variety of levels - fostering belonging, building teamwork and leadership skills, and providing a means to “give back” and help others.   

Formal experiential learning involves applying concepts through active experiences to better understand the applications of one’s skills and knowledge to real-world problems. In addition, one’s self-reflection of the experience and how it aligns with one’s interests and values is crucial in helping inform future career choices.

Experiential learning can range from job simulations to internships and everything in between.

• Job Simulations
  • These prebuilt “simulations” are created by professionals to walk others through typical tasks/deliverables and give them a sense of the types of projects and work performed in certain professions. They are a great way to experience a “day in the life” and reflect on whether you could see yourself performing these tasks as part of a future career.
  • Explore InterSECT Job Simulations
• Job Shadowing
  • This relatively informal process involves spending a day or two with a professional to see what their work looks like. You might be able to leverage informational interviews into future job shadowing opportunities. 
  • Industry "site visits" provide a more high-level overview of an employer but also serve a similar function of allowing students and postdocs to experience an employer first-hand. See this publication for an example of one site visit model implemented in North Carolina's Research Triangle Region.  
• Internships
  • The most immersive of the options listed here often involves spending typically 8-12 weeks embedded in a work environment. While some graduate programs offer formal internship opportunities, not all do. 
  • Even if your institution does not have a mechanism to support internship programs, the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s INTERN Program provides supplemental funds for graduate students supported on NSF research grants to pursue up to six months of an internship experience in a non-academic setting. 

​Some of these experiential learning options require risk and uncertainty. Thus, starting with informational interviews to narrow your scope before pursuing more immersive experiences is a good idea. What I think you will learn after giving the process time is that the more you talk with and learn from others, the more information you will have on a potential career. As you delve further into understanding day-to-day activities and processes through job simulations and shadowing and potentially via internships, the more confident you will feel in pursuing a certain career path. You will de-risk taking the next step through these information gathering and immersive experiences. The ultimate goal is to be fairly confident that the next step you take is the right one for you right now. 

The right now is important to remember as our professional goals and needs will change over time. In most cases, the next job you undertake after graduate school or your postdoc will not be your last. You may eventually need to explore different professional paths. But, having gone through the process once, hopefully you will find it a little less uncertain and daunting the next time around. 

​To close, try not to be scared of the unknown, the unpredictable, the uncertain. Realize that in uncertainty often lies unexpected opportunity and discovery. For example, when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt, I (reluctantly) took on a leadership role in our local postdoctoral association that seemed risky for me at the time - I was/am introverted and didn’t see myself as leadership material. I went from treasurer of our postdoc association one year to vice president the next to a professional working in postdoctoral affairs and serving on the National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors a few years later. I built confidence in my leadership skills through each successive experience. If you had asked me as a postdoc if I would have expected to be here professionally seven years later, my answer would have surely been no. But, circumstances pushed me to step outside my comfort zone and ultimately I found a career path where I felt I could make a difference in higher education. Life is unpredictable and career paths are windy but one has to be willing to venture down new avenues of experience and exploration to gain a better understanding of what pathways may be out there for you. 

There is a big, wide world out there…bigger than any of us can fully appreciate. If only we are willing to step outside our comfort zones and take some risks. Being strategic, however, in how you approach the unknown, specifically seeking out opportunities for informational interviews and experiential or volunteer-based learning, can de-risk your situation quite a bit. However, at some point you will have to take the leap. Hopefully, though, you can do that with a bit more confidence and conviction, leveraging the resources and advice you learn along your career exploration journey. Like many, it took a lot for me to take the leap into a profession outside what I “knew.” Hopefully, though, the resources and methods shared here can help make that leap feel a little less risky for you.

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!  ​

“Find your passion. Do what makes you happy.”

We hear this advice all the time and think, yeah, it would be great to find a career one is passionate about, that makes one happy, pays one well, and fits one’s skill set and interests. But is it reasonable to expect this out of one, single job? Maybe, but we Americans are, too often, allowing our careers to define us (termed “workism” in this Atlantic piece and see also this piece by the New York Times), which can be problematic.

The challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic that have persisted over the past 13+ months are many and further highlight the fact that work should never come first. People have had to juggle many priorities this past year:

• Trying to stay healthy, physically & mentally, in the face of so many unknowns (though perhaps that is changing with vaccines rolling out at higher numbers)
• Taking care of loved ones, physically & mentally, sometimes at a distance
• Assisting their children with virtual learning
• Striving to stay "present" in their work while often working virtually and juggling the priorities mentioned above
• Having to decide that trying to maintain a job and balance the priorities above is not feasible and needing to take a step back from their career (a major issue for female workers this past year; see also)
• Setting boundaries between "work" and "home" when you work from home, etc...

As we begin to reset our lives as we emerge from this unprecedented event, many are looking to redefine their work lives to achieve greater balance and flexibility. 

In this blog post, I will talk about some of the key aspects of work we find fulfilling. According to the book Drive by Daniel Pink, and based on research by Edward Deci in the 1970s, we perform best when we are intrinsically motivated. The three key factors that determine intrinsic motivation are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I will break down those three concepts in terms of work satisfaction (I will use my new job as an example; with new reflections 2+ years into it added), but other activities can also fill these human needs.

Autonomy

By autonomy, I mean feeling in control of your situation in life, work, etc. Autonomy in terms of work means not feeling micromanaged in your job, having the ability to prioritize your schedule, and choosing to do things in an order and manner that work for you.

I can say in my current position that I have a lot of autonomy: I decide how to prioritize and order my day, the tasks I need to accomplish, and my larger goals for the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at North Carolina State University. This is great and a huge plus for my current role.

Now, it isn’t like I have complete autonomy and one shouldn’t expect such autonomy, unless you are self-employed and, thus, your own boss. In my current role, there are still somewhat mundane tasks that I have to do.

For me, that is human resources-related tasks associated with the postdoctoral appointment and hiring processes at NC State. Would I say completing human resource actions in the multi-layered systems at NC State is my passion and makes me happy? No. Is it an essential component of my job and the function of my office (at least as currently defined)? Yes.

Over the past year, my administrative load has INCREASED by at least 30% as we now have additional processes that must be undertaken to hire postdocs given UNC System-wide restrictions on new hires. There have also been more requests by faculty to extend postdoctoral appointments past our 5-year limit this academic year. I have worked to accommodate these requests as these are unprecedented times we are living through and pauses to research projects have necessitated a need for many postdocs to stay in their position longer. In addition, many faculty advisors want to shield their postdocs from a tough job market or a need to move to secure other employment and so I am supportive of them staying here longer until conditions improve. Note, though, that many of our postdocs were able to land jobs in 2020 despite the pandemic. 

The blurred lines between work and home have certainly not helped detach from work...I think I work more now than pre-pandemic. This challenge of disconnecting from work started long before the pandemic but like so many things was exasperated by it. The ability to always be connected to work via one's phone (I probably should discount my work email from my phone Gmail app) has led our leisure time to be turned into what some researchers describe as "time confetti". Time confetti are the little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking often aided by our devices and super connected world. The term was coined by Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. 

We live in an age where our attention is increasingly fragmented, which often prevents us from focusing on high-value work AND our personal lives. It is so easy to let those work email pings distract us from being present at home and with our loved ones. We all need to work on being more present and our employers need to more effectively encourage us to disconnect after 5 PM or on the weekends (in fact, France has a law seeking to restrict after-work emails).

Back to my administrative work: I take the approach of framing my human resource tasks as critical to the purpose of my job – to improve the postdoctoral experience. This is important because it ties to another key factor of intrinsic motivation – purpose. I need to review these hire actions to be sure the institution (and the faculty supervisors) are treating postdocs in an appropriate way that both follows our institutional policies but also ensures the postdoc’s best interests are considered.

Despite a taxing year in 2020-2021, I am proud of what my office and our postdoctoral association have been able to accomplish this year to support NC State postdocs from virtual social hours to professional development awards geared toward online learning or networking experiences. Many other institutions have also taken efforts to support their postdocs during COVID. So, in spite of the increased workload and administrative burden, I know I am making a difference by facilitating needed processes to keep our postdocs employed, supported, and connected during a difficult year.   

Life is a matter of perspective and having the right mindset of WHY what your doing is important/necessary can get you through some mundane tasks and tough times.

Mastery

People want to feel like they are making progress in their lives; that they are improving and getting better. Humans seek mastery in their work.

As a Ph.D. student or postdoc, you have spent years mastering your experimental, analytical, and communication skills to produce a dissertation, publications, and conference presentations. It feels good to know you are making progress and, as a Ph.D. student or postdoc, you are keenly aware of how frustrating it feels to not make noticeable progress. And this past year of COVID have certainly interrupted early career researchers' progress and job prospects, which we much seek to address at our institutions (for more see this article & this one).  

​A career is also filled with both sides of the mastery coin: moving forward and spinning one’s wheels. Sometimes it is very clear you are progressing toward mastery in a key task/component of your job or nearing completion of some large project or deliverable. Sometimes, though, you feel like you are not progressing. That is life and sometimes measuring progress is tricky.

So, while a sense of mastery and self-improvement is important for fulfillment, you can define what that means to you. If you feel like you have learned a little more than the day before, that you are a little more comfortable in your role than the day before, then you are making progress. It is often dangerous to put too much stock in measurable progress as it doesn’t usually capture subtle aspects of one’s job. As anyone in the sciences knows, the number of papers one publishes does not, in and of itself, denote the degree of mastery or accomplishment one has achieved in your training. I have only been in my new role for a few months, but I feel like I am making progress in understanding the key responsibilities of my position, including learning how to best interface with key people at NC State and how to interact effectively with our postdoctoral community.
​
In some ways, progress has been made over the past 2 years on the job and in some ways not. It helps, I think, to look back at accomplishments of my office and our postdoctoral population. So, I started at the end of each calendar year to construct a "Postdoc Year in Review" document to highlight the impact of my work. Constructing this document each December and looking back at the 2019 & 2020 versions remind me that much progress has been made by my office.

I know much more needs to be done to improve the postdoc experience here and nationally but progress takes time and effort. I have worked over the past 18 months to advocate for more resources for myself and the postdoc office here and those efforts have been only minorly successful (and further budgetary challenges due to COVID have certainly not helped). I hope that as I continue to build awareness of myself and my work on campus and make connections with more stakeholders, more resources will follow. I continue to persist and strive for what I believe is possible for our office and our postdocs in the future.   ​

Please define mastery and self-improvement in a way that makes you appreciate the slow, incremental progress that accompanies much of work.   ​

Purpose
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Working toward a larger purpose can help one persevere when times are tough. It allows you to keep in perspective the reason you do the work. Ideally, your career fills your need to be doing work that has a purpose. In my case, I focus on improving the postdoctoral experience at NC State University. I know firsthand that the postdoctoral years can be challenging and filled with uncertainty (even more so now after living through a pandemic that threatens progress and potential job prospects for postdocs), and I hope that I can help current postdocs identify the unique skills they can bring to the workforce and match that to a career that fits them. I will know if I am successful if I see our postdocs moving on to satisfying careers of their own. And that is certainly happening as evidenced in the career outcome data reported in our 2019 & 2020 NC State Postdoc Year in Review documents mentioned earlier. 

All work does not have a higher purpose, though. Sometimes you are in a bull*hit job (which are common in academia, too) or, as others have labeled them, a rent-seeking job—jobs that don’t produce tangible products or results. These jobs are plentiful and involve processing transactions, moving money around, lobbying, etc. While it could be argued they produce something, their value to society is debated. I won’t get into economic theory, but the point here is that it is difficult to find purpose or feel like one is making the world a better place in some careers. That is OK, though, because you aren’t just your career.

Too often in America, we allow our careers to define us. I am as guilty as the next person; I often ask at social or networking functions, “So, what do you do?”. This question doesn’t specifically ask about someone’s job function, but often that is how individuals interpret the question.
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Perhaps even worse than that question is the awkward response, “well, I am between jobs right now.” A paying job doesn’t have to define what we do with our lives. You can volunteer for an organization you are passionate about, you can stay at home spending quality time with your kids, or you can take time off to travel the country with your loved one(s), making memories along the way. COVID has forced many to reconsider their life priorities and make difficult choices, which while tough in the moment, may ultimately lead people to lead happier, more fulfilling lives. And a new YOLO (you only live once) movement post-pandemic is emerging as younger workers seek greater meaning, autonomy, and real-world experiences (travel).  

I took my new job to be closer to the people who mean so much to me. I plan to frequently visit my aging parents who live on the coast of North Carolina (a 2.5-hour drive from my new job), I will reconnect with old friends from Furman University and UNC-Chapel Hill who live in the area, and I want to see more of my sister who lives a couple of hours away. I also am plan to take the time to visit my other sister in Memphis, TN, from time to time. The flexibility of my new role gives me all these opportunities and I am thankful for that. Furthermore, there is data suggesting recent graduates who value time over money report greater well being and more intrinsically motivated activity pursuits—pursuing work that they find meaningful in itself versus work they seek for financial/status reasons.

You Are More Than Your Work

It is essential to have activities outside of work that give one’s life meaning. What those are will vary from person to person, but you should seek out activities that fill the key components of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

If you can’t find purpose in your job, you could volunteer for an organization whose mission statement aligns with your interests: tutoring, helping the homeless, advocating to Congress regarding some issue, etc.
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If you don’t feel like your job allows you to achieve mastery, take up a new hobby and learn how to knit, build a chair, speak a new language, etc.

​If you don’t feel like your job gives you autonomy, take control of some other aspect of your life. Maybe you decide to take up a new exercise routine or re-connect with an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Do something that gives you a sense of control and brings with it self-fulfillment.

Keep that COVID hobby you started this past year (it's great for your health) and lean into the increase in empathy and volunteerism that has emerged during and as a result of the pandemic...you will never regret finding ways to help others.  

Final Thoughts

In closing, be careful in your search for the elusive “dream job.” Finding a job that fills the needs of autonomy, mastery, and purpose, plus pays you well and fits your interests and skills is a tough, perhaps an impossible order. The good news is that your job doesn’t have to define you as a person nor should it be your only sense of self-worth or fulfillment. Even the best job has its tough moments, and that is when you need to have other activities (volunteering, hobbies) and roles (sibling, parent, son/daughter, friend) that give your life meaning and purpose. You are more than your job, and you can define what a successful, fulfilling, and meaningful life looks like for you.

Hopefully as we adapt to a "new normal", post-COVID, we will be able to find increased flexibility in our work with potential hybrid roles where we spend some time physically in the office and some time working from home. We need some balance of in-person human connection with our coworkers while also having the capability to work virtually to balance family and personal needs with those of work. And, as the ability to engage with others face-to-face returns, we should also look for ways to collaborate and contribute to something bigger than ourselves by joining groups or volunteering for organizations with a mission we can get behind.

If the past year has taught us anything it is that life is too short to not find purpose in something and seek each day to grow, evolve, and make a difference if only in the smallest way. 365 days of making a 1% improvement in some aspect of the world results in it being 37x better at the end of each year. Whether you make that difference via your job or in the  community at large through volunteer or other efforts, just be sure that you do.​

For Further Reading
The Impact of COVID-19 on Boundary Management, Work/Life Integrations, and Domestic Labor for Women in STEMM, report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine

Designing Your Life

• The Book
• Resources
• YouTube Video
• New: Designing Your Work Life Book

The Future of Work Post-COVID
​Prudential's Pulse of the American Worker Survey (March 2021)

The new negotiation over job benefits and perks in post-Covid hybrid work

Other Blog Posts of Interest

• Why you should get involved in things outside the lab/work
• ​The power of human connection
• Giving thanks: Finding personal fulfillment
• More from my NIH BEST Blog Rewind series

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.