Guest post by Bob Dolan, MIT

“What will I do next in my career?” can be a daunting question when there are so many options and variables to consider. Whether you are interested in a non-research career or a research-intensive track in academia or industry, this article will help you design a career exploration strategy.

Your career path can change multiple times throughout your life. Your role within your career may change, for example, from staff to leadership. You may also change careers if your interests and priorities change. Regardless of where you go and what you do, you will always need a strategy that will help your search be more effective.

An effective Career Exploration Strategy involves 3 steps.

1.     Self-Assessment What are my skills, interest, traits, and values?
2.     Career Research What positions/industries/institutions can use my skills?
3.     Creating and Executing your Action Plan Building relationships/networking and creating an effective communications plan.

Step 1 – Self-Assessment

What are my strongest skills?  For example: research, problem solving, leadership, communications, programming, writing, managing projects, inventing, etc. Identify your strongest 3-5 skills.

What are my interests? Research shows that people are more successful when they work in an environment that interests them. Assess your interests and identify your top 3-5 in a work setting: for example, working independently, fixing problems, working in teams, fast-paced environments, writing, leading people, physical work, teaching, travel, etc.

What are your strongest traits?  How would you describe yourself? How would others describe you? What are your top 3-5 strongest traits? For example: artistic, adventurous, creative, responsible, sociable, loyal, people-oriented, dependable, a self-starter, efficient, civic-minded, a perfectionist, etc.

What are your values? What is important to you?  Your personal values keep you on course and are one of the most important aspects of your career choice. Understanding your personal values, and recognizing that they affect every aspect of your life, can guide you during your decision-making process.  How do your values fit with your personal life, work, family, love, peace, play, etc.?  How are your values shaped by your cultural experiences, family, education, economics, customs, status, ethnicity, social institutions, etc.?  Identify your top 3-5 values from the following:

• Independence and Autonomy – having the freedom to do things on your own, minimal restrictions
• Authority – managing your environment, influence over the outcome of a situation
• Leadership/Management – coordinating the work of others, responsibility for results
• Technical Expertise – the drive to have expertise in skill areas or functions
• Lifestyle – having a holistic pursuit in your life, unifying career, family, and interests
• Service – providing guidance or solutions, dedication to a worthwhile cause
• Companionship – being in an environment that fosters friendships and teaming
• Security – having financial strength or stability
• Challenge – stretching your abilities, technically and organizationally
• Prosperity – accumulating wealth, more than you need

Once you have identified your skills, interests, traits, and values, create a summary of your self-assessment.  As you begin to establish your action plan, use this summary to ensure that the role you are targeting has most of the attributes that you have identified as important to you.  It would be unusual that you would find all of your desired attributes in a job, but now that you are more aware of them look for them during your career exploration phase.  My advice is to go to a place that is right for you.

Step 2 – Career Research

You now need to consider different career options and conduct some research.

• Do you need a job now, or do you have time to look?
• Do you want academia, industry, non-profit, or government?
• Will your visa status impact your ability to work in certain countries?
• Is continued education or a postdoc an option?
• Is a different profession/industry an option?

Once you have selected a path consider the following:

• What type of organizational/institutional structure would you be comfortable in?
• Are you compatible with the environment you are pursuing?
• Do your values align with the organization’s core values and guiding principles?

Academic Positions:

• Research, teaching, or both?  Public or private?  Do you need funding?
• Lab requirements?  Other roles?  Local or international?

Industry Positions:

• Public or private?  Start-up? Non-profit?  Research or technical roles?
• Leadership or support roles?  What size organization?  Local or international?

Step 3 – Creating and Executing your Action Plan

To develop your career action plan, you must research your targeted organizations/institutions and truly understand what they do, what they need, and how you can contribute to their mission. You can identify different organizations/institutions by contacting staff at professional societies. They can direct you to resources and people for gathering information. The next step is to develop your written communications, such as your CV, Resume, Cover Letter, Research Statement, Teaching Statement etc.   You should also  consider possible references and begin speaking with them about your next steps.

In addition to the written documents you should begin developing your verbal communications. You need to develop responses to general questions like “tell me about yourself” or “tell me about your research”, as well as many other interview questions. You may also have a presentation component to your job search.

Now it is time to establish or strengthen your web profile. Social media is becoming a major recruiting tool for many companies, particularly LinkedIn. Research shows that most recruiters in the US use LinkedIn to source qualified candidates. You should have a strong profile that highlights your skills, accomplishments, impact on your profession, list of publications, awards, technical/science expertise, and organizations/groups you may be following.

Follow this career strategy to your success!

Bob Dolan

About the author: Bob Dolan provides career counseling and professional development workshops for the Postdoctoral Scholars program at MIT. He is a Certified Job Search and Career Transition Consultant with experience in the field of Career Management since 2001. Before joining academia, Bob had a private Career Consulting practice and worked with clients across multiple industries, as well as providing career consulting services for a global Career Management firm.

Searching for a job can be overwhelming and it is often difficult to know where or how to begin. To get you over the activation energy threshold for starting your job search, here are a few general tips for designing a non-academic resume.

Format

Let’s start with the basics – how a resume should look. In contrast to lengthy academic CVs, most resumes are 1-2 pages in length. In general, the length of the resume is dependent upon the amount of relevant work experience you have. That being said, it is still important to check the job posting or electronic application system for specific limitations in length. If you are unable to find anything specific about the length and still feel uncertain, you can consult with professionals working within the field or even check with the Human Resources representative managing the application process. If you find yourself concerned with the space constraints, remember a good place to elaborate further on your relevant skills or experience is LinkedIn. Individuals involved in the hiring process will most likely check your LinkedIn profile.

It is important to make your resume clear and easy to read. Don’t try to squeeze more text in by using a small font. Unless you’re a typography expert, stick to 10 to 12-point size of a standard typeface like Times New Roman or Arial. It is also important to leave some white space so your resume does not appear overwhelmingly dense. Some of that white space will be in the margins, which should be no less than half an inch.

Use a structured layout with bold headings to keep the reader focused. Be careful to not embed images, logos, or blocks of color – many companies and organizations use software to pre-screen resumes and these visual elements can lead to your application being eliminated by the screening system.

Key Content

In 2012, Ladders, a career resource company, conducted a study where they tracked the eye movement of recruiters as they were reviewing resumes. The results showed they focus on three main areas: the applicant summary, experience and education. The remaining sections depend on the information listed in the job posting. You should tailor the sections to emphasize the required and preferred experiences listed by the employer. Other sections might include:

• leadership
• teaching & mentoring
• licensure & certifications
• service
• publications & presentations
• awards & recognition

The summary is located at the top of your resume and is 3-4 sentences in length. It should be thought of as your professional elevator pitch. This area is an ideal place to customize your resume for the position. For each position that you apply, you should create a new summary that frames the resume with the employer’s interests in mind. Before you begin writing, and using the job posting as a guide, identify accomplishments you could use to highlight your fit for the position. Also identify the skills you have learned in your research setting that are transferable to this particular position. Once you have done that, you can begin drafting the summary.

The first sentence will describe what defines you as a professional.

“Demonstrated leader in academic and industry settings with extensive experience in scientific modeling”

Sentence two is a good place to highlight your transferable skills.

“Provides expertise in computational analysis and data visualization to communicate complex data sets”

The final sentences should highlight your accomplishments.

“Known for effective project management and diverse assay development”

In the summary, be sure to connect the dots for the reader. Be specific and make your case for why they should continue reading your resume. Use evidence to back your major claims. For example, if you say in the summary you are “known for effective management” you should support this later in the resume – for example describing an award or an achievement that illustrates your management skills.

The experience section should highlight your experience that is relevant to the specific position for which you are applying. When reading through the job posting, look for words like “required” and “preferred”. These words will indicate the relative importance of that particular qualification for the employer. You should first list experience relevant to the employer’s “required” qualifications, followed by the preferred, as space permits. This can be surprisingly difficult because we all have achievements we are really proud of that don’t necessarily speak to the needs of the position. It is difficult to deprioritize these accomplishments in place of something we may perceive as being less meaningful. Use only 3-5 bullets under each position and ensure that each is one complete sentence. These sentences should begin with an action verb and describe what you have achieved, focusing on the results of your work.

“Provided science communication training and research mentoring to 3 undergraduate researchers; resulting in 4 poster awards, 1 undergraduate research award, and a publication in GENETICS”

You do not want to simply list a bunch of job duties. Take the time to make these sentences specific and meaningful. When possible, quantify any outcomes.

The education section can either come before or after the experience section, this depends on the importance of education for the specific position. If your degree is required for the position, you may want to put it before the experience section. More and more, applicants are placing their education further towards the end of their resume. Doing this allows you to place the most relevant information for the position first, speaking to the interests of the reader.

Crucial last steps

Finally, don’t forget to proofread your resume. Envision your reader making their way through a huge stack of qualified applicants. You don’t want to give them a trivial reason to set your application aside. Share your resume with a trusted colleague or mentor working in the field. Ask for their feedback and use their comments to guide your revisions. If you are working at an institution that has a career office, schedule an appointment to have your resume reviewed. The professionals working in these offices have dedicated their careers to guiding others through the career process and can often provide great insight and guidance.

Most importantly, be proud of what you have accomplished. There are always gaps in our skills and experience that can be filled with just a little more training. But, chances are you can learn much of this once you are working in the position. Afterall, your scientific training demonstrates that you are able to problem solve and learn quickly!

When I was 21, I spent a year in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, at the end of which I hoped to stay on in Cambridge for graduate work. The Biochemistry curriculum included a set of lab-based projects, and so I found myself one fine spring morning spreading E. coli onto agar plates. In front of me was my beaker of ethanol and a lit Bunsen burner, enabling me to sterilize my triangular glass spreading rod after each use.

As sometimes happens with this procedure, one of the dunks into the beaker coated my rod with a bit too much ethanol, and following its ignition in the Bunsen, a drop of flaming ethanol fell from the rod to my benchtop. As I moved to attend to the tiny fire, my hand carelessly knocked over the entire beaker of ethanol, instantly covering my bench with what was now an impressive conflagration.

At the front of the lab stood the head of the department, quietly speaking with a couple of students. When he saw my bench engulfed in flames, he hurried over, and with a few well-directed puffs of lung-power quickly put out the fire.

The department head then wryly commented to me that his arrival in Cambridge to commence his professorship had been delayed when the Biochemistry building had burned down. But my concern was less about his moving on than mine: at the end of that day’s labwork I had been set to ask him to send a letter of reference to my hoped-for graduate advisor. Perhaps not surprisingly, I decided to postpone the request awhile to let him extinguish the lab fire from his memory.

I’ve been a little leery ever since of letters of reference. These ostensibly contain everything I need to know in choosing new grad students and postdocs—better, I’m sure, than spending $9.95 for a search on the Internet. I in turn provide in my letters everything future employers—including universities looking potentially to hire my postdocs as faculty members—need to know about those moving on from my lab.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that I don’t read or write these letters correctly. So in the interests of allowing both trainees seeking mentors and jobs, and mentors and search committees seeking those to hire, to better calibrate their choices for future matchups, I’ll give you some excerpts from letters that I had received and failed to heed. These may help you in your own deliberations.

“Let me sum up my overall take on Lewis, who is considering several possible choices for his postdoc: You would indeed be lucky to get him to work in your lab.” How true this statement turned out to be! And alas, how unlucky I was in never getting an honest day’s work out of Lewis.

“I should comment on whether Emma was a responsible member of my laboratory. As you have read above, Emma’s project was a complicated one, requiring the use of complex instruments, expensive reagents and, indeed, even toxic and combustible chemicals. Inevitably along the way, there were bound to be a few mishaps, perhaps even a small explosion or two. But in my candid view, Emma was always responsible.” Likewise, I later learned, she would be completely responsible in my own lab, and while insurance covered the bulk of the reconstruction, we did lose nearly a year of work.

“I’d like to point out that data analysis could sometimes be a real struggle for Rick, occasionally leading to outbursts of intense frustration – a bit surprising in one of our beginning computational students. Additionally, and perhaps you’ll forgive what seems like a petty annoyance with him, Rick’s axes were not always labeled.”

Later on in the letter, Rick’s referee commented on an “altercation Rick had with another graduate student, which escalated from a minor scuffle to a fearsome swing—fortunately that didn’t connect—with one of the sharp implements that were kept in the lab bay; we didn’t even know at the time whom these belonged to.”

By now, though, I had finally learned to read these letters carefully. When Rick joined us in the lab, he soon brought into his bay an extensive collection of baseball bats, truncheons, swords and—of course—several axes. On all of them, we insisted that he write: “Property of: Rick.”

Disclaimer: the Cambridge story is true; the rest, not so much. But nobody should blog too frequently about topics like poor funding prospects, especially on April 1^st. For more lighthearted fare, check out my lab’s video for #IAmGSA https://genestogenomes.org/next-to-a-fern-iamgsa/