Postdocs have few years to identify career goals, strengthen CVs, and construct a professional network, all while working full time in the lab. Given the current situation in academia, most of us will end up in what used to be considered alternative careers. There is a long list of non-academic careers. We just have to know where to look and how to market ourselves. For the creative communicators among us, science writing is an option. For those interested in protecting public health, a career in regulatory affairs could be appropriate.
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As I have previously mentioned, I am an individual member of the National Postdoctoral Association ( http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/ ), and I recently attended my third annual NPA meeting in San Francisco. This year marked the 10th annual meeting and was wonderful due to the attention to detail and efforts of the meetings committee. A special mention must go to a key NPA member, Sam Castaňeda from UC Berkeley who masterfully served as the chair of the NPA local host committee for this year’s meeting.
One of the best ways to land a new job is through personal contacts. As a scientist in academia, you have many opportunities to forge relationships within academia through seminars, conferences and more. However, if you are interested in learning more about career opportunities outside of academia, it’s not always easy to make connections (especially for us in biological sciences).
In this blog, I provide several groups you can join to build professional contacts outside of academia.
For many of us, the reasons we focused on achieving our Ph.D. may be clear cut--we are destined for greatness in the academic arena. For others, it was just the path of least resistance and allowed the continuation of the “student lifestyle” in a comfortable research field.
I came to a critical juncture in my career in 1969. I was pre-med for the first three years of my undergrad studies at Tufts where the environment was toxic and cut throat. Though I never saw such things, it was rumored that students sabotaged each other’s experiments. In physical chemistry, some students supposedly went so far as ordering the chemical product they were expected to produce in the lab, and adding it to their product, to artificially enhance the yield of their experiments.
SciPhD will be hosting seven weekly free webinars that walk students through the process of preparing for industry careers- from what kind of jobs are out there, to determining if you're qualified, to building your brand and applying for the job. To get more information and to register click here.
In my last post, I shared the advice that I had received as I prepared to head to my first batch of postdoctoral position interviews. I did practice my interview seminar. I packed 4 sets of nearly identical outfits to ensure a professional look – all black for the shirt, pants, and shoes with a colored cardigan for something unique each day. I did skim abstracts from recent publications again and re-read my own papers. So, with all that advanced preparation, I also come up with a list of questions to ask potential advisors and their current group members.
One of the most overlooked aspects of academic science by graduate students and postdocs is the actual cost of conducting science in an academic lab. Before we take a look at what an average molecular biology lab costs to run, it is first best to frame the discussion in terms of running a small business. Academic labs produce a product … research published in the primary literature. This product produces revenue … grant money from various government and private agencies.
As a graduate student, it seems there is always work to do on holiday breaks. Last year, I only took a couple days off to spend with my family because I had to return to the lab to finish the suggested experiments for a publication. It was strange being in the lab because there were only a few people in the entire building!
Hi and welcome to my blog. I’d like to thank Bio Careers for the opportunity to lend my thoughts and opinions to career-related issues encountered by today’s bioscientist. My hope is to provide some new perspectives on what it’s like to transition through the ranks of academic science, and explore things that we often don’t think about or know that we should be doing.
