Finding the alternative within academia

As with networking, the best time to prepare for your next career move is NOW.

But what if you don't really know what you want to do after your degree / PhD / postdoc?

Well, NOW is also a good time to start figuring that out.

Identify the things you enjoy

The great thing about the academic experience is that it exposes you to many different tasks and experiences that are relevant to careers outside of the traditional tenure track. If you can identify the parts of your work that interest you the most (hint: these are probably the times when you're actually happy to be working rather than reading blogs), then you've already made a huge first step towards identifying your ideal career.

I made my first step when I started to write my PhD thesis. I'd enjoyed my three years in the lab about as much as it's possible to enjoy a PhD, but I struggled with some technical aspects of the work, especially long-term cell culture. The sorry state of my house plants is a testament to my lack of a green thumb, or whatever the cell culture equivalent is. When I started to write, I realised that my rate of progress was determined solely by the amount of time and effort I put in. What a contrast to those long Sundays in the lab, slaving away over a hot incubator, only to have my cells die before the end of the assay! I'd always enjoyed writing anyway, but this was my first realisation that I might enjoy writing about science more than actually doing it. This suspicion was confirmed during my postdoc - I was always happiest when writing papers, popping into the lab occasionally to run a gel and chat with friends. It took me a little longer to identify careers in science that were primarily based on writing, but I got there in the end.

So: what do you enjoy most about your current situation? Straight-up lab work? Maybe a research position in industry would suit you. TAing? Maybe you'd like to be a teacher, or to work in a public communications role such as in a museum or science centre. Do you find yourself more drawn to the opinion pieces and corporate merger information than the research articles in Science and Nature? Consider a career in science policy, intellectual property, or business development.

Hate everything about academia? Well, all is not lost. Any hobbies and volunteering you do in all that spare time you have (ha!) will also give you some ideas. Or maybe you have a friend with no scientific background, but with a job that sounds pretty cool. Might a biotech or big pharma company, a University or a museum or a professional association, need people to play a similar role within their organisation? Have a look at the careers section of their website and find out.

Now find a way to do them more often

If you enjoy a specific part of your current position, find a way to incorporate more of it into your remaining time in academia. This is a good idea for two reasons

1) it gives you a better idea of whether you really do want a career that focuses on this one area

2) it gives you experience that will make your CV stand out from all the others

You want to convince future interviewers that you're looking for a career, not a job; being proactive, not reactive; working to a long-term plan, not applying to any old scientific job that crops up in your local area. If you can point to areas of your CV that show a long-standing commitment to your chosen field (do this in the cover letter and - repeatedly - at interview), you will stand out from the pile of CVs stacked up in human resources.

My postdoc supervisor knew that I eventually wanted a job in scientific communication, and she was happy to help me gain more experience. I volunteered to edit and proofread manuscripts and studentship / fellowship applications written by other lab members. I wrote parts of her grant applications and progress reports.

But don't just rely on your boss; look for other opportunities too. My department had a newsletter, run by some of the grad students, so I wrote articles whenever I had time. I volunteered for Let's Talk Science, an outreach programme that took us into high schools to, well, talk about science.

Writing and communication are relatively easy examples, because they're such a large part of academic science anyway. But you should be able to find ways to gain more experience regardless of your chosen future field. Just volunteer for anything even vaguely related - even if you end up spending a lot of time proofing legal documents from your technology transfer department, sitting in committee meetings, volunteering for ethics review boards or whatever, you can find a way to get the right experience and flesh out your CV. (That's the other great thing about the academic experience; always more tasks than volunteers).

Again, you don't have to stick to academia - maybe a local charity would appreciate some help with their own newsletter or website. Maybe you have a friend who could use a fresh pair of eyes on her big sales report. The skewed tasks:volunteers ratio is not just an academic phenomenon...

Repeat ad infinitum

Hopefully the advice above will help you to make that first step into your new career. But don't stop now! Your first non-academic position is unlikely to be the amazing dream job that you will do for the rest of your life, but it will expose you to another, broader, range of experiences. For example, as well as the grant writing that is my day-to-day focus, my new job also gets me involved in public relations, website design and intellectual property issues. I haven't quite figured out which parts I enjoy the most (definitely not intellectual property!), but you can bet that as soon as I do, I'll start volunteering for more of it.

Applying for jobs in big companies

Here is a couple of things I've learned from a friend managing a research lab in a big private company.

1. In these companies, when a job is posted, the applications are first screened by HR departments. They have no idea what science really is. They can not guess that if you did -say-"bioinformatics" it means you are good at data mining. Unless you explicitely write "skills: data mining" in your CV.

2. If you leave your CV on their website's online database, it will be screened by computers. They search for keywords. So a good way to pass this filter is to first google the website of the company to find out what are the keywords they love. And then include them in your resume.

3. When you send an unsollicited application, email again and again. Or call. Some people never reply before your third attempt, just to see if you're really motivated. Some others are just busy and your application rapidly disappears from their list of most recent emails.

Does any of you dis/approve these advices?

The career crisis and the CV

I'd like to rebound on Mad's previous post.

I always had a CV updated. Well, maybe not always, but in the last 2-3 years I didn't let my CV unupdated for more than a couple of months. I also got one online. I even googled my name to see what websites were popping up first. Was this information that I wanted my next employer know? If not, learn the lesson: never put your name again on such a website. Then learn a bit how Google ranks the websites and arrange for other websites to take the lead. The first page must be clean.

When my career crisis happened, I was certainly not ready [who is?]. But at least I got all my career information ready. What I did where, what I published, what conferences I attended and what were the titles of my talks, who I supervised, what grant I got, etc., etc. All I had to do was a little bit of CV cleaning/shuffling for the different positions I was applying for.

That's what I thought.

My problem number one was with my online CV. As I simultaneously applied for different jobs with emphasis on different skills, shall I rearrange it for every position I was applying for? Should I advertise for my website? Worse, should I advertise for my blog (I never did)? What I wanted to do was to match my online CV with the position I wanted the most at a given time. But that was much too much work. Keeping it simple and factual was probably the smartest thing to do.

I was unaware of my problem number two until a friend of mine, working in a private company, had a look at my CV. He knew me, knew I was a smart guy (hey, he's a friend), knew some of my skills... but couldn't find any such information in my CV. That was a good academic CV tailored for academia, with a little bit of focus on what I really wanted to do (more management / communication / supervision /...). But it was not a CV for the industry market. And he was not surprised at all that I didn't get any interview.

We spent a couple of hours starting to completely rewrite my CV. Something I wished I learned before. Something any reader of this blog should learn. 

And?

And I never finished this re-writing. Because I got positive feedback on my favorite application. So I preferred to wait a bit before spending more hours on that CV. And I finally got the job I wanted. Guess what? Well, a position in academia involving more management / communication / supervision (but not as an assistant prof). Exactly what my CV was designed for.

But I have to admit that a bit of luck helped...