BGS Career Development

Making It Count!

Articles

Post-Interview Steps for Success

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An oft-heard piece of career advice is the importance of following-up on an interview with a thank-you note. This Inside Higher Ed article provides a slight alteration to that advice – sit down and write everything you can remember about the interview. A few questions to consider include:

  • What did they ask?
  • How did you answer?
  • What seemed to matter to them?

Completing this task before details of the interview begin to fade can help you to reference specific details in your thank-you note. If offered an additional interview, these notes may help you predict future questions. If not, the notes on your own performance may help to improve your interview skills down the line, for other positions.

The author details other questions to consider in your notes – read them here.

International Careers

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Intramural Training and Education (OITE) provides an informative blog post about the challenges and rewards of an international career. Though the challenges of a domestic job search – networking, negotiating, and more – can be multiplied when navigating the norms of an unfamiliar culture, the advantages of an expanded world-view are not to be discounted. The author provides links to helpful resources, such as questions to ask before accepting an international job offer and tips for negotiating across cultures.

Read more here.

NIH: Strategies for Enhancing Postdoctoral Career Transitions to Promote Faculty Diversity

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The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) recently sought input from the scientific community about strategies to enhance successful postdoctoral career transitions, in order to promote faculty diversity. 89 responses were recorded, from stakeholders including postdoctoral scientists, faculty members, and professional societies.

Read about the most frequently mentioned barriers as well as potential solutions here.

Careers at Community Colleges

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In this Careers Blog post, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) sheds light on a typically overlooked topic related to academic hiring – faculty and support positions at community colleges. With free tuition programs on the rise, enrollment at community colleges is increasing. The author then describes the similarities in structure between community colleges and other higher education institutions. The former is a subset of primarily undergraduate institutions. Finally, the author provides a sample of job postings as well as other job seeker resources.

Read more here.

ASCB: “Trainee survival tips: the importance of self-care”

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Acknowledging the difficulty of being a graduate student or postdoc, this ASCB article provides tips for self-care. Notably, the author recognizes that stressors can arise even when everything is going well, so self-care should be considered an ongoing priority. Five general tips include:

  1. Find something that you enjoy and try to incorporate it into your daily routine.
  2. Choose the right people to socialize with.
  3. Take a break when you need it.
  4. Take time to decompress each day.
  5. Love yourself.

The author provides further explanation and specific examples of each. Read more here.

Science: “How to find the right place for your Ph.D. or postdoc”

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This Science Careers post features insights from various researchers at different career stages. They each discuss their experiences when searching for a lab, principal investigator (PI), adviser, or training position. As they describe the pros, cons, and specific questions they considered, readers may gain perspective on their own career path.

Read more here.