Atlanta BEST Magazine Summer 2018 (Special Issue 9)

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The Atlanta BEST Magazine

PhD Science Careers

Community Narratives

Summer 2018

IT TAKES A VILLAGE Career Exploration for PhD Trainees Requires Time, Experimentation, and People. by Tami Hutto, former Atlanta BEST Program Manager Associate Director, MBA Career Management Center Goizueta Business School, Emory University

This special issue of our BEST magazine is a commemoration of the learnings from the Atlanta BEST Program – our National Institutes of Health-funded program under the initiative of Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST). It took place at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology from 2013-2018. After hundreds of workshops, resources, evaluations, surveys, and conversations with trainees, faculty, and administrators we found that career exploration comes down to several things: gaining better self-awareness, building intention and strategy, dedicating time, and having a good network of people to talk with along the journey.

about the work you like to do, everyone faces obstacles in discovering and then obtaining jobs and careers we enjoy. Hearing how others approach and manage this aspect of their lives helps to motivate and inspire your own approaches and mindset to development.

In this special issue we set out to share short narratives about stories of scientists in your community. Instead of publishing another set of articles about career paths and explicit advice, we want you to see the human side of science and career exploration. Those in the portraits are sharing a snippet of their narratives and are people you can very much reach out to and hear more about their career paths, as well as share yours.

1) REFLECT: Take some time for yourself and ask some key questions: Who are you? What are your strengths? What value do you bring to your work? How can you put your attributes as a scientist to work in a new career?

Our message for this issue is to engage others in your career exploration! Conversations are the key to clarity around your careers. Whether you have no idea or are crystal clear

3) TALK TO MORE PEOPLE: Undertake a few informational interviews to practice articulating your career narrative, learn about career options, and make contacts along the way.

For many people, their careers define their identity. It’s well worth the time investment and hard work required to really reflect, explore, and talk through your questions to make informed decisions about your next steps. There are many different ways to do this, but here are a few stepping stones to get you started.

2) TALK TO PEOPLE: Once you have your initial answers on your own, ask a few people that you respect to answer these questions with you and provide you with feedback from their perspective.

REFLECT—

For most trainees questions of “Who are you? What are your strengths?” are hard to answer. When it comes to the first question of who you are -- you’ve spent so much time developing an identity as a scientist, it’s hard to think about an identity that doesn’t consist of intellectual rigor, lab meetings, lit reviews, and experiments. So, the first thing you need to know and believe is – YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A SCIENTIST! You should not spend any mental energy worrying about changing your identity as a scientist. The hard work is going to be about aligning and evolving your scientific identity with different work environments, your strengths, and your favorite parts of being a scientist. Ask yourself: Where do I most come alive and get energy— during the ideation, the execution, the communication, or the analysis of science? Not all scientists are created the same, thank goodness, so you need to think of your unique attributes as a scientist and how they are leveraged in careers such as writing, law, business development, or teaching. As you do this, it should start to be little clearer how your skills of rigorous investigation, asking questions, trouble shooting, or being innovative are very relevant and totally usefully in many, many, many jobs. These transferable skills from your PhD training are where you can start to answer the questions around what your strengths are and the value you bring to your teams and projects.

TALK TO PEOPLE

Now that you have reflected, the crucial thing to avoid is staying stuck in your head and only having conversations about these things with yourself. You are a scientist, remember? You need to start experimenting with what you reflected on by talking with others, testing assumptions and gathering data so you can take action and develop a strategy. Experimenting and taking action here doesn’t mean you should jump into job searching by submitting resumes, then crossing your fingers to get an interview. When trainees do this, they quickly get disappointed and frustrated when they get no response, leading to a spiral of anxiety and desperation. These are things I have unfortunately heard all too often from many of the smartest trainees I’ve been lucky enough to work with: “I have no skills. I applied to 40 jobs and haven’t heard back from any. I’m wasting my PhD training. I am a failure. My PI is going to be disappointed in me. My family and friends are going to think I am an idiot. My only option is to do a postdoc, or keep doing postdocs. It’s too late to find the work I love. I’ve spent a decade hiding in school. I could never be successful outside of academia. I don’t know what I’m doing. I am the only one who thinks like this.” I can assure any trainee reading this: if you have had any of the thoughts above, you are perfectly normal! YOU ARE NOT ALONE. You are not a failure and you have skills! Everyone feels the weight of ambiguity when it comes to deciding on next steps. My colleagues at other prestigious institutions have also heard from trainees that very much feel the same doubt around not knowing the answers to their career development.

This means that no matter where you have done your training, how successful you have been, and how well (or badly) you have been supported by your mentors – all trainees go through similar internal turmoil around their next steps and making use of the skills they have gained throughout their PhD training. What will give you clarity, confidence, and direction is the effort you put into experimenting with your assumptions and the degree to which you engage with the people you surround yourself in order to get support and encouragement. So— start collecting more data. Ask people you know: How do they see you? What do they think your strengths are? What value do they think you bring to the lab/projects/relationships? What kinds of jobs do they think you would be good at? You need to get a diverse set of perspectives from a variety of aspects of your life. This is called developing self-awareness; it’s when you are discovering how you see yourself and then learning how others see you.

TALK TO MORE PEOPLE – Next, start finding and talking with people you don’t know. Most trainees hate this part. Start small and ask around about past lab members, ask your friends. Then venture out and get on LinkedIn and find some alumni and practicing professionals who are doing the work you think you might maybe want to do. This is called informational interviewing – google it! In doing informational interviewing you are learning about different careers and companies AND you are practicing articulating who you are and how you add value. After a couple of informational interviews, I guarantee you will gain more clarity around your career narrative and how to go about finding a job and ultimately a career that is a good fit for you. Career exploration is just the first step in job searching and career development. It’s a fact that if you spend quality time in this space, the later steps of résumé writing, elevator pitches, networking, job boards, and interviewing will be a much less painful process.

– << THIS COMMUNITY NARRATIVES PROJECT >>

The following pages are portraits and community narratives of scientists who are alumni, former postdocs, faculty and staff at Emory and Georgia Tech. They were engaged with the BEST Program in one way or another and are at different stages in their careers. Each person has a different story to tell about how they got to where they are, but they all have at least 2 things in common with you: they are scientists and they are humans. They are people out there in your immediate community that can and want to help you in your careers. They may not be able to get you a job, but if you reach out to them, they will give you the gift of their stories and the ability to tell yours. Check out their LinkedIn or webpages to learn more about their careers and connect with them!

<< Magdalena’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Bridgette’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Mike’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Crystal’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Ines’ LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Nael’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Kevin’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Tami’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Doug’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Dan’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Mojdeh’s Google Scholar Website >>

<< Penny’s Faculty Profile >>

<< Ron’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Karen’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Jeff ’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Kellie’s LinkedIn Profile >>

<< Ras’ LinkedIn Profile >>

Images and design concept Š Adam Mastoon and Robert Maloney 2018 Adam Mastoon is a transmedia storyteller, author, and educator. His work utilizes the power of images and narratives to celebrate diversity and inclusion in communities nationwide. Robert Maloney’s mixed media work incorporates elements of typography, topography, architecture and the urban landscape. His pieces are composed with transparent layers of imagery, information and imagination. https://www.adammastoon.com/

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