Actionable career advice for early career researchers in biomedical sciences
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Biomedical workforce is strong and growing. This makes it dynamic and creative, but also competitive when it comes to job market and scarcity of position, especially in academia. Fortunately, early career researchers in biomedical sciences have many options and many transferable skills. Unfortunately, they are never told so, and one point of my talk is to dispel the myth that all they are qualified for is career in research and science. Here I share couple of tools and strategies to help early career researchers navigate their career transitions from a postdoc to a satisfying career in academia, industry, government, publishing or elsewhere.
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Actionable career advice for early career researchers in biomedical sciences
- 3. From “Girl before a mirror”, Pablo Picasso, MoMA collection
- 4. 23%“NIH advisory committee estimated that about 23 percent of biomedical Ph.D.’s move into tenure-track faculty positions” NIH Biomedical Workforce Working Group (2012)
- 9. science writing, publishing & editing intellectual property & law science policy & regulatory affairs research administration business of science & entrepreneurship
- 10. where to find help? your advisor your mentor your network of contacts your Office of Postdoctoral/Graduate Affairs your alumni organization your scientific society/professional organization
- 11. s m a r t specific measurable actionable realistic time-based best kinds of goals are:
- 12. strengths what am I good at? weaknesses what do I need help with? opportunities what can I offer that others need? threats what’s your competition up to? internal external
- 14. best papers have one bold idea, quality data & ethical research practices best scientific writing is simple yet engaging best scientific data visualization is accurate yet well designed
- 15. target the right journal think of peer review as a collaboration keep reading and writing
- 16. talk about your science
- 19. Milka Kostic, Ph.D. Senior Editor, Structure and Cell Chemical Biology Editor, Cell CrossTalk Cell Press Email: mkostic@cell.com Twitter: @Structure_CP Twitter: @CellChemBiol Twitter: @MilkaKostic LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milka-kostic This presentation is on SlideShare:
Editor's Notes
- Thank you! I am very glad to be here today and share with you some of my thoughts on where an advanced degree in science can take you, and some tools and resources that can help. Couple of years ago when I turned 40 all of a sudden I started noticing all these articles about what advice would you give to your 30 year old self, or what is one thing you wished you knew when you were 25, and such alike. And that got me thinking – as a 25 year old I’ve just crossed an ocean to start my graduate school, and as a 30 year old I found myself again moving from one coast to the other coast to do my postdoctoral work. At those points in my life I don’t think I had any career plans other than lets see how this science thing goes. So, I think the first thing I would have told my past self would be: “Don’t panic”, and the second thing would be “It’s never too early to start thinking about what is that you want to be when you grow up”. The first time I really sat down to consider my career interests and options was in the last year of my postdoc, and not knowing where to begin I started by taking a stock of things I like and things I did not like. So science went into the “Like” bin, and bench science and lab work went into “Don’t Like” bin. Learning went into “Like” bin, but “Teaching” went into “Don’t Like” bin. This helped me understand my preferences and make a decision to transition into being a scientific editor. However, throughout this process I wished I had more support and better tools to understand the diversity of career options as well as my own skillset. So, I am here today with one goal in mind: to help you get some useful tips and tricks that will make you better scientists, as well as better prepared to tackle career transitions if that’s a direction you would like to explore.
- One Size Does Not Fit All. What this means is that the path your advisor took may not be the best path for you, and it is certainly not the only path that you should be considering. Not only that: a career that fits you today may be quite different from a career that will fit you in 10 or 20 years time. I will share with you few tools that you can use to get you started and which are quite generic so will remain useful and applicable throughout your careers, regardless of where they may lead you.
- What all these tools have in common is that they place you in the center and offer a guided and structured way of self reflection and self assessment. The moment when I made a real progress in figuring out what I wanted to do after my postdoc came at the time when I decided to have a very honest conversation with myself about what it was that I liked and what it was that I did not like. So, science went into a like bin, and bench science went into a not like bin. Although I did not know this at the time, I was basically using some of the strategies I’ll tell you more about later. Why am I mentioning all this, some might ask? Isn’t obvious that all of start from self-reflection and go from there? Well, I am not so sure. And the reason why I am not so sure that most of us start from soul searching and go from there is that we are scientists and we like to base our conclusions on facts and numbers. So, here is one number for you.
- So, here is one number for you. Does anyone know what 23% represents? In 2012 NIH released insights from their Biomedical Workforce Working Group, and one of those insights was that approximately 23% of biomedical Ph.D. move into tenure-track positions.
- You may have also seen this infographic that shows career trajectories for those with biology PhD and this summary suggests that there is a serious disconnect between what PhD students seem to desire, which are tenure-track faculty positions, and the availability of those types of positions. I have to say that looking at figures like the 23% and or the fact that unemployment of biology PhDs seems to be on the rise is enough to sink anyone’s hopes. Grim figures indeed and I am sharing them with you because this has been the type of messaging that graduate students and postdocs have been exposed to number of years now, creating both a sense of urgency for institutions and individual advisors to do something about creating the future for trainees, and the sense of disillusionment among the trainees themselves. Do these numbers matter? I think that they do. Numbers like this do reflect a market reality and match what we all are feeling – it’s very competitive, options and opportunities are getting tighter, not only in academia but in industry as well, so overall we seem to be running out of space in was seems to be a biomedical bubble… But, but, but, and what I am going to say next deserves the three buts, these numbers should not be the end nor the beginning of YOUR scientific career story. Going back to my point about self-reflection the real beginning of your scientific career story should be you, a very open-minded and honest you.
- So how do you go about figuring out what sort of career options are out there? What your interest are? Where your strengths reside? What skills you have that match the career you are interested in? And what skills you may want to build in order to be more qualified for the type of job you want to do? A good place to start is by developing an Individual Development Plan or an IDP. How many of you know what IDP is? How many of you have an IDP?
- Individual Development Plan or an IDP is all about deliberate career planning. One tool that was designed with you in mind is MyIDP available to everyone freely via Science Careers. Have anyone used this tool? Great. Basically, as some of you already know, the tool includes questionnaires about your interests, skills and values and uses the information you provide to point you in the direction of careers that are likely to be a satisfying choice for you. And if you are wondering what types of career options myIDP can point you to, they are quite diverse and numerous especially compared to what we all usually enter our PhD in mind with.
- A very common starting point for most of us revolves around well trodden career path travelled by many that came before us, and those careers revolve around research and teaching. We naturally gravitate towards them because people that we look up to have gone down these paths, people that we know have done it, people that we hear talk have done it, lab alumni or department alumni have done it, and quite frankly these are the types of career all we ever hear anyone talk about. Well, today you met me so you can start thinking about careers that fall into the road less travelled category…
- This road less travelled can be bumpy, as you may be entering a relatively uncharted territory for your Ph.D. or your postdoctoral advisor, or for your peers. But, Rome was not build in one day and neither is a career, especially one that requires a transition. It requires a good amount of personal drive, but you don’t have to go at it all alone.
- For your individual development plan to be fully functional it has to make sense to both you and your advisor, and requires both of you to commit to it and execute the plan. I’ll share one strategy that can help making an IDP and your goals real and actionable on the next slide. Suffice to say all these people and resource can also help you figure out the best tools and strategies to use so take what I say as a snapshot not as a final word on the subject. I would like to highlight couple of things here. First and foremost the difference between an advisor and a mentor. In some cases this will be the same person, but in some cases you will need to find a mentor outside your lab, perhaps among other researchers in your department or perhaps someone in your network of contacts who can offer advice and share experience that a) your advisor may not have and b) without concern that you will be judged and evaluated in a way that your advisor may do. Another great way to get coaching and to strengthen your skills and elevate your profile in your community is by being active in a scientific society in your field. For example, Biophysical Society, Protein Society, the American Chemical Society, American Society for cell Biology and many others offer mentoring, networking, career building opportunities and advice. So, you have your IDP, you have lined up your advisor and maybe a mentor, and maybe few more people that can offer ad hoc advice and assistance so now what? How do you make something like “in 2 years time I would like to work as an outreach coordinator for a museum of science” into reality? Well, hopefully during the process of coming up with a goal like that you have had a conversation with someone who is currently doing that type of work and got a good feel from them what qualifications and skills a strong candidate should bring to the table. So, now all you need to do is trace a path from your present self to that future self – sounds daunting? It doesn’t have to be is you keep making small steps in the right direction in a SMART way.
- What does being SMART mean? How many of you have heard of SMART goals? It’s an easy to use tool for making sure you have all your ducks in a row, as it helps you to frame your goals in a way that makes them real, clear and relevant. You can use this framework for setting both your research, as well as your career development goals. And to give them an extra kick and power you should share them with your advisor, with your mentor, with your lab mates and friends and family for input and feedback, so that you can adjust and refine them to fit your needs, the needs of your research project, and your life best.
- Another career development and business development tool that is complementary to myIDP and SMART is a SWOT analysis. You don’t usually hear about SWOT in the context of self-assessment and analysis as it has been developed as a tool for organization but I found it helpful as a personal development tool as well. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and in most frameworks strengths and weaknesses are considered to be internal, so these are the types of things that myIDP may pick up, and are under your control, whereas opportunities and threats are more external. So, for example under threats you may have decrease in federal funding, not something you are likely to control but something that you should definitely be aware of and ready to tackle. Under opportunities you may have increased need for better medical communication and public awareness of science, so you can anticipate that this will be an area to see future growth. Or, if you are research driven you can take a stock of what’s going on in different field and determine that immunooncology is on the rise and therefore an area that you may want to shift towards, for example. Some of your weakness may include a network that is not robust enough to support your career aspirations, or presentation style and skills that need polishing which is then something you can work to address. Strengths are all your strong points, and for some those are going to be ability to deliver results on time and deadline, and for others it will be managing collaborations and interpersonal skills. One point about strengths and weakness: you need to be realistic here, both in terms of your self-evaluation, but also in terms of whether your desired career options really need you to be strong in a specific area. Take a position like a One strength, or perhaps a weakness that I bet is on everybody’s mind, is the publication list. This is the topic that follows you around through your graduate school, through your postdoc, and through turbulences of finding an attractive career and getting hired into it. Publication output is one of the basic ways in which we currently measure the productivity of a researcher, and where and how frequently someone gets to publish as a first author, second author, middle author, corresponding author is used as a proxy for their professional worth. It’s not my intention to go any deeper into whether this makes sense or not, we can definitely talk about It some more during the Q&A session, but hopefully what I share with you next may help you improve your publication outcomes and experience, if this is what you need to do in order to get to the career you want.
- As an editor at Cell Press it is my privilege to handle other scientists work and my duty and responsibility to the communities my journals support and the integrity of science to handle each paper with care and respect. It also part of my job to ask whether the work at hand addresses an important question of high interest and takes the field in a new and bold direction. If the paper passes internal editorial threshold, it goes out to reviewers who advise us on whether our view that the idea is bold and beautiful is a reasonable one given the evidence of existing literature, current thinking in the field, and data presented. And I bet you are all now wondering if there is a shortcut? An easy path to glory?
- Well, I can’t offer a shortcut but what I can share is my perspective on what are some of the things that will likely increase your chances of getting your paper published. With the caveat that “best” might be up for debate, good papers have one bold idea, good data that is well documented and described, and are the result of scientists following ethical research practices. It helps a great deal when papers are written in a style that engages yet is simple enough that even those that are coming to your work from other subfields of biology can interact and learn from your work. Additionally, because data is key to anything that we publish, how that data is visualized and presented is essential.
- The question that is probably on tip of your tongue now is how can you know what it is that a journal wants. In addition to solid science reported in a conscientious, diligent and scholarly way, all journals want slightly different things which places some burden on you as researchers to tease apart what options for publication of your work are likely to be viable. A good starting point is a literature search to see where people in your field that you respect are publishing, and going from there. You may want to consult some your colleagues, or people from other parts of your institution and ask for their feedback on either their past experience with a specific journal or their general impressions of the science that your target journal publishes. Another source of information are journal’s home page, Editorial Board page, and Aims and Scope statement which you should definitely check. In the case of Cell Press, we encourage presubmission inquiries where authors interested in submitting their work to us get in touch with a brief cover letter and a summary to seek advice on whether their work is a good candidate for peer review. We have a policy of responding to those inquiries within few days and this can save time as well as open a conversation between an editor and the authors that can lead to further interactions and collaborations down the line. Over the years I heard and read many complaints about the peer review system in biomedical sciences and claims that it is broken and that it impedes true scientific progress and transformative research. Some concerns are real. It can take a long time to get a paper published – but if you are honest with yourself and realistic in evaluating your priorities and priorities of your coauthors so that your starting point is the right journal, I can wager that this timeline will shrink. As an editor I think the peer review works well and I see it on daily basis. This is not to say that reviewers are always in agreement, or that I as the editor am always in agreement with reviewers, or that authors are always happy to receive my decision letter. Scientific discussions can get very heated and sometimes people hold quite different hypotheses for example. That does not happen often, however in emerging areas without much foundational understanding or similar we sometimes encounter those situations. However, authors, reviewers and editors usually do find common ground, one way or the other, and proceed towards a resolution. That’s why it’s important to keep interactions professional and focused on science and facts. And while you are going through a process of thinking up a new project or writing up a new paper or a proposal it is important to learn from past experiences to refine your style, as well as continue to read broadly and prolifically. All that reading is an important component of improving your own writing and data presentation, as you explore and identify what works in papers written by others. Also, enlisting help from your colleagues, friends and family is again priceless. Once you thick off all these boxes hopefully you would have some solid publications under your belt. So, does your work stop with the publication of a paper?
- Not as fast. It is becoming increasingly important to be social media savvy and understand how to use it to talk about your science. Many scientists are active on Twitter and LinkedIn but there are number of different platforms and tools that scientists use for professional purposes, to talk about their work as well as discuss the work of others. There is also a growing number of scientists that track their progress or offer insights into areas of their interest and/or expertise via different blogging platforms. All this may seem too much! Where can you possibly find time for research, and job hunting, and social media… and that is a fair comment.
- So we come back to my big disclaimer – when it comes to scientific careers One size does not fit all. But, as you venture out of the lab and start exploring, either through volunteering, organizing events, or hosting speakers, networking or teaching you can use those opportunities to test the waters and put your skills to the test in what usually are very safe and welcoming environments.
- So where does this bring us? Careers in science, as indeed in all other areas, are no longer linear and we are witnessing major shifts of expectations and aspirations in early career researchers that match what we are seeing elsewhere. Any career is a balancing act, with many competing factors and all any one of us can to to stay up to speed and on track is to continue to learn and develop new skills, by always stretching your goals and taking yourself out of your comfort zone. And by not forgetting that self-assessment and reflection can help you adjust and correct the direction of your career path to best fit your evolving preferences and needs. Thank you very much, and I hope this talk gave view few new tools and ideas on how to go forth. Now I am happy to answer any questions you might have about career transitions, publishing, time management, work/life balance… anything really.
- Let me not forget to put up my contact info. I have also made these slides publically available via SlideShare and feel free to take a look or share with colleagues who may not have been able to make it to the talk today! Now for the questions…