Much to my dismay, I learned last Friday that it would be another two weeks before I received my first paycheck. Schmower readers, I implore you: Is this fair?
Overall, I have been amazed at the speed at which things have moved since I arrived here at Big U. My office was furnished within a day. I had an email address, a phone number, and a voicemail account before I could say "bureaucracy." But five whole weeks of work before I get a penny? This seems unjust. The mooching off the boyfriend will apparently have to continue unabated for a couple more weeks.
There was a point toward the end of graduate school when I realized that my salary would double if I became a postdoc, but my work wouldn't change all that much. Suddenly a postdoc seemed like a fantastic idea! Even if I found my work dull and isolating, at least I'd be getting paid more for it, right? In the end, my relatively lavish salary as a postdoc didn't make a lick of a difference in my level of job satisfaction, but the promise of a higher salary did help me barrel through those final months of thesis writing.
The payroll situation now at Big U. isn't really an issue. After all, it's just a delay in receiving payment. But I have to admit that I had a moment of decreased job satisfaction when I realized that I wouldn't be getting a paycheck for a while. I started to feel (irrationally, I know) that my job was just the latest in the string of volunteer positions I'd had since leaving my postdoc.
In talking with a few people who have made the switch from research science to science education or science administration, I learned that it's not uncommon to have several volunteer or contract jobs before finding a permanent position. One woman I talked to said that she had spent about five years earning minimum wage after leaving her postdoc. Zoinks! My own period of unemployment was similar. I did spend a fair bit of time reading novels and taking afternoon naps, but I also had two fairly demanding volunteer positions that kept me busy for a few months.
The first position was as a grant writer for a small, informal education* non-profit. The company was just getting started and needed help raising money for their programs. Although there were some academics involved who had experience writing grants to large government agencies like NSF, no one -- including me -- had any experience raising money from small family foundations. Helping them out was a good experience in the sense that I learned about a side of the philanthropy world that I hadn't been aware of. I also learned how to write proposals about things that I didn't know much about. Good resume builder.
At the same time, I started going around to middle and high schools giving presentations about my brand of science. This was actually a really rewarding experience in a lot of ways. The teachers were so thrilled to have me visit their classes, mostly because I could talk to the kids about what it was like to be a "real" scientist. (I suspect that they were also thrilled because they were off the hook for a class period, since a couple of teachers actually fell asleep during my presentations.) But it was also fascinating to visit a bunch of schools within a three hour radius of where I was living and see the differences between them. Good resume builder.
Going into both of these situations I knew that I would never get paid for any of it, and that was okay. Both were good learning experiences, both look great on my resume. But I also needed to keep myself from going crazy, and they gave me a sense of purpose.
But given that my degree was a big factor in obtaining these volunteer positions, and given that I was spending about 20 hours a week volunteering, I got a bit sensitive about how much of my time I was willing to give for free. So I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually being compensated for the work I'm doing now, even if it's taking a while to turn the cranks of the bureaucratic machine.
*Informal education refers to education programs that are outside of the traditional classroom. Museums, camps, that kind of thing.
Showing posts with label job search. Show all posts
Showing posts with label job search. Show all posts
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
timing + more good blogs
I got a great comment from a reader asking why I left my postdoc before I had secured another job. I've often asked myself whether that was a good decision, especially since not having any structure to my days generally makes me unhappy. There were two very good reasons why I left when I did: I was going crazy; and I could.
The first reason is one that I've talked about before. Though I'd toyed with the idea of leaving graduate school, my emotional sunk costs were high enough that it was worth sticking it out and getting the degree. My work environment as a student was pleasant in that I had a wonderful group of friends around me. As a postdoc, I no longer had that nice social workplace, and I no longer had interest in my research. Going to work each morning involved an internal battle between emotion and obligation. And by about 4pm each day, emotion won out and I'd come home. A lot of things came crashing down at once: I was living in a strange new place, I didn't know anyone, my building was like a prison, and my research seemed worthless.
I thought a lot about whether research had to be this way. Perhaps if I'd really sunk my teeth into new research projects I would have enjoyed going to work more -- and, looking back, I sometimes think I should have tried a little harder to get new projects going. I also considered changing research directions so that I was working on something that I found more engaging. This would have involved finding another university and advisor to host me as well as transferring my fellowship to another university. While I spent many days and weeks pondering these options, in my heart I knew I wanted to cut bait.
What I ended up doing was giving myself a set date for leaving my postdoc. If I'd found another job by then, great! But if not, I'd leave anyway. I set that date about three months in advance and spent that time applying for jobs and learning some new skills that I thought might make me more marketable. When the three months were up, I didn't have a new job, but I did have two interviews lined up in the town I was moving to.
The other reason that I left when I did was that I could. The numbers for the percentage of Americans who report being satisfied with their jobs are all over the map, but I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people out there who either detest or simply tolerate their jobs for the sake of having an income. I certainly could have just joined their jolly lot and kept getting a paycheck, but I fortunately didn't have to.
I was raised to believe that women shouldn't be dependent upon men for, well, anything, but money especially. My boyfriend knew that I didn't have the money to quit my job and continue paying my half of the rent for more than a few months. And while I didn't want to mooch off of him indefinitely, I also didn't want my extended job misery to affect our relationship. So he offered to pick up the tab for a while, and I gratefully accepted.
Had I known that that tab was going to accrue for as long as it did, I probably have stayed in my postdoc longer. But the interviews I had lined up had made me very hopeful. During my time of unemployment, my boyfriend and I developed a de facto division of labor: he worked and earned money while I did most of the cooking, cleaning, and reading of novels. Not a fair trade, by any means. But maybe someday he'll want to quit his job, and he can be the novel reader for a while. If that day comes, I'll be happy to pick up the tab.
Thanks to a comment left by DayByDay, I discovered a bunch of great blogs written by female scientists. Once I have a chance to read them a bit more, I'll add some to the blog roll. We're not alone, ladies.
The first reason is one that I've talked about before. Though I'd toyed with the idea of leaving graduate school, my emotional sunk costs were high enough that it was worth sticking it out and getting the degree. My work environment as a student was pleasant in that I had a wonderful group of friends around me. As a postdoc, I no longer had that nice social workplace, and I no longer had interest in my research. Going to work each morning involved an internal battle between emotion and obligation. And by about 4pm each day, emotion won out and I'd come home. A lot of things came crashing down at once: I was living in a strange new place, I didn't know anyone, my building was like a prison, and my research seemed worthless.
I thought a lot about whether research had to be this way. Perhaps if I'd really sunk my teeth into new research projects I would have enjoyed going to work more -- and, looking back, I sometimes think I should have tried a little harder to get new projects going. I also considered changing research directions so that I was working on something that I found more engaging. This would have involved finding another university and advisor to host me as well as transferring my fellowship to another university. While I spent many days and weeks pondering these options, in my heart I knew I wanted to cut bait.
What I ended up doing was giving myself a set date for leaving my postdoc. If I'd found another job by then, great! But if not, I'd leave anyway. I set that date about three months in advance and spent that time applying for jobs and learning some new skills that I thought might make me more marketable. When the three months were up, I didn't have a new job, but I did have two interviews lined up in the town I was moving to.
The other reason that I left when I did was that I could. The numbers for the percentage of Americans who report being satisfied with their jobs are all over the map, but I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people out there who either detest or simply tolerate their jobs for the sake of having an income. I certainly could have just joined their jolly lot and kept getting a paycheck, but I fortunately didn't have to.
I was raised to believe that women shouldn't be dependent upon men for, well, anything, but money especially. My boyfriend knew that I didn't have the money to quit my job and continue paying my half of the rent for more than a few months. And while I didn't want to mooch off of him indefinitely, I also didn't want my extended job misery to affect our relationship. So he offered to pick up the tab for a while, and I gratefully accepted.
Had I known that that tab was going to accrue for as long as it did, I probably have stayed in my postdoc longer. But the interviews I had lined up had made me very hopeful. During my time of unemployment, my boyfriend and I developed a de facto division of labor: he worked and earned money while I did most of the cooking, cleaning, and reading of novels. Not a fair trade, by any means. But maybe someday he'll want to quit his job, and he can be the novel reader for a while. If that day comes, I'll be happy to pick up the tab.
Thanks to a comment left by DayByDay, I discovered a bunch of great blogs written by female scientists. Once I have a chance to read them a bit more, I'll add some to the blog roll. We're not alone, ladies.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Informational Interviews
I'm almost through with week one of my new job, and it's been fantastic so far. Almost a full year has gone by since I've really interacted with scientists, and I forgot how strange most of them are. (I mean that in a good way.) I haven't had any time to write in the past week, but I'll start sharing my impressions soon.
In the meantime, someone asked whether I was doing anything beyond sending out resumes and cover letters during my job hunt, which is the perfect follow up to my last post about talking to people.
Most of those 50-ish resumes and cover letters that I sent out were met with a resounding silence. Never heard a peep. There's nothing worse than spending a few hours perfecting a cover letter and then not even being met with a rejection letter. After sending a couple dozen applications out into the black hole, I had some great templates for my cover letter and a few different resumes that were tailored for different types of jobs. For instance, I had a resume that I submitted to academic publishing jobs that highlighted my writing skills and experience. That resume was very different from the one I sent for jobs that were education-oriented.
Despite all of the great application materials I had, I didn't appear any closer to actually having a job. When you look at the numbers, the percentage of people who are hired through online job applications is relatively small*. This is a fairly major difference from the academic world, where lots of jobs get filled by people who simply sent in applications in response to an ad. When I started really reading the ScienceCareers forum, it became clear that I had to change my strategy a bit.
The word "networking" always sounds cheesy to me. Worse than cheesy, actually. Sleazy. But it doesn't have to be. During my job search, I built up a network of people in my area who were doing interesting things, working at interesting places, or seemed well-connected in a given field. Looking back, this kind of happened naturally. It started with one woman I met who was working in science education/outreach at my postdoctoral institution, then she gave me the names of a bunch of other people working in that arena. Slowly, I contacted all of them and set up meetings with them. These are often called informational interviews, and they can be really interesting.
There are a couple of schools of thought about how you should approach informational interviews. Some people feel that you should approach informational interviewers and new contacts without telling them that you're actually looking for a job. Others feel that you should be up front about the fact that you are job-hunting, though you shouldn't expect that the person you're meeting with will actually do anything about it. I opted for the latter approach, because it seems more honest to me. You can tell someone that you're looking for a job and think they're company is interesting without sounding like a bozo. I also suspect that people can see right through your request for a meeting...they know on some level that you're gunning for a job.
During my job hunt, I had about 15 informational interviews with people from state agencies, nonprofits, research institutions, universities, and schools. Almost everyone I contacted was happy to meet with me, and most of them gave me the names of a couple other people to talk to. These interviews also gave me a good sense of what was going on in my community. One of the interviews led to a conference for science educators, which I attended at the expense of the school that invited me. The conference led to more contacts...and so on.
Because I was living in a fairly small and economically sleepy town, I started to feel like I'd exhausted my network. Luckily, the interview process for my current job started just as I'd run out of people to talk to. But one way to take the sleaziness out of networking is to actually keep in touch with people. Networking is a two-way street, so keep the lines of communication open.
Tips for Informational Interviews:
1. Keep your initial email to someone you don't know short, but put the text of your resume in the text of the email.
2. Coffee shops make good venues for meetings, but always offer to meet the person at his or her office. Essentially, make the meeting as easy for someone to attend as possible.
3. Dress nicely. For most meetings, there's no need to wear a suit. Nice pants and a button-down shirt (or something along those lines) sends the message that you have your shit together.
4. Do your research. Make sure you know what the person you're meeting with does and how it fits in with the rest of the company, just like you would if you were visiting a university department for an interview.
In the meantime, someone asked whether I was doing anything beyond sending out resumes and cover letters during my job hunt, which is the perfect follow up to my last post about talking to people.
Most of those 50-ish resumes and cover letters that I sent out were met with a resounding silence. Never heard a peep. There's nothing worse than spending a few hours perfecting a cover letter and then not even being met with a rejection letter. After sending a couple dozen applications out into the black hole, I had some great templates for my cover letter and a few different resumes that were tailored for different types of jobs. For instance, I had a resume that I submitted to academic publishing jobs that highlighted my writing skills and experience. That resume was very different from the one I sent for jobs that were education-oriented.
Despite all of the great application materials I had, I didn't appear any closer to actually having a job. When you look at the numbers, the percentage of people who are hired through online job applications is relatively small*. This is a fairly major difference from the academic world, where lots of jobs get filled by people who simply sent in applications in response to an ad. When I started really reading the ScienceCareers forum, it became clear that I had to change my strategy a bit.
The word "networking" always sounds cheesy to me. Worse than cheesy, actually. Sleazy. But it doesn't have to be. During my job search, I built up a network of people in my area who were doing interesting things, working at interesting places, or seemed well-connected in a given field. Looking back, this kind of happened naturally. It started with one woman I met who was working in science education/outreach at my postdoctoral institution, then she gave me the names of a bunch of other people working in that arena. Slowly, I contacted all of them and set up meetings with them. These are often called informational interviews, and they can be really interesting.
There are a couple of schools of thought about how you should approach informational interviews. Some people feel that you should approach informational interviewers and new contacts without telling them that you're actually looking for a job. Others feel that you should be up front about the fact that you are job-hunting, though you shouldn't expect that the person you're meeting with will actually do anything about it. I opted for the latter approach, because it seems more honest to me. You can tell someone that you're looking for a job and think they're company is interesting without sounding like a bozo. I also suspect that people can see right through your request for a meeting...they know on some level that you're gunning for a job.
During my job hunt, I had about 15 informational interviews with people from state agencies, nonprofits, research institutions, universities, and schools. Almost everyone I contacted was happy to meet with me, and most of them gave me the names of a couple other people to talk to. These interviews also gave me a good sense of what was going on in my community. One of the interviews led to a conference for science educators, which I attended at the expense of the school that invited me. The conference led to more contacts...and so on.
Because I was living in a fairly small and economically sleepy town, I started to feel like I'd exhausted my network. Luckily, the interview process for my current job started just as I'd run out of people to talk to. But one way to take the sleaziness out of networking is to actually keep in touch with people. Networking is a two-way street, so keep the lines of communication open.
Tips for Informational Interviews:
1. Keep your initial email to someone you don't know short, but put the text of your resume in the text of the email.
2. Coffee shops make good venues for meetings, but always offer to meet the person at his or her office. Essentially, make the meeting as easy for someone to attend as possible.
3. Dress nicely. For most meetings, there's no need to wear a suit. Nice pants and a button-down shirt (or something along those lines) sends the message that you have your shit together.
4. Do your research. Make sure you know what the person you're meeting with does and how it fits in with the rest of the company, just like you would if you were visiting a university department for an interview.
Friday, May 11, 2007
lesson #1: talk to people
At some point, I'll write more about strategies for finding a job outside of academia and such, but for now let's start with a few statistics about my job search:
- Number of months between leaving postdoc and securing new job: 8 1/2
- Number of resumes with customized cover letters sent out during this time: about 50
- Number of formal interviews: 4 1/2 (I never figured out if my third interview was for real or not, so I'm counting it as half an interview)
- Income during this time period: $0
- Number of part-time (10-30 hours/week) volunteer jobs done during this time: 3
Scientists out there, you could interpret these results in many ways, no? In terms of how these numbers fit in with the experiences of other academic refugees, I'm not sure. The only thing I am really sure of about my refugee status is this: It fucking sucked.
For 8 1/2 months, I felt like I had severe head wounds from banging my head against the wall that I had to neatly cover up each time I went begging for a job in my new suit. I jumped up and down screaming "I'm here! I'm smart! Hire me!" until I was hoarse. I put on song and dance routines for the many kind strangers who granted me informational interviews (another topic for a future post).
In the end, though, the head-banging, the screaming, the singing, and the dancing, didn't get me a job. What got me a job was all of the genuine hard work I'd done as a graduate student.
When I started applying for non-academic jobs, I sent a quick email to the three people who had furnished letters of reference for all of my academic job applications asking them if they would still provide letters for me for this new breed of applications. They all said yes, but only one of them -- committee member X -- asked what kind of job I was looking for. I emailed him some of my general ideas, and never heard back. In my mind, I thought "It's true. They all think I'm a failure."
About five months after I sent that email, I got a call from X out of the blue. He was calling to find out whether I would be interested in a job at his university. He described the job and I nearly fell over. It was *perfect*. I had described a job like this -- but not quite as cool -- to friends and family. My qualifications were perfect. He hadn't called anyone else. I am starting on Monday.
Having spent over 20 years in school, I really wanted to believe that the old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" wasn't true. I wanted my resume to speak for itself, and to some extent it did. On its own a resume can say a lot of things. Mine basically says "I'm a nerd, but I just got my braces off, so I'm cool now." X knew that I was a nerd, and my qualifications were a big part of why I got the job. As important, though, was the fact that we had worked together in the past. X and I wrote two papers together -- I was first author on one, and he was first author on the other. We worked well together and had a great deal of respect for each other. There are plenty of other people out there with resumes like mine, but X hadn't worked with them before.
And so we come to the first, and most important lesson when looking for a job:
Talk to people. Every single person you know is an important contact, and they need to know what kind of gig you're looking for. Even more fundamental than that, they need to know that you're looking for a job. Don't be afraid to tell them, whether they are former advisers or relatives. These people already know you and, hopefully, think well of you. So if they are ever in a position to suggest someone for a job, they'll think of you.
- Number of months between leaving postdoc and securing new job: 8 1/2
- Number of resumes with customized cover letters sent out during this time: about 50
- Number of formal interviews: 4 1/2 (I never figured out if my third interview was for real or not, so I'm counting it as half an interview)
- Income during this time period: $0
- Number of part-time (10-30 hours/week) volunteer jobs done during this time: 3
Scientists out there, you could interpret these results in many ways, no? In terms of how these numbers fit in with the experiences of other academic refugees, I'm not sure. The only thing I am really sure of about my refugee status is this: It fucking sucked.
For 8 1/2 months, I felt like I had severe head wounds from banging my head against the wall that I had to neatly cover up each time I went begging for a job in my new suit. I jumped up and down screaming "I'm here! I'm smart! Hire me!" until I was hoarse. I put on song and dance routines for the many kind strangers who granted me informational interviews (another topic for a future post).
In the end, though, the head-banging, the screaming, the singing, and the dancing, didn't get me a job. What got me a job was all of the genuine hard work I'd done as a graduate student.
When I started applying for non-academic jobs, I sent a quick email to the three people who had furnished letters of reference for all of my academic job applications asking them if they would still provide letters for me for this new breed of applications. They all said yes, but only one of them -- committee member X -- asked what kind of job I was looking for. I emailed him some of my general ideas, and never heard back. In my mind, I thought "It's true. They all think I'm a failure."
About five months after I sent that email, I got a call from X out of the blue. He was calling to find out whether I would be interested in a job at his university. He described the job and I nearly fell over. It was *perfect*. I had described a job like this -- but not quite as cool -- to friends and family. My qualifications were perfect. He hadn't called anyone else. I am starting on Monday.
Having spent over 20 years in school, I really wanted to believe that the old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" wasn't true. I wanted my resume to speak for itself, and to some extent it did. On its own a resume can say a lot of things. Mine basically says "I'm a nerd, but I just got my braces off, so I'm cool now." X knew that I was a nerd, and my qualifications were a big part of why I got the job. As important, though, was the fact that we had worked together in the past. X and I wrote two papers together -- I was first author on one, and he was first author on the other. We worked well together and had a great deal of respect for each other. There are plenty of other people out there with resumes like mine, but X hadn't worked with them before.
And so we come to the first, and most important lesson when looking for a job:
Talk to people. Every single person you know is an important contact, and they need to know what kind of gig you're looking for. Even more fundamental than that, they need to know that you're looking for a job. Don't be afraid to tell them, whether they are former advisers or relatives. These people already know you and, hopefully, think well of you. So if they are ever in a position to suggest someone for a job, they'll think of you.
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