Julie Miller Vick – Page 3

Laughter is the Best Medicine for a Sluggish Dissertation

Julie Vick

The first thing I wrote for the Career Services blog was “’Makes ‘Em Laugh:’ A Comic a Day Gets the Dissertation Written.”

In that little piece my goal was to help current doctoral students take a break from their research and writing to laugh at Piled Higher and Deeper, a comic strip that documents the humorous, and not-so-humorous, aspects of grad school.

Now, more than two years later, Jorge Cham, the author who started writing the strip while working on his PhD at Stanford, has to his credit four published books, a movie (which was shown at Penn this past fall) entitled “The Power of Procrastination” and an online store full of T-shirts and mugs with such PhD-pithy sayings as “Grad School: It seemed better than getting a real job” and “The Origin of the Theses”.

Undergrads who are considering graduate education: Piled Higher and Deeper can help you get an interesting read on your possible future. For first-time readers, there’s a page to check where you can learn about the characters and link to the most popular strips.

As I said last time, not only are the comics themselves great to read but so is the fan mail:

“Oh God, it hurts! It’s all so true, and so evil! I can’t tell whether I should be laughing or crying in sympathy” -Chemistry grad from Caltech

“Your comic strip rocks! I’ve decided not to go to grad school.” -Electrical Engineering undergrad from Yale U.

“Everybody in my lab loves your work. The songs help soothe the hurt when my experiments fail and I think about the next 6 yrs here” -Microbiology grad from NYU

You can join a mailing list to be notified of new strips. So once again, I advise, “Give yourself the gift of laughter and spend a little time with PHD!”

Developing Professional Skills in Unexpected Places

My daughter got married this fall and, because she and her fiancé were getting married in Philadelphia but live in Canada, I helped them with a lot of the organizational activities, including creating, refining and using the master invitation list. At the start, it became apparent to me that, in order to do this most efficiently, I should learn how to use Excel.

Younger readers to this blog will think to themselves, “Doesn’t everyone know how to use Excel? It’s so basic.” I’m of the older generation who started using computers in my second professional job in the late 1970’s and bought my first personal computer in 1983. And while I have learned (and forgotten) a whole raft of programs over the last three decades, I stayed away from Excel, partly out of fear – it looked too complex and numerical for me — and partly because my office mainly uses Access for data management.

I’ll never be an expert but, in addition to being able to make mailing labels for the invitation, I was able to keep a running tally of who was coming on which side and create files for seating arrangements, dietary preferences and escort cards
I’m telling you this because you need to remember that what you do outside of class, the library or the lab may help you in your job search or, if you’re already employed, do better in your current job.

Undergraduates are very good at including extracurricular activities on their resumes along with the GPAs, but graduate students (the group I work with at Career Services) are less likely to think of them as opportunities where relevant strengths are developed and demonstrated. In fact, many will say, “I don’t have time for anything extracurricular!”

It doesn’t have to be organized activities and you don’t have to do anything big or be very engaged in. For another example from my life, there are currently a lot of assessment activities going on in student services offices and some of the assessment methods involve using rubrics. When my children were younger their school used rubrics to assess learning outcomes and involved parents in the process. So now I may be using something I learned about in a somewhat passive way, and I imagine you have done something similar.

So, expand your thinking in regards to your skills. As the line from the “hokey-pokey” says, “put your whole self in!”

Advice for Good Interviews

Julie Vick, Senior Associate Director

As a Career Services advisor, I work with PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and Master’s students in several of Penn’s schools. I work with students and postdocs who are preparing for interviews, many of whom do not have much experience with interviewing. We have lots of information on interviewing on the Career Services website and we offer mock interviews but sometimes the thing to do is to talk to a successful job hunter.

Recently, I asked three people who had just accepted job offers this question: What is one thing a candidate should do to have a good interview? I found their answers to be informative and contain a common thread.

From a postdoc who has a new position in consulting:

There is no question that practicing case interviews helped me tremendously in my job interviews. Even for a non-consulting job, I would recommend that candidates read case studies (available online or in the Career Services library), practice them individually, and practice with a partner. The skills learned during that process, including (1) being able to answer a seemingly impossible question by stating what one heard, explaining how one would go about it, and then interacting with the interviewer, and (2) being able to keep one’s cool and calmly answer a question during a stressful situation, are invaluable during the interview process and beyond.

Another postdoc who will be working in chemical research responded with this:

For me the one most important thing is to be well prepared with a list of behavioral and technical questions (for scientific background) and answers. The list helped me to understand myself better and formulate answers for unprepared questions.

And Tryan McMickens, a doctoral graduate who accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at Suffolk University advised:

Beyond knowing scholarship and having a solid teaching philosophy, a doctoral candidate applying to faculty positions must be aware of the needs, challenges, and future directions of the department in which she or he interviews. Being informed can lead to more thoughtful and useful discussions at various phases of the academic job interview (e.g., search committee meeting(s); job talk Q &A; student breakout sessions; and individual interviews with the dean, department chair, and other campus decision-makers). A favorable (or unfavorable) outcome is determined by the knowledge learned about the organizational dynamics of the department.

In addition to having the appropriate qualifications (and being able to talk about them), preparation is key to having a successful interview. It is absolutely necessary to know something about the institution or company and be able to talk specifically about what you have to offer them. It’s crucial to think about the questions you may be asked and practice answering them. And it’s important to be comfortable talking with one or several interviewers. I have never had a student or postdoc say that they wished they *hadn’t* done a mock interview with me or one of my colleagues, or *hadn’t* practiced case questions with someone in the Graduate Student Consulting Group. As you can see, the answer to the question is the answer to “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

Good luck with your interviews.

Take My Word For It

by Julie Vick

Readers of this blog know that Career Services staff blog that unlikely and different experiences can actually inform your job search, and I really mean DIFFERENT. Some of the topics on which we have posts are TV watching, dirty diapers, Dr. Who, your cat, and lunch; if you take a moment to read those posts you WILL find that those experience can be meaningful for some aspect of your search.

One of MY passions is playing Scrabble, both in person and online. I love words and really enjoy figuring out the best word I can make with as many of my seven letters as possible. I compare doing that to writing a strong resume or CV and a cover letter. But I can’t put my word on the board just anywhere; it has to connect to a word already played. Just so, my resume and cover letter must show a connection to the job to which I’m applying. As I may have to tweak the word to find it a place on the board, so I need to tailor my job hunting materials to each specific job. And the third strategy I employ is to try to place high-scoring letters on triple- or double-letter spaces and/or make sure the word falls on a triple- or double-word space. That is somewhat similar to getting some useful information about the job or employer before you finish the written materials which might let you say in the letter, “Your colleague suggested I apply for the job because my experience and abilities are a good match for it.” SO, to review: the excitement of making a good word AND playing it well is akin to writing strong and targeted application materials that get you a phone interview. It’s not enough to put together a good word from the seven letters in your tile tray; you also need to make a connection.

There are many low moments with Scrabble too. When I have a tray with three “I’s”, two “U’s” and two “N’s” on it, I have to decide whether or not to turn in some of those “I’s” and other letters. I’ll get new letters but lose a turn to play. (If I have a lot of “I’s” plus other low-scoring letters, I usually trade some of them in. Unfortunately, over the next few turns they seem to find me again.) It’s the same with job hunting. If you find that your strategy isn’t resulting in some interviews perhaps you need to rethink it; maybe you need to talk with some Penn alumni/ae in the field that interests you so that your letters sound more knowledgeable. Perhaps your resume doesn’t provide enough detail — or provides too much detail – and needs significant REVISION.

About every 10-15 games I play what’s called a “bingo,” that is, I manage to use all seven letters that are on my tray in a play. A bingo earns you 50 extra points in addition to the points for the word. The ultimate job search bingo would be an offer but it could also be an interview or even discovery of an opportunity that’s great for you. I’m always on the lookout for a bingo even though for me with Scrabble I know they happen only occasionally. You need to do the same…Take my WORD for it.

Lingua Franca

by Julie Vick

via harvard.edu

Are you applying to a doctoral program because you feel teaching students and doing research would be an exciting career? Perhaps you are already in a doctoral program and preparing to write your dissertation or maybe finishing it up. Regardless of your stage, you are probably aware of the importance of learning the language of your discipline but did you also know that when you look for a job you need to learn the professional language of higher education?

Every occupation, whether it’s in an academic discipline or a professional field, has its own language and higher education is no exception. An example you have probably come across is a “CV” as opposed to “resume.”

A CV, which stands for curriculum vitae, meaning “course of life” in Latin, is used by candidates seeking college and university teaching positions as well as by those applying for other research jobs and for fellowships. A CV (which is also referred to as a “vita”) includes details about one’s academic work, including publications and presentations and is usually much lengthier than a résumé which should be tailored for a specific kind of job. Of course, the purpose in preparing either is to interest a prospective employer enough to invite you for a personal interview.

As a career advisor who works with doctoral students, I co-author a column every 4-6 weeks for the Chronicle of Higher Education, a daily news website/weekly newspaper devoted to all aspects of higher education. Because many Penn doctoral students and postdocs ask questions about terms and abbreviations used in the job search process I, with my co-writers have written three columns on the language of higher education that is important to master while applying for faculty jobs: If you want to find out the meaning of chalk talk, SLAC, soft money, ABD and degree in hand, as well as other terms, check out these articles: Learning the Lingo, Learning the Lingo, Part 2 and Learning the Lingo, Part 3. And be sure to learn the language of your own field!