Tag: PhDs

A New and Improved PhD and Postdoc Careers Webpage!

One of the exciting projects that I was working on this past summer and early fall was revamping our webpage for PhDs and postdocs in collaboration with my colleagues. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our new Ph.D./Postdoc Careers page! This new webpage centralizes all job and career-related resources for Penn doctoral students and postdocs. It’s structured into three main sections to help you easily find the information you’re looking for.

Here’s a quick run-down of how you can use the webpage:

If you’re currently in a PhD program or postdoc and have questions about which career paths would interest you or how you should prepare for your career, check out the Making the Most of Your Ph.D./Postdoc page. It features a four-step career exploration process to guide you in identifying and preparing for careers that would be a strong fit for your interests.

Are you actively applying for academic jobs and/or jobs beyond academia? The Searching, Applying, Interviewing & Negotiating for Jobs page contains information on the entire job search process for postdoc/faculty careers as well as careers beyond academia. You can find resources on preparing your job application materials as well as preparing for job interviews and negotiations.

If you are looking to find out what Career Services can offer you, take a look at the Taking Advantage of Career Services page, which lists all of our services for doctoral students and postdocs—from one-on-one advising to workshops to digital career resources.

We hope you’ll check out our new webpage—you’ll see below some testimonials from your fellow peers on their experiences using the webpage in our focus group.

The Graduate Student and Postdoc Team at Career Services is eager to help you in all aspects of your career exploration and planning process, for jobs in academia and beyond, so make an appointment to see us!

“The breakdown of the four-step Career Exploration Process on the Making the Most of Your Ph.D./Postdoc page was helpful in clarifying what had initially seemed nebulous to me, and it allowed me to move through the steps systematically without feeling overwhelmed.” –Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English

“I found the Professionalize and Gain Experience page extremely useful because it lists several concrete ways in which one can gain work experience at Penn that extends beyond academia.” –Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Linguistics

“I gravitated towards the Making the Most of Your PhD page. I didn’t realize there were job simulations until now, and I am definitely going to play around with that resource!” –Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Genomics and Computational Biology

“I was really impressed with the Career Exploration Process information. That is a really concise, concrete and useful resource.” –Ph.D. Candidate, School of Engineering & Applied Science

“The webpage’s new step by step overview of how best to use your time in grad school is an invaluable resource!” –Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations

Plumbing 101 – some thoughts on branching career pipelines

Dr. Joseph Barber

The following paper was recently published in the journal “CBE – Life Sciences Education”:

“Improving Graduate Education to Support a Branching Career Pipeline: Recommendations based on a survey of doctoral students in the basic biomedical sciences” (find the article here)

The authors summarized the key results from this study:

  • Students’ career preferences change strikingly during the first 2-3 years of graduate school (when students join a lab full-time), and the primary change is a decrease in interest for becoming a PI at a research-intensive institution.
  • By the 3rd year of graduate school, 33% of UCSF graduate students would choose a non-research career path.
  • Students list a variety of reasons for deciding against becoming a PI in an academic setting.

And they list the following implications of the data:

  • We as a national scientific community need to refine our definition of a “successful” doctoral student to explicitly value those who pursue non-academic, and non-research, career paths.
  • The timing of students’ career decisions (and their low confidence in these decisions) suggests that universities should place greater emphasis on career education within the curriculum, and target students earlier in their graduate training.
  • Career education would optimally assist doctoral students in understanding their career options, identifying career paths that provide a best fit, and developing the professional skills needed to succeed in these diverse careers.

Read the full paper to get a better sense of what this research revealed. If you have questions about your own career pipeline, and whether it will branch or not, and when it might do so, then stop by Career Services to set up an appointment to meet with an advisor. You can ask us about career alternatives, and attend the Biomedical & Life Sciences Career Fair to see what opportunities exist for yourself. For more on “leaky pipes” in the sciences, see this blog post.