R&D in industry: which job title is right for me?

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Seeking an R&D position in industry but not sure which level you should be applying for?  Let’s take an example.  Looking  at the One Nucleus website (biotech jobs, in the Cambridge/London area), the following job titles appeared on my screen:

Scientist, Senior Group Leader, Research Associate, Research Scientist, Senior Scientist and Principal Scientist

So, as a postdoc, how can you tell which of these are the right level  for you?

Read the job requirements

The job titles a company uses may be fairly arbitrary. But they should at least be a little clearer in the job description. For example, many of you currently have the job title ‘research associate’, so you might assume this would be the right level.  But when I read the job requirements, I found this role only expected a BSc/MSc.  In fact it was the ‘research scientist’ (at the same Cambridge University spin-out!) position that asked for a PhD and postdoc/industry experience.

A ‘senior scientist’ position – at a different organisation – specified at least three years in industry.  The ‘scientist’ position was vaguer, talking about experience in a ‘drug discovery environment’.

Apply now button

So what can you do to make more sense of job titles?

Do some research.  Looking on LinkedIn, I could quickly find how much industrial experience people tended to have when appointed as ‘scientists’ in this organisation. LinkedIn also revealed a great deal about the ‘senior group leader’ position, where the job requirements said ‘Science based Degree or PhD with significant experience in a product development/ laboratory environment and proven managerial experience’.  One current senior group leader at this organisation joined with an MSc and another a BSc, but both already had years of experience managing large teams.  Admittedly, it is five years since the more recent joiner was recruited, but postdocs with only minimal management experience might decide against prioritising an application at this level.

I couldn’t use LinkedIn to find out more about people doing the senior and principal scientist roles because I didn’t know the company name – they were being advertised through a recruitment agency.  I tried my trick of taking what looked like a unique piece of text and pasting it into Google – quite often you can find the same job being advertised on the company website.  But this didn’t work as the company is in Poland, and they may well have used Polish there!

In summary, job titles vary from company to company, so don’t make assumptions.  Do read the job requirements/person specification carefully, try to find out which companies recruitment agencies are representing (by pasting a unique phrase from the advert into your browser), and look at the experience of current jobholders on LinkedIn.  This should help you to focus your application efforts on roles where you have the best chance of being shortlisted.

 

by Sally Todd, Postdoc careers adviser

Too late to change direction?

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Can you postdoc for too long? It’s a question I’ve been asked many times by clients trying to negotiate their career path. You can break their concerns down in to two further questions: How many years should you postdoc before securing an academic job becomes unlikely? And: How many years can you postdoc before employers outside of academia are no longer interested in you?

I love a nice graph, so I’ve attempted to use one to represent the assumptions I think a lot of postdocs make about these questions:

 

 

We can probably agree that during the early part of your postdoc career, you need to take time to build your research track record and reputation in order to make yourself attractive for permanent academic positions, but after an unspecified period of time you might find it harder to get more independent positions as you become ineligible for early career fellowships or selection panels question why you haven’t yet obtained a permanent position. We’re also assuming that during this time you’re becoming increasingly unattractive to employers outside academia as you become so highly specialised. These are sweeping generalisations, of course, but the strategic question is valid: at what point do you know when to stop trying one path so you can maintain your ability to switch to a different one?

If you’re in the first few years of your postdoc career, then my message for you is ‘get planning’. If you’re a little way further along that t-axis, my message for you is ‘don’t panic’. In either case, we’re here to help you.

If you’ve got time on your hands and you can still see an upward trajectory for your academic career, keep up the good work, but don’t neglect your other options. At this stage, you don’t need to commit to any other career path, but if you have a bit of a sense of what you could do outside of academia, it will help mitigate the panic if things don’t work out quite the way you had planned, and it can help you make the most of your time by signposting you to useful activities and networks that could help you to access these roles in the future. Our previous blog posts about deciding your direction will help you with this.

If you’re a little further along the postdoc path, don’t worry, we have lots of examples of postdocs who have made a career change after several research contracts. They key to success here is creating a positive narrative about the change – what’s motivating you? It may well be that you’ve realised that academia isn’t going to work out, and you feel like this change is being forced on you, but an employer isn’t going to see that as a valid reason to recruit you. You need to demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the role, and this means doing your research beforehand, finding out about the employer and the sector, and what the hot topics are. If you’ve taken the time to do this, through wider reading and speaking to people in the sector, you’ll convince employers that you really want to make this change.

Career change can be challenging at any stage; accepting you need to make a move and working out what you might do next takes some thought. The Postdoc Careers Service is here to help you with any aspect of that process – come and see us if you’d like to talk it over. We can absolutely reassure you that it’s never too late to change direction.

 

Liz Simmonds, Postdoc Careers Adviser

 

Telephone and Skype interviews – how to prepare with short notice.

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Help! I’ve been called for a telephone (or Skype) interview tomorrow, and there’s no time to see a careers adviser. Can you help me prepare?

It’s one of our most common enquiries, and it’s also typical that postdocs get very little notice for these first-round ‘screening’ interviews. So we thought we’d put together some top tips to help you, if you find yourself facing a remote interview at short notice.

A short telephone or Skype interview is frequently used in all sectors – for lectureships and jobs outside academia – as a time and cost-efficient way of meeting candidates and deciding whether to invest in taking them further in to the process. As a result, they tend to be quite broad in scope aiming to assess in some way each of the elements that will be addressed in detail at a later stage.

So time is short, and the scope is broad – what should you focus your preparation on?

Find out who’ll be interviewing you. This could give you some useful clues about what to expect. For example, if you’re being interviewed by someone in an HR function, the questions will probably focus on your career path and CV, but if you’re going to be interviewed by someone in the team you’ve applied to, the questions may well focus on knowledge needed for the role or sector. If it’s a lectureship interview, knowing the research interests of the people you’ll be talking to will help you decide at what level you need to pitch your answers.

Anticipate some questions, and plan your answers.

In lectureship interviews, the questions are usually quite predictable, and you can see an extensive list of examples in our Quick Guide. Be ready to talk about your current research, major achievements, and future plans, as well as your teaching experience, and how you hope to contribute to the University or institution you’ve applied to.

If your interview is outside of academia, it’s harder to generalise, but you should always be ready to answer the question ‘why do you want this job?’, and to talk about the skills and experiences you think you can bring to the role. Check back to the job description for clues about what skills might be most important to emphasise, and have at least one example, preferably more, to show how you’ve demonstrated each skill. It’s also a good idea to read a bit about the company that’s interviewing you – what issues are they currently facing? What recent achievements are they proud of? What’s happening in the wider sector that’s relevant to them?

Be specific

Where a lot of people fall down in interviews is by being too generic in their answers. Your goal in an interview is to show how you stand out from other candidates, and to do that you need to make your examples personal to you. For instance, if you’re telling the interviewer about your experience giving presentations as an example of your excellent communication skills, don’t talk in general terms. ‘I regularly give presentations to a variety of different audiences’, makes you sound just like every other candidate. Instead talk about a specific presentation, and furnish the example with detail. What was the presentation about? Where was it, and for whom? Did you do anything different to address this audience? How was it received? What did you learn from it? By making the example your own, it becomes much more convincing.

Rehearse but don’t script!

You need to be confident in delivering your answers, but you don’t want to sound like you’ve scripted them. It’s a tricky balance, and if you’re nervous or English isn’t your first language, it can be tempting to learn answers off by heart. Instead, try to jot down two or three key points that you’ll cover for each question. Practice saying the answers out loud by following these points – perhaps even record your answers and play them back to see how they sound.

Find a good place to have your interview.

Find somewhere quiet for your interview where you won’t be disturbed – the last thing you want is a colleague walking in on you, or your baby crying next door… If it’s a Skype interview, make sure there’s nothing messy on the wall behind you, dress smartly, with no distracting patterns, and aim to look at the camera when you speak (a good trick is to put the screen with your interviewer right at the top of your screen, under your camera). The advantage of remote interviews is you can have your notes accessible to jog your memory, as long as this doesn’t become distracting. The downside is that you lose some of the useful non-verbal cues that show your interviewer understands you. Don’t be afraid to use phrases like ‘Have I answered your question?’ or ‘Would you like me to talk more about that?’.

Have a question to ask.

Finally, think of a question you’d like to ask them. It’s practical at this stage to ask about when you’ll hear about the outcome of the interview, but it’s also a good opportunity to ask questions about their organisation or the role that show you’re genuinely interested in the job.

By Liz Simmonds, Postdoc Careers Adviser

 

 

The elevator pitch: giving your funding application a lift

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At the recent Postdoc Careers Service fellowship event many of the speakers talked about ‘elevator pitches.’  So, what exactly are they?  And how can travelling in a lift help you get the funding to turn your fellowship idea into reality?

The term ‘elevator pitch’ originates from the US business world.  It imagines that a budding entrepreneur is riding in an elevator with a possible investor.  Time is money, so our nervous business person only has the duration of the ride to the next floor (typically under 1 minute) to describe the benefits of their idea and spark the investor’s interest.  The lift door opens and the question arises – will the potential backer be inspired by what they hear and continue the conversation – or will they walk away?

New York elevatorAll of which sounds interesting – but what has this got to do with your funding proposal?

Well, funders are very similar to the investor in the scenario above.  They have limited time and a lot of people wanting their money.  Like the fledgling entrepreneur, making a brief but persuasive case for your research early on in your application will increase both the chances of the funder reading further, and securing that precious funding.

So what makes for a ‘brief but persuasive case’?  Professor Steve Russell, event speaker and funding panellist with 15 years’ experience, says that you need to clearly and compellingly outline a) what’s the question, b) why it’s important, c) what you will do and d) how will you advance the field.

It sounds easy.  But how do you put this advice into practice when time/word counts are so tight?

  • Make it easy to understand

Don’t be afraid to express your key ideas in uncomplicated language – it won’t mean that your research is ‘too simple.’

  • Be ruthless

Slim your sentences and make every word count.  Even though there may be parts of your proposal that have taken time to write and you feel proud of, cut anything that doesn’t rapidly build a case for your research.  Dr Farzana Meru, event speaker and early career fellowship holder explains: ‘Less is more, you don’t have to talk about everything you want to do, you just need to tell a good compelling story.’

  • Explain clearly

Don’t presume that your reader understands your area of research as well as you do.  Including unnecessary jargon and assuming a level of knowledge creates barriers to understanding that will send your proposal to the bottom of the pile.

Try to get as many non-experts to read your work as possible.  Afterwards, check that they can convincingly describe the four key elements of your research proposal – the question, why, what and how?  If they can’t, it’s time for a rewrite.

  • Be upfront

Keep that one minute journey in mind.  Check to see that you haven’t hidden a key aspect of your research somewhere down the page.  Imagine the entrepreneur taking 70 rather than 60 seconds to make their case for funding.  Taking too long to explain the benefits means they’re left talking to an empty lift whilst the investor walks away.

Get inspiration from successful research proposals. Ask people you know for examples of their lay summaries in their proposals. 

  • Elevator pitches can be useful elsewhere.

Elevator pitches take time to get right – but they will become an invaluable part of your researcher’s toolkit.

Several fellowship holders at the event stressed the importance of contacts to the success of their funding applications.  From formal networking events to spontaneous chats in cafes, having an answer to the inevitable ‘and what do you do?’ question will help you make important connections with people who could support your work now – or in the future.

Although memorising a script isn’t recommended, it is well worth having some words that outline the question (or problem) you want to look into, that explain why your research is important, how you plan to investigate and how your work will advance the field.

So, next time you’re putting together a research proposal, remember the elevator and raise your game.

Check out the video of speaker top tips from the Fellowships: What you need to know event

Fellowship and funding information

By Heather Smith, Postdoc Careers Service Team

 

The PI as entrepreneur

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Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

I was thinking the other day that we do postdocs a disservice when we talk about ’staying in academia’.  It makes it sound as though moving into industry or non-research careers is a career change, but that the move from postdoc to PI is not.

In fact the skills required to be a successful PI are perhaps closer to those needed to be a successful entrepreneur than those you have developed as a postdoc.  Your ability to carry out research will be less important, as you will have postdocs and PhD students to focus on that. Instead you will need to raise your profile, to network and to persuade others that your unique research ideas are worth funding. You will have to inspire great researchers to join your ‘start-up’ group.

‘PIs as boundary spanners, science and market shapers’ Journal of Technology Transfer, 39(1):1-10 found that successful PIs are strategists with a clarity of purpose and a clear vision of their scientific mission over the long term.  They are loyal to their vision, not their institution, and so are mobile, making strategic moves.  They are collaborators, spanning traditional boundaries between disciplines and increasingly between academia and industry.  And they are leaders, setting the direction for their research group.

If this isn’t how you see your career developing, don’t despair – there will be different career paths to suit you, but ‘staying in academia’ long-term might not be right for you.  If, however, you are keen on being a PI, start observing how the PIs you know deploy their entrepreneurial skills.

By Sally Todd, Postdoc Careers Adviser

We love helping postdocs because….

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Postdoc careers advisers infront of header 'we love helping postdocs because'

It’s Valentine’s Day and a good excuse to find out more about the postdoc careers advisers and why they love helping postdocs. (from left – right)

Anne

‘I love helping postdocs because they are a diverse and amazing group in the University.’

As a former postdoc in Germany, Anne has been there and done it. The reason she’s a postdoc careers adviser is she loves helping postdocs discover what makes them tick.

Diane

‘I love helping postdocs because they have fantastic research stories to tell.’

Diane has a background in political theory and music – she came to postdoc careers advising after working overseas in the Canadian foreign service, with other roles in education at a London orchestra and in HE.  She loves working out the logic of postdoc’s story and seeing where this will take them next.

Sonali

‘I love helping postdocs because in addition to helping them, I always learn something new.’

After doing a postdoc in the USA, Sonali has held a number of positions in education and public outreach in the sciences. An astrophysicist by training, she understands how daunting finding a career post-postdoc can be and is happy to help.

Liz

‘I love helping postdocs because they are so passionate about their research.’

Liz is a chemist by training, and before becoming a careers adviser spent time working in science writing and policy. Liz loves working with people, but is also our resident spreadsheet fan!

Sally

‘I get to meet talented researchers from around the world.’

Sally studied genetics, and worked as a wheat breeder, before stepping sideways into training and then careers work.  You may see her cycling frenetically towards the Biomedical Campus for postdoc appointments there.

Together we have over 12 years’ experience of working with the postdoc community – so we know what kinds of pressure you’re facing, and how to help. We also understand that your career is a very individual experience, so we’ll work with you whatever questions you bring to us.

To book an appointment

Naming your values

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What do you value about your work – now and in the future?

Hands playing piano
Photo by Dolo Iglesias on Unsplash

One of my favourite things to watch is a good biographical documentary of a pianist (think ’32 short films about Glenn Gould’ and ‘Richter, the enigma’ on Sviatoslav Richter).  I enjoy the insight into their personal story and following their routes to creative flourishing.  These stories are inspiring – not least because the real life characters within are confronted with challenges of all sorts and variety.

Despite the individual challenges they face, the Richters and Goulds are so driven by their talent and love of their art that their direction is self-apparent.  One would not expect that they necessarily ever sat down to explicitly consider if their work gives them enough of what they value.

Many postdocs I meet have pursued their academic career with similar focus on ideas in fields of research where they have talent and are successful.  For some, the singularity of the research goal coincides with their personal work values and continues to do so through postdoc and onward inexorably in academia.  For many others, their values may change over time as personal and professional situations develop and priorities shift.   In any case, as much as you might have a good instinctive sense of what your values are, it is helpful to name them and to go through a process of interrogating yourself to check in with your current values and to help steer your own course.

How naming your values is helpful in career decisions:

Your values are one element in career choice which belong alongside your interests, skills, and strengths – and these can help to give some structure to the landscape of your career.   Spending a bit of time thinking through the beliefs and principles in which your aspirations are grounded can help to validate the path you are on.  This can give you a framework to check that your next steps are in line with what is important to you.  Risk? Routine? Status?  Autonomy?   Altruism? Naming your set of values will not give you the answer to the job you want, but it will enable you to be strategic and scrutinise whether your direction is meaningful for you.

Values may change over time:

Person looking at sunset in quiet contemplation
Photo by Chetan Menaria on Unsplash

At one stage in my own career I valued change and variety –this has been supplanted by a value of stability.  Similarly, it is unlikely that your beliefs and ideals have remained completely static over time and it is worth being deliberate about taking some time to consider whether they have changed and what that change can mean for what you find satisfying in your professional life.

Tools to use:

There are a number of ways to go about reflecting on and identifying your values including online resources such as this values-based motivator of success http://www.careers.cam.ac.uk/careerplanning/knowyourself.asp.  The values assessment on Imagine PhD (a career exploration tool for AHSS PhDs and postdocs though the values tool itself is not discipline dependent) https://www.imaginephd.com/assessment  also has a good mechanism for identifying values and with suggestions of questions to ask yourself about choices based on your identified values.  Or book a confidential appointment with one of our postdoc careers advisers for individualised help with exploring your values and how this can enlighten your career planning.

Diane Caldwell-Hird, Postdoc Careers Adviser

 

Seven things I learned about applying for fellowships

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At the Postdoc Careers Service, we’ve got lots of experience in helping postdocs applying for fellowships. At our event in December, Fellowships: what you need to know, it was great to hear our advice being backed up by the real experts – fellowship holders and academics who sit on review panels. But among the standard tips and tricks we expected to hear about, there were also some new nuggets I’d love to share with you.

Get new ideas by attending talks outside your discipline

You’ll probably have heard advice to ‘read around your subject’ and find the questions that interest you, but Prof George Malliaras gave some very specific and practical advice: at conferences, seek out talks, especially the general level ones, which are running outside the sessions for your own community. This is a great way to get perspectives from outside your discipline, and to look for that all important space in the field you can call your own.

Don’t assume good networking means rubbing shoulders with the great and good

We all know that conferences are an important way to expand our network, and seek future collaborations and job offers. But asking a question at the end of someone’s talk marks you out as a ‘scientist’ and not just a schmoozer.

Write an opinion piece to stake a claim to an area of research

BBSRC David Phillips Fellow Sebastian Eves-Van Den Akker suggests writing a short opinion piece as an easy way to demonstrate independent thought on a particular area of your field. Get this piece published, and you have peer-reviewed evidence of expertise in an area you can call your own.

A fellowship is a benefit to your host, not just to you.  Play this to your advantage.

Prof Florian Hollfelder pointed out that as an independent fellow, you are not tied to your host PIs project milestones, so you may be able to try things out which are considered too risky for a grant-based project. This could be an attractive proposition to put to a potential host.

If a fellowship doesn’t offer research costs, make sure you choose a well-resourced host.

Your choice of host is important for many reasons. As URF-holder David Fairen-Jiminez said, you want a host that doesn’t just allow you to work there, but wants you to work there. Working with a new PI could be really exciting – being there at the start and setting up a lab could offer you new skills, and the PI has a lot of boring stuff to do so as the first postdoc you could have a lot of freedom. But if your research is expensive, a well-established lab might be safer.

Don’t let your proposal fail by confusing a fellowship project with your long-term research vision.

Your vision is broad – it’s what you want to do with your academic life. Don’t confuse this with your fellowship proposal, which is only one component of your vision, and has to be the right scale for the time of the fellowship. Where will you be at the end of the fellowship? Structure the project to deliver this.

Even professors do interview practice

Dry runs are tough but make a difference. Seasoned fellowship panellist and professor Steve Russell stressed that even senior academics have practice interviews too. Don’t be embarrassed about asking for help.

For more tips from our event, watch the video!

Liz Simmonds, Postdoc Careers Adviser

 

What are my career options?

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It’s a question that comes up again and again here at the Postdoc Careers Service. The good news is that you have plenty of options, but they take a bit of time to navigate. In the spirit of a new year, let’s make a start….

Academia

Your experience in academia is the baseline against which all options will compare. I rarely meet postdocs who feel that their research is going as well as they’d like it to. But do you feel you are ‘sort-of’ on track to become a lecturer/PI? Not sure? Get feedback from academics in your field and find out what achievements postdocs who have recently got these positions had. If you don’t feel you are competitive, what can you do to make a difference? How realistic is that plan? Would you actually like being a lecturer/PI? Heck, you meet these people every day. Observe what they do for a while and imagine yourself in their shoes. Being a lecturer/PI may be the best known career option for postdocs, but it’s certainly not the only one. Are there other options in academia you would consider as an alternative? Support roles such as scientific facilities or being a long term postdoc, bearing in mind, you may have to move research groups and locations as required?

Research outside academia

OK, let’s say you love doing research but don’t have a burning, some would call it, er, dogged, desire to pursue your own research questions. At the same time you are sick of being a postdoc. How about doing research outside academia? You are, after all, a professional researcher. We have tons of postdocs getting great research jobs in what we often call ‘industry’ – scientific and technology based ones. The pharma/biotech sector is popular but there are many more. Interested?  Employers will look for relevant specialist skills or subject knowledge and a willingness to work towards what they, not always you, deem important. That normally involves teamwork, which many postdocs tell me they yearn for.

Non-research roles

Perhaps you’re done with niche techniques and digging deep into one area, y-a-w-n, but you realise that you enjoy parts of your job. Do you prefer analysing data to generating it? Yup! Got good feedback from a presentation? Like writing papers and reports and, in fact, right now, you have a line of people queuing for you to edit theirs? That’s just a few examples of how to identify your skills, you have many more. ‘So what’, you might say, these skills are ubiquitous in the job market. Actually, employers tell us that they find it hard to get people with many of the skills which you use day in, day out in research. But how do skills translate into actual jobs? Look at some of our examples of amazing jobs postdocs in your shoes have got.

It is healthy to be aware of your career options; there is enough pressure in academia without feeling your options are limited. They’re not.

Wishing you a good start to 2019, dear readers.

Anne Forde, Postdoc Careers Adviser

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