PerspectivesAre you interested in submitting a Perspective Article? Be sure to read The Science Advisory Board's Editorial Guides for Perspective Articles. Click here. The World According to Your Next Employer: An Aid to Finding Your Big Break by Robert F. Ryan, M.S., Ph.D.  Are you getting ready? Are you putting in the time? If not, start today. Has anybody told you how much time it will take? Have your friends, mentors, advisors made certain to remind you? Have you pushed yourself enough yet to get going? It may come as no surprise to some, but it will to many others. That time honored job hunting experience awaits you at every turn. For years, I have been reminded by my PhD mentor I should always keep looking, you never know when the “right” job will come along. It is difficult to predict exactly how time consuming searching, planning, typing, correcting, looking, preparing, sending, wwwwwaaaaiting and interviewing can be. One thing is certain, it will be longer than you expect, especially in today’s market. Hopefully, this article will present you with facts, food for thought from a spectrum of different disciplines, writers and new sources, and then give you impetus to help you find that next position in your career, regardless of who you are.First, let’s examine data from the United States National Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of May 30, 2003, the somewhat stable overall unemployment rate is 6.1%. By region it is 5.7%, 5.6%, 5.5% and 6.5% in the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West, respectively yet varies substantially state to state (3.4% – 12.5%). Importantly, these figures have risen from approximately 4% overall in only 2 years. Hidden behind these figures though, according to a recent article from The Chicago Tribune (June 1, 2003), long-term unemployment has risen substantially, much like after the recession in the 1990s. The article presents data indicating that the number of long-term unemployed (greater than 6 months) has doubled from 11% in 2000 to 21.8% and also states that 43% of the jobless have utilized all state-funded unemployment benefits—the highest level since 1983. From the many articles I have read, economic analysts can’t decide if the economy will rebound any time soon. Lastly, I found a very disturbing trend from the National Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate of unemployment for individuals with bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degrees has risen 15% over the past year from 2.7% to 3.1%. (Employment status by educational attainment)  There are many sources of information these days to aid and guide us through our job searches. In discussions with academic, business, and government individuals, approximately 70% of all positions are filled through contacts, not submitted curricula vitas (CVs), and up to 50% of potential employers already have a candidate in mind when an announcement is posted. Therefore, it is extremely important to go to meetings, seminars, etc., making certain to meet people and develop contacts that may in the future produce your next job. Drs. Larry Boxer and Bob Todd have written an article “Why the mentor is more important than ever” in Hem/Onc Today, May 2003, which could be used as a guide to finding the right mentor or boss as much as teaching mentors what they should be striving to accomplish. As you go through your job or fellowship search, I recommend looking for the qualities they recommend. They first suggest that “most obvious, a mentor should love to teach, gaining personal satisfaction from the success of trainees during the training process.” In addition, they suggest mentors be well established, projecting confidence and enthusiasm to the trainee, and should have time to teach, making it a significant part of their day. The authors also suggest that mentors should help the trainee develop and execute hypothesis-driven research with achievable aims yielding publishable results. Mentors should also help trainees develop authorship skills, make professional contacts, guide their ethical conduct, analysis and result reporting and eventually assist the trainee in finding employment upon fellowship completion. Thus, there is a great deal of value in 1) maintaining good relationships with previous mentors/bosses/companies and 2) determining who to work for prior to accepting/beginning any new job. Although this should be done diplomatically, consider asking others in the office or lab about management style, how supportive they are, if they aid in connecting their personnel to potential employers and how previous personnel fared in their job search after leaving. This may provide you insights about working with them. Another excellent source of information is your local library or bookstore. I recently came across a great book entitled, “Getting and Keeping the Job: Success in Business and Technical Careers” by Val Clark (Allyn and Bacon Publishing). The text begins with a section, “About You and Your Search for the Right Employment Position” and continues from there doing a thorough job of assessing, guiding and leading the reader through self-analysis and eventually interviewing, communicating and working productively with co-workers. Although we often feel like our application is the only one, over 20 million resumes are submitted to potential employers daily. There are often 100-300 CVs submitted for each job opening. Therefore, it is worthwhile to seriously consider your CV or resume quality. In a recent discussion with someone from a large company, he indicated that in addition to a CV, it was a good idea to create a resume. He suggested it was important since it provides a one page, “quick-look” sheet, which covers all your major accomplishments and specifically addresses what you are presently doing and what you can offer to potential employers. When potential employers find who they want, they will contact you for more. Cindy Kraft, a certified Career Management Coach, has written a wonderful article for Gene Sciences News on DNABlogs.com entitled “5 Mistakes That Can Kill Your Job Search.” She has boiled down the failure to secure a job, as you might guess, to the following five reasons: 1) Lack of a clear, and realistic, career focus; 2) Failure to identify and quantify marketable skills; 3) Inadequate marketing documents. (e.g., resume, cover letter, application, follow up letters, etc); 4) Poor references; 5) Flunking the interview. After talking to Ms. Kraft myself, I suggest that her offer at the end of her article may be exactly what we all need: “Spend 30 minutes with me in a complimentary coaching session—with absolutely no obligation—and you will learn at least one new strategy to help you outperform the competition.” In case you missed it or Chinese is not your primary language, a nice job-finding article was recently published in the Chinese New World Times (April 11, 2003). Besides recommending looking for a job every day, they suggested five themes: 1) Revise your CV and have a colleague look it over and provide feedback. Since your CV is the first thing an employer sees, it can make you surface to the top. 2) Not all job openings are listed on the web, so don’t rely on it entirely. 3) Before you meet with a hiring company, make certain not to mention salary, if at all possible. This prevents losing a potential position you might otherwise accept. 4) Consider using headhunter companies. 5) Be prepared to accept a lower salary. The priority is to find a job. When the economy isn’t doing well, the job is more important than the salary. When the market recovers, you can always find a better paying job. As if you didn’t already know, the web is a great source of information and looking for a job online can be overwhelming in its depth and complexity. Nonetheless, there is a great article entitled “Follow the Money, On the Web” by Chris Tucker for the Southwest Airlines magazine, Spirit (May 2003). He gives us a good description of the top five web job hunting sources and has produced a great synopsis table. Besides the job listings, Monster.com has the Virtual Interviews and Salary Wizard; Career Journal is the Wall Street Journal’s job seekers site; Hot Jobs has a great Career Tools section and a Hot Block feature to keep your present company from knowing you’re looking; FlipDog.com has a web-prowling job search engine; and GetThatGig.com provides interviews with people in many positions. Finally, Ms. Kraft provides us with his five tips for online job seekers: 1) Do your homework; 2) Protect your privacy; 3) Don’t expect job sites to do all the work; 4) Lose the cutesy e-mail names; 5) Don’t use the “mad-spammer” approach. So, by now I have hopefully come full-circle by providing you with data and several different people’s vantage points and tips to help you in your job search. What are my five overriding suggestions? 1) Study yourself: think about where you are and where you want to go; 2) Make sure to update your CV and resume to match your direction and let someone else read it; 3) Keep up with your field; 4) Keep in constant touch with your references; 5) Keep submitting applications/CVs and Never Give Up! “The right match will come,” as Gary Officer, Executive Director for the National Credit Union Foundation told me, “And when it happens, it will all happen very quickly.” ### Dr. Ryan is a molecular biologist and geneticist with expertise in molecular biology, protein characterization and biochemistry. He completed his M.S. degree while studying Sickle Cell and other hemoglobinopathies at The Medical College of Georgia. Later, Dr. Ryan received his Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA where he characterized the DNA and RNA binding properties of the zinc finger proteins TFIIIA and p43. He completed his Post-Doctoral training at The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia and The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, studying mechanisms of transcriptional repression and the binding properties of the glucocorticoid receptor in vivo. He has published research articles in Experimental Cell Research, MCB, Nucleic Acids Research, PNAS, Sphere and The British Journal of Hematology. His primary interests are in teaching, writing, increasing translational science and initiating new cancer treatments while differentiating responding from non-responding patients. Dr. Ryan has been a member of The Science Advisory Board since October, 2001. ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Perspectives ] |
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