Guest contributor Liesbeth Aerts
One year ago today, I found myself in a lecture theatre, presenting my research to a thesis jury. During the years leading up to that moment, there were many days when I worried whether I was ever going to make it that far. When I finally did, most of all, I felt relieved.
Liesbeth Aerts
Guest contributor Helen Cammack
In my last blog post, I discussed career progression, publishing and gender equality with Professors Donald and Gibson. Here, we continue our conversation.
Did you relocate often as a postdoc?
AD: I moved around – I had a postdoc in the States, then returned to Cambridge. But at that stage I wasn’t really thinking about a career, so I wasn’t that bothered about what happened next. I didn’t intend to be an academic, so the pressure wasn’t on me. Nowadays everyone has to be calculating and publish in the right journals, and the pressure can detract from that freedom.
VG: When I was in my early career, I was just enjoying the moment, and I wasn’t thinking about my future career. The postdocs of today seem to more aware about career opportunities; they know that the majority of them won’t stay in academia; they’re looking around for what they would like to do and they’re picking up the skills they need for the future. It’s not just the academic side, it’s also the personal aspects – they’re concerned about getting on the housing ladder and potentially having families. At that stage those concerns never crossed my mind.
Guest contributors Philipp Gramlich and Karen Bodewits
Philipp Gramlich and Karin Bodewits
Guest contributor Thaís Moraes
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” first reads like an outworn self-help cliché. But I tried it. And I have to tell you that this outworn self-help cliché worked for me. I’m a Brazilian researcher who came to Germany in April 2014 for a two-year postdoc, alone, without speaking a word of German, without knowing anyone, and without even knowing the city. What could have been a complete disaster turned out more than great. I’m very pleased I left my comfort zone.
Guest contributor Sarah-Jane Lonsdale
The Institute of Physics ran an event in November 2015 targeted at PhD students and early career researchers on “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist”. It was a rallying cry which attracted women in physics from all walks of life, working in both academia and industry.
As a first year PhD student, I attended the event hoping to explore possible career options in a supportive environment. My interest in engaging more women in science comes from several supportive female mentors that helped me through my formative years, both at school and as I honed my skills as an undergraduate. They facilitated my first steps into STEM and research, but not everyone has the same good fortune. I hoped to be able to share my experiences and support others, while hearing the inspirational stories of women who have “made it” in physics. After the event, I spoke with Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet, R&D manager at SHARP Laboratories, and Dr Jenny Wooldridge, associate programme manager at the National Physical Laboratory, about their career paths in industry.
Sarah-Jane Lonsdale
Now, she works at Texas A&M University in College Station, where she helps professors put together grant applications, form collaborations, and identify funding opportunities.
Tell me about your job.
It’s hard to say what a typical day is like, which I kind of like. On any given day, I might consult with an investigator about a research grant or edit a proposal.
Our goal is also to help promote collaboration among faculty. For example, we help to facilitate the formation of research interest groups, on, say, imaging or healthy ageing. We might organize a meeting where faculty get two minutes to present an overview of what they are doing, and we make program books and plan meetings to help make ideas happen.
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Guest contributor Helen Cammack
Since I entered the third year of my PhD, my future career has been increasingly on my mind. I’ve been to a few careers events with stands full of free USB pens and glossy brochures, but always came away disappointed, unable to see myself in the roles they had advertised. The IOP’s careers event was different; there, people shared my aspirations and were sympathetic to my concerns. The opening talk by Prof Athene Donald was inspirational, and there was a variety of guest speakers who had used their physics training to build successful careers. I came away from the day with a new buzz, excited about my career possibilities.
Ronald McQuaid, University of Stirling
When you send off a CV to a prospective employer, you will hope to get a fair hearing. You will hope that your skills, experience and qualifications decide the response, rather than the school you went to, your post code, or even your name. Instinctively, though, we know that this isn’t always the case. Prime Minister David Cameron already has zeroed in on the issue of how applications from people with non-Anglo-Saxon or Celtic names are treated:
Do you know that in our country today: even if they have exactly the same qualifications, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get call backs for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names?
The UK civil service, and many major employers, have agreed to introduce application forms without the applicant’s name, in order to reduce the potential for discrimination. But how much does theory and evidence back this up? Continue reading
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1. Work–life balance: Lab life with kids
Time management and organisation is essential to keep your lab life ticking over and your home life running smoothly. But it can be done. As Jens Schuster, a molecular biologist at Uppsala University, Sweden, says, “cells don’t care if you come in at midnight or noon to take care of them.”
This classic question has been tripping prospective employees up for years – whether they’re applying for jobs at the local greengrocers or at Apple. There’s no 100% guaranteed-to-land-you-the-job answer to this question, but there are certainly wrong ways to answer, and ways that will maximise your chances. The first step, as with many interview questions, is to understand why you’re being asked the question – what is the interviewer looking for? After that, we’ll examine how you shouldn’t answer, and end on how you should.
Why?
Generally, an interviewer is looking to see a few things when they ask you about your weaknesses – first, they’re looking for self-awareness. Are you knowledgeable enough about yourself to understand and appreciate where you’ll fit well within a role, and where you might need to develop? And are you comfortable enough with yourself to admit those areas?
This is one of the most well-known interview questions out there, so an interviewer may also be looking to make sure you care enough to have prepared to answer this question. If you don’t have something ready for them, that could be taken as a red flag.