Most read on Naturejobs: October 2015

Posted on 30 Oct 2015 by Julie Gould

Career uncertainty, industrial postdocs, writing for highly-selective journals and more!

Thank you to everyone for reading our posts this month. We’ve been working closely with a lot of new writers, and we’re pleased that you’ve enjoyed what they have to say! Here’s a list of your top ten favourite reads from October.

This year Nature have been running their Graduate Student Survey, trying to understand what careers graduates are looking to do when they finish their training, and how they are preparing for them. In Graduate survey: Uncertain futures, Chris Woolston gives a great summary of the results, and shares some stories from graduate students around the world.

Industrial postdocs: A bridge between two worlds is a report from the Naturejobs Career Expo in London earlier this year, where Roche presented a workshop on the postdoctoral opportunities they offer.

The traditional route in academia – PhD, a postdoc or two (or three) and then professor – is one everyone is familiar with. But there are other options, as Careers in academia: Different options explores. This is another report from the 2015 Naturejobs Career Expo in London, where different types of academics gave an insight into their different roles.

The Naturejobs Career Expo reports are popular this month! Nature Masterclasses: Writing for highly-selective journals, is another report from the event, this time about one of the workshops run by the Nature Masterclasses team. Continue reading →

Academia to industry and back again

Posted on 29 Oct 2015 by Julie Gould

Eric Betzig, one of three chemistry Nobel laureates from 2014, shares what he learned from working in both academia and industry, and how he applies it to his career now.

It’s often said that being a science graduate is a great thing: it opens so many doors and gives you the chance to take on any career. Although this might be true, it also makes deciding what career to focus on, and train for, very difficult.

This month, Nature Careers published a great piece based on the 2015 Nature Graduate Student Survey, where Nature tried to uncover what careers early career researchers were hoping to get, and how they were preparing themselves. In this podcast I was joined by Monya Baker, one of the Nature Careers editors, to give us some further insight into the survey.

The second part of the podcast is an interview I did with Eric Betzig, one of the three chemistry Nobel prize winners in 2014. In our chat we talk about his work in breaking the diffraction limit, what it’s like to see living cells move and his transitions from academia to industry and back again.

The 2015 Nature Careers Graduate Student Survey

Posted on 16 Oct 2015 by Julie Gould

See how current graduate students around the world feel about their future career paths in next week’s issue of Nature as the results from the 2015 Nature Careers Graduate Student Survey are published.

One challenge that many graduate students face when deciding on future career paths is finding information on what the options are, and how other graduates got there. Although some information is collated by universities and by the Survey of Doctoral Recipients, run by National Science Foundation in the United States, for example, it’s not enough for students to make an informed decision.

“Graduate students would make better decisions [about their future careers] if they had better data,” says Paula Stephan, a labour economist at Georgia State University. So, to do their bit and help young graduate students arm themselves, Nature Careers runs a bi-annual, global survey of graduate students.

Many say that mentors should have an active role to play in preparing students for their future careers, but in 2011 the graduate student survey run by Nature Careers demonstrated that as the years went by, graduate students were less and less satisfied with the support they received.

Other surveys have shown that this decrease in support could in part be due to the growing lack of interest in academic careers as the students move through their PhD programmes.

In 2013, the Nature Careers graduate student survey also explored the issue of debt, and how students were increasingly worried about how the financial burden of grad school would affect their future careers.

Whether these trends have continued, the Nature Careers team is trying to find out. This year, the survey looks to answer questions that many graduate students will have on their mind: What do science graduate students around the world expect to pursue for their career? What do they really think about industry – or academia? How do they decide on a career path? Are they getting useful advice from their adviser or from their institution? And how do they feel about their graduate programme?

Find all this out and more in Nature Careers on 21 October 2015, when we publish the results of our 2015 survey. We had almost 3,500 respondents from all corners of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe and Central, North and South America.

Most read on Naturejobs: August 2015

Posted on 31 Aug 2015 by Julie Gould

Drug hunters, social media, assessing PhDs and more!

With the run up to the Naturejobs Career Expo in London on September 18th 2015, we’ve been busy sharing the articles from the journalism competition we ran earlier this year! On top of that, we’ve also launched a new writing competition for the #SciData15 event in October (today’s your last chance to send in your applications – so get on it!). Lot’s of opportunities for you to contribute to the blog, as many have done this month.

Here we’ve collected your favourite reads of the month from the blog and from Nature Careers.

1. As the biotherapeutics industry is burgeoning, it needs scientists with specialized disease knowledge and technical savvy to join in the drug-discovery efforts, according to Jeffrey M. Perkel in his piece Biomedical research: Drug hunters wanted.

2. The key to a strong grant application is a well-considered and detailed outline of expenses, says grant director Ingrid Eisenstadter in The dream budget. Continue reading →

What’s your most burning science-careers question?

Posted on 21 Aug 2015 by Julie Gould

We want to know what you want to know so that we can give you what you want to know!

At Nature Careers and Naturejobs, we want to make sure that we’re answering your questions and providing you with the information that you need to make informed decisions about your science careers.

To that end, we’re asking you what you would like us to ask the experts.

We’re looking for everything and anything from the mundane, ‘What do I do when my labmate keeps dropping test tubes on the floor?’ to the more philosophical, ‘Why am I pursuing a scientific career?’

We want to know what you’re thinking, wondering and hoping can be answered.

To this end, we’ve created an online survey where we can collect your questions! Please take just a couple of minutes to take part in our survey, and then share it far and wide, so we can help as many of you as possible!

Alternatively, you can leave your most burning question in the comments section below.

Thank you!

Most read on Naturejobs: July 2015

Posted on 31 Jul 2015 by Julie Gould

What makes a good scientist; Leaving academia; ERC funding and much more from Naturejobs this month.

This month on the Naturejobs blog we’ve published 17 blog posts (18 if you include this one!). That’s a lot of words, and a lot of advice from your peers.

On the last Friday of every month we share the top picks, as chosen by you. Feast your eyes:

1. What is the biggest missing piece in how we educate scientists? Responses, from a range of thought leaders, ranged from the practical to the philosophical in STEM education: to build a scientist on Nature Careers.

2. Insider Knowledge, by Chris Woolston, offers insights into what others might have already learned in a career that you have chosen to follow. His advice: take the time to seek out what inside information you can get to help decide whether or not this career is the right fit for you. Continue reading →

Finding job satisfaction in science outreach

Posted on 01 Jul 2015 by Julie Gould

How Elizabeth Waters took a love of mentoring and training into Rockefeller University’s teaching labs.

Elizabeth Walters

After completing her PhD at Oregon Health Science University and doing postdoctoral and associate researcher work in neuroscience at Rockefeller University, Elizabeth Waters transitioned to a position in science outreach there. She describes her move to science education.

Click here to read about how Waters pursued science outreach as a career.

What do you do as lead scientist at the university’s outreach programme?

We offer lab classes to NYC high school students. This was something that was previously run twice a year and now it is run twice a week. We introduce kids and their teachers to the molecular biology skills that were so important in Rockefeller’s discoveries, and to the idea of how scientists choose what scientific questions interest them. We ask: do you like top down questions or bottom up questions? Even in science, you have to discover what kind of scientist you want to be. Continue reading →

Most read on Naturejobs: June 2015

Posted on 30 Jun 2015 by Julie Gould

Public speaking, mobility and a bit of self-reflection have been the subject of your favourite reads on Naturejobs in June 2015.

What a busy month we’ve had. Again! The Naturejobs blog has published 15 new blog posts, which have been read by thousands of you.

For those that missed them when they first came out: here is a list of the top 10 most popular pieces from Naturejobs and Nature Careers this month. Happy reading!

Although it might not be immediately obvious when you first sign up to becoming a scientist, being a proficient public speaker is very important. You might have to present your work at a conference; you’ll definitely have to defend you PhD work in front of a group of peers. You’ll also have to persuade funders to give you money. In Public speaking: The elevator pitch I was inspired by an elevator pitch I had to give (not science related, unfortunately) to write a few tips on what makes a good pitch. Continue reading →

Most read on Naturejobs: May 2015

Posted on 29 May 2015 by Julie Gould

Building reputations, relocation, adjunct teaching and more have been the topics of choice in May 2015.

This month the Naturejobs team have been working hard on the Boston Naturejobs Career Expo, which happened last week. It was a long, but great day and we want to thank everyone who got involved: Speakers, delegates, exhibitors, sponsors. THANK YOU!

For those that missed it, there will be reports on the event coming out on the Naturejobs blog next week, starting with a summary of the keynote speech by Professor Robert Langer on Monday June 1st.

But now I want to concentrate on May, and here’s a list of your Top Ten reads from Nature Careers and the Naturejobs blog:

1. To get respect in a field, scientists need to consider not just their work, but also their interactions with others, says Chris Woolston in Recognition: Build a reputation on Nature Careers.

2. Contract teaching positions are becoming the norm for many aspiring professors. Know how to make the best out of them, says Kendall Powell in Adjunct teaching: For the love of lecture on Nature Careers.

3. The postdoc series: Help for lost postdocs shows how self-reflection can help young researchers analyze their skills and plan for their futures. Continue reading →

Most read on Naturejobs: March 2015

Posted on 31 Mar 2015 by Julie Gould

The most popular reads on the Naturejobs blog and Nature Careers in March 2015.

It’s that time of the month again for us to say a MASSIVE thank you to all our contributors, interviewees and of course, our readers! Without you, this blog wouldn’t exist.

To celebrate that it’s the end of the month, payday, Lent is almost over and the fact that we can almost crack open the Easter eggs (I confess I might have had a nibble at mine already), we’ve collated the top ten most popular reads on Naturejobs this month. This includes any podcasts, blog posts and Nature Careers articles.

1) The hidden job market by Barry O’Brien gives an insight into how to find those jobs that aren’t traditionally advertised. Unfortunately, this is for about 80% of all jobs that are going… so this piece is definitely worth a look!

2) The second part of the postdoc series: What is a postdoc? is a quick look at the basics of what a postdoc really is.

3) The postdoc series: Insights, careers, options is the opening post to our Postdoc series on the blog in March, and introduces you to some of the concepts that the series touches on.

4) The postdoc series: The plight of the postdoc looks at the challenges that postdocs face, aprticularly in the life sciences.

5) Do you ever wish you’d stayed in science? Some scientists do, some don’t. But now, there is the option to do science and science communication at the same time.

6) Jobs in the USA: Academic CVs and industrial resumes

7) An academic postdoc position might not be the right thing for you. You might want to get a sneak peak into the industrial science world, so maybe part 4 in our postdoc series, Postdocs in industry will be useful to you.

8) One of the most popular pieces on Nature Careers, especially on social media, is all about sexual harassment and assault that is ever-present, and much-hushed in academia. It’s worth reading Social behaviour: Indecent advances, to make yourself aware of the situation.

9) Viviane Callier and Nathan Vanderford’s piece, Wanted: Information, argues that more detailed information about scientists’ movement after they leave academia will help future researchers make more sense of the career options that lie ahead of them.

10) Postgraduate careers: The hunt for the elusive alumni by Paul Smaglik also argues about the need for information about university alumni. It’s obviously something on many-a-researcher’s mind.

Special thanks go to our Naturejobs and Nature Careers contributors in March 2015: Prital Patel, Lauren Celano, Gina Maffey and Barry O’Brien for the Naturejobs blog. Virginia Gewin, Julie Gould, Rachel Cernansky, Paul Smaglik, and Viviane Callier and Nathan Vanderford on Nature Careers

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