Finding Good Scientific Career Advice When Job Prospects Are Tight

An unfortunate number of young scientists report having been given bad career advice early in their professional lives. Faced with the choice of whether to pursue a scientific career at all, and if so, whether to aim for a career in academia, industry, government, or some other sector, potential scientists are hungry for advice and become bitterly disappointed when that advice proves incorrect. Although "incorrect" counseling may not have been mean-spirited-- indeed, it may not even have been incorrect at the time it was given--it is undeniable that the current scientific job market is tight and shows no signs of easing soon. This places good advice at a greater premium than ever. But if scientists feel they've received bad advice previously (see story on page 1), where should they go for good advice now, and how will they recognize good advice when they get it? CAST A BROAD NET : Talk to many different people for advice, suggests Virginia Tech's Joseph S. Merola, and then compare what they say. "Number one, talk to multiple people," says Joseph S. Merola, director of graduate education for the chemistry department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "One of the difficulties that we sometimes have is that there is one person whom we have a close association with, and we look to them for advice. Get multiple pieces of advice, and talk to as many people as you can to see how everything jibes. "There are a lot of people who are very negative about careers in science, and there are a lot of people who are positive about scientific careers. People should talk to their professors, talk to their colleagues, and see if they can come to a comfortable conclusion. They may decide, 'Things don't look so good, but this is what I really want to do, and it's worth taking the chance,' or 'Things look so bleak that I don't think I can be successful in this environment, so I'd better go look for something else.'" Catherine D. Gaddy, executive director of the Washington D.C.- based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST), agrees, and suggests that people seeking advice on scientific careers talk to people who understand different aspects of the problem. "I would say that faculty advisers are one source and, as with any scientific inquiry, you want multiple sources," she suggests. "From a field-specific, knowledge-and-skills point of view, the academic advisers are it. From a career-development point of view, talking to other recent graduates gives you specific information, and folks often don't take advantage of it. "I recommend they use the alumni networks from their graduate and undergraduate programs, and talk to folks in the field, in the industry, and in the geographical location where they might want to work." Surfing the Internet is another way to get a variety of points of view. "I think the Internet is an excellent source of advice, with the proviso that there's an awful lot of noise," says Merola. "I'm specifically referring to the Usenet newsgroups, especially sci.research, sci.research.careers, and, for my own area, sci.chem. Those are really good places to get a dialogue going, because just during the last year the number of people participating and responding has grown exponentially. It's a very good place for give and take." The newsgroup sci.research.careers is a venue for particularly lively discussions of career issues. In recent months, discussions have included such topics as whether it's a bad idea to take a second postdoc, whether medical school is preferable to graduate school, and, most generally, whether "science is a bad career move today"--the subject heading of one of the most active threads, or series of messages. Merola is a frequent participant in these discussions, and he generally advocates and defends the choice to pursue a scientific career against the many bitter and disillusioned scientists warning young people to stay away. "The only problem with this particular discussion," he notes, "is that those folks who are having real difficulty with finding positions now are justifiably tied up emotionally in the problem. Many times it's awfully hard for them to accept reason and logic. As one student said, 'Everything you've told me is probably correct, and I would probably agree with you, but it's hard when I don't know where my next meal is coming from.'" Another Internet resource for career advice and discussion is the Young Scientists Network (YSN), which is available both as an electronic mailing list and on the World Wide Web (send E- mail to: ysnadm@crow-t-robot.stanford.edu for more information). YSN was founded by physicist Kevin Aylesworth in May 1990 when he was a postdoc at the Naval Research Lab. The network now has more than 3,000 subscribers to its mailing list. "I was talking to people trying to find jobs, and they were having a tough time," Aylesworth recalls. "At the same time, I was hearing a lot of news reports about the shortage of scientists, and that disconnect really got to me. I said, 'Something has got to be done about this,' so I tried electronic mail. Our primary objective was to let everybody know there is no such thing as a shortage of scientists. Another goal is to help find careers for people. I'm trying to move the Young Scientists Network more in the direction of the latter goal, because the first goal, for all intents and purposes, has been won." The YSN E-mail list includes discussions of career and political issues of interest to scientists as well as position announcements. Its participants also lend each other mutual support in their job searches. (For more information on using Internet resources to find job openings and career advice, see R. Finn, "Career-Building Sites On The Internet: Hunting For Jobs Electronically," The Scientist, Jan. 23, 1995, page 22.) A way to become one's own adviser, to assess whether one will eventually be successful in a scientific career, is for young scientists to begin investigating the job market well before they actually need to look for a job. Gaddy recommends making a habit of reading the classified ads in important scientific publications every week or every month. And Arthur E. Sowers, a membrane biologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, who is a frequent participant in discussions on sci.research.careers, says that postdocs should go even further. A year or two before they'll be looking seriously for a position, he suggests "that they actually start sending out their C.V.'s just to test the waters, to see if they're going to get any responses at all. Some of these kids are going to be sending out 100 to 200 C.V.'s. If they only get one or two invitations to come and give a seminar, they should begin to get the message that they're going to have a difficult time." Even better than testing the waters is actually trying a potential career on for size, making face-to-face contacts and gaining hands-on experience. CPST's Gaddy recommends that young scientists pursue internships. These are good, she says, not only for making personal contacts, "but also for seeing first-hand what's going on." A graduate student in molecular biology unsure whether to pursue a career in academia or industry, for example, might find that a summer internship at a pharmaceutical company would provide valuable insight. Scientists who wish to take a highly organized approach to career development may want to investigate an intensive program called "Scientific Career Transitions" run by the New York-based, nonprofit Science and Technology Advisory Board. Photo: Mark Kaganovich LEARN TO MAKE CONTACTS : Stephen Rosen's Scientific Career Transitions program helps researchers develop vital networking skills. Developed by astrophysicist and author Stephen Rosen, the program began in 1990 and was originally designed to help Russian scientists and engineers who were recent refugees from the collapse of the Soviet Union's science programs to find work in the U.S. Rosen's current project, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation--and in which he is joined by YSN's Kevin Aylesworth--opens the Scientific Career Transitions program to American scientific workers, who may be refugees of a different type. "You can say these are refugees from unhappy or dead-end careers," Rosen notes. "Scientists and engineers have special needs and special problems," he says. "They happen to be skeptical of lots of things. They feel very comfortable with ideas, facts, books, and equipment, but they often feel relatively uncomfortable with social skills. But it's the social skills that are required in making professional contacts, especially when one is pursuing new career options." Specifically, after a round of intense aptitude testing, intended to uncover latent interests and abilities, participants in the program concentrate on developing a broad social network--which, according to Rosen, is the key to finding employment. In his E-mail message to potential participants, Rosen writes, "most employers (especially corporations, but also universities and research labs) tend to look for employees first by asking trusted current employees, second by asking trusted competitors, third by advertising, and fourth by paying search firms or agencies. . . . This is the major reason for the repeated research findings that the vast majority of jobs come from contacts. "But how do most employees look for work? Usually, first by answering ads or [through] search firms, agencies, or postings. Second by asking friends or relatives. Third by sending out resumes 'cold' to potential employers on the off chance that their qualifications will arrive at the moment they're needed. Notice [that] this is in inverse order of priority to the employers' search methods. It is also inefficient, leads to very low response rates . . . [and] to rejection, frustration, discouragement, anger, shame, [and] fear of scams." Rosen says: "The more arrows you have in your quiver, the more parts of your personality or latent skills and interests you can cultivate, the richer a person you will be and the more likely you will be able to turn on a dime and keep a lot of career paths open. It's even worthwhile to go through the process of considering multiple options, even if you come back to the career direction you started in. As arduous as it may be, some people feel it's a worthwhile exercise. And it is arduous. It's like moving a cemetery. It's like getting a Ph.D." As demanding as the program can be, it has proved successful for some researchers. "I have an example of one of the Russian scientists who arrived here penniless," Rosen continues. "He spent 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for four months [working on the program], at the end of which he had 300 individuals in his network of personal contacts. That resulted in 10 job interviews and four job offers in his specialties-- crystallochemistry, materials science, and solid-state physics." In the current pilot program funded by the Sloan Foundation, which is conducted by E-mail, Rosen expects participants to commit to spending at least 20 hours a week on the program. And all this testing, mentoring, and coaching does not come cheaply. Participants are asked to pay entry fees of $100 to $300, and to pledge 10 percent to 20 percent of their first year's salary if the program helps them find what they consider to be an appropriate job. (For more information, send E-mail to: srosenc@ix.netcom.com.) It may be particularly difficult for scientists, trained to search for definitive and quantitative answers to nature's mysteries, to accept that there's no way to know in advance the "correct" career path to take. It's hard to tell good career advice from bad, but California Institute of Technology physicist and vice provost David Goodstein offers what is perhaps the most reliable advice of all on scientific careers: "The answer is, do it if you love it. Don't do it because the Ph.D. is your ticket to an easy life, because that's not true anymore. But if you love science and want to do research, you should still do it."

Finding Good Scientific Career Advice When Job Prospects Are Tight

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Robert Finn

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May 1995

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