Expand your departmental tasks
If you’re not sure if you want to leave, try to take up as many roles within your department as possible. This might seem counter-intuitive, given that academics at all levels are pretty much outrageously overloaded, but hear me out.
Every university requires teaching staff for their undergraduate courses—teaching lab demonstrators, tutors, lecturers. Many institutions may require you to teach as part of your position, and if they don’t, try to teach at least one class or deliver one lecture per semester.
Not only is it something extra to put on the CV as well as an extra source of income (always welcome!), teaching can often clarify whether you REALLY want to spend a part of your life trying to drill the citric acid cycle into a bunch of adolescents. Additionally, your department will also likely have many committees, and the more you do for your department, the more they will back you up should you need help when leaving. These are the people who see you every day, and most likely the ones you will ask for references from when you need them.
Network, network, network
Of course, underlying all my preceding advice is the need to encourage networking. The best thing you can do for yourself in your career, both in front of and away from the bench, is to know as many people as possible. The more people know you, how it is to work with you, and your skills, the more likely you’ll be recommended for positions, both inside and outside of research.
This can be illustrated by the story of one of my acquaintances, who had completed two post-doc positions. His first postdoc was on a grant that included industry partners and they ended up publishing a paper together. A few years later, the company posted an advertisement for a scientist, and my friend called the person with whom he had conducted a lot of the work. Following an internal recommendation for an interview, he found himself working for the company.
Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to be involved in such projects, but keep in contact with people and keep on developing yourself, and you can always find a way to parlay your scientist skills to something other than just the lab.
And lastly, chat with the industry people you meet at conferences—you never know when they might give you useful advice!
This article is from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff
