Lots of people are being forced to rethink and rewrite their careers in the face of a changing business landscape. Check out Finding a New You — Reinventing Your Career After Being Laid Off from ABC news.
Archive for the ‘Career Fulfillment’ Category
Surprising Career Paths
Saturday, August 8th, 2009You may not believe this, but I have interests other than career development for scientists. One of them is needlework, and in particular quilting. In that vein, I read a blog called Going to Pieces, by a very talented quilter.
In a recent post, she talks about a trip she took, and a gentleman she encountered who had a very surprising career path. Check out Fun and Surprises in San Francisco. The piece I’m talking about starts about halfway down, after the second photo. I actually remember encountering this gentleman on a trip of my own several years ago, but the career path aspect didn’t occur to me until Diane pointed it out.
Looking Out For the Future
Monday, July 6th, 2009One of the mailing lists I’m on has had a discussion recently on how professionals in our field can adapt to changes in the world. The conversation started when someone asked what cities were doing significant hiring, so they could relocate there and find a job.
While this is certainly an option, it may not be the best one. Just because an area has low unemployment doesn’t mean you will find a job there, let alone a job you like. Furthermore, that area may not continue to grow, and you may find yourself having to move again in a few years.
A better strategy is to be flexible not in where you will live (though that can be important), but to be flexible in the type of work you will do, and the industries in which you will do it. By applying your skills to a new field or industry, you can continue to learn and grow professionally without having to relocate (unless you just like moving!).
If you keep up on trends in your industry, and in the world in general, you can see the early warning signs of companies and industries that are on the declines, and ones that are growing. If your area is on the way out, start learning the vocabulary and quirks of ones that are on the rise, so you will be positioned to transition when/if it becomes necessary.
To help you out, Fortune magazine has published a list of growing market segments. Many of these segments are science-related, or could benefit from scientific input. Which ones are of interest to you? Which ones will you keep an eye on, or learn a little more about?
What would you rather do?
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009A great post on StLToday.com provides a nice list of questions to ask yourself when thinking about your next transition….check it out. Decide what you really want to do, then find a way to do that.
Or would you rather check out Bird Land or Bernie’s Five Minutes?
Motherhood, The Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009I finished reading this book this morning, and found it very interesting. It is basically short, first-person narratives from about 30 professional women scientists who are also mothers. Organized chronologically, this book provides an interesting historical perspective on how scientists who want to balance career and motherhood have progressed, or not, over the past several decades.
Each talks about how they manage the balance in their lives, over the days, months and over the lifetime of their careers. The similarities are striking – the wide-eyed innocence with which most entered the ranks, knowing that balance would be possible but not quite how, and the angst when they realized that there were no clear-cut right answers, but a just a series of difficult choices. Most went through stops and starts in their professional careers, trying different career paths and child care options until finding a balance that worked well for them.
It seemed to me that part-time and nontraditional work was used by women more in recent years, though that could just be that those women are easier to find now. I also found that the vignettes were more painful to read the further you got in the book. I suspect this is because the earlier stories are by older women, who have had time to come to terms with their choices and see their children grown and living fulfilling lives. Those later in the book are still in the middle of day care, career building, and the eternal struggle for more hours in the day.
I suppose I should find this encouraging – with the perspective of time, the women in this volume were overall happy with their choices, and had both satisfying professional careers and happy, healthy children. In science, as with raising children, it can take years of trail, error, and wondering until you finally achieve the results you have been looking for. You are never sure how things are going to turn out, and have to go with your best hypothesis and gut instinct. You do the best you can with the information you have at the time, watch closely, and stand ready to change course if things do not turn out as expected.
Science and motherhood are both difficult paths, requiring dedication and persistence, but the payoffs are big. The stories in this volume of how some women scientists have done both may serve as examples, and encourage others who choose to follow both paths.
Tom Lane’s Seven C’s for Career Success
Monday, January 12th, 2009In a recent ACS Career Forum, the featured speaker was Tom Lane, ACS president 2009. He had some great points, which I have summarized briefly below.
Dr Lane started by pointing out that chemistry contributes to every major industrial segment – 20K or 11% of all patents are chemical in nature. It’s a $650B industry that influences 25% of the nation’s GDP.
Dr Lane’s 7 C’s for career success are:
Competence – in your field is now price of admission, not ticket to success. Your ability to learn is vital. Must be a learner, not learned. “In times, of change, learners inherit the world, while the learned are beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. (Eric Hoffer)”
Courage – to pursue new areas, lead into new directions. Must know how to fail. Must try areas that no one has tried before. Working in new environments – generations, across cultures, etc.
Collaborative – becoming increasingly important. Chemists are being asked to address enourmous, complex, interesting problems that cross many disciplines. Teams are dynamic, globally scattered but must still work together.
Communicate – both what is said and what is not said. Young people need good written skills, but as you get older more of your contact is through oral communication. All transactions are between humans, but perhaps facilitated by technology.
Creative – inventive. Force yourself out of the box.
Committed – to excellence, to your career
Competitive – being motivated to succeed. Desire to raise the standard. Healthy competition is a great motivating force.
Not Happy with Your Job?
Friday, January 9th, 2009Thinking you’re not happy with your current job? Looking for something that will make you happy? Check out this list of The 10 Most Satisfying Careers In America. Maybe you’ll find something you like better…….
Take Advantage of the Day
Friday, January 2nd, 2009For those you who, like me, are at work on this last-day-most-people-are-taking-off, you’re probably finding it rather quiet. A few people are at work, either to do specific tasks or because they’re saving vacation for another time. It doesn’t feel like a work day, so not much “real” work is getting done.
This is a great day, however, to knock off those nagging tasks that should only take a few minutes, and you’ve been leaving “until you had time”. Everyone has a to do list, and all sorts of things get added. However, some seem to linker forever, not getting done but not getting deleted. Today is the day! Either do them, or decide they’re not worth doing and delete them from the list. Clean out your to do list, freeing yourself from all the guilt of seeing them on there every day. Free your mental energy for things that matter to you, and let go of things that would be nice but aren’t necessary. Perhaps the reasons you wanted to do something no longer exist. Perhaps a particular task has been made irrelevant by other developments. Perhaps you’ve moved in a new direction, and should be doing something different instead. Perhaps others add things to your list when you’re not looking (I know this happens to me!).
Take the time to examine each item on your to do list, and either make progress on it or delete it. Go through the piles of “papers to be dealt with” on your desk, and file, recycle, or address each one. If you get yourself in the right mood, you can get quite ruthless and get a lot done.
Then you can go back to work next Monday, when the New Year really begins, with fresh energy and a well-ordered list of things you really need to do.