Career Advice from Others

Intro

A lot of info linked to is from a specific point of view, or has intrinsic biases, so general advice is to read broadly and take everything with a grain of salt. Usually, you can synthesize out what are the common generalities (everyone says it) vs. anecdotes.

General

• another guide to resources
• identifying the career for you
• negotiating
• survey of employment for PhD’s in ecology

Cover Letters

(i.e. “how to brag about yourself without coming across as arrogant”)

• writing cover letters for postdocs
• cover letters for academic positions
• cover letter for a faculty position
• cover letter for non-academic (NPR)

Academic

• general tips

Faculty

• myths about TT job search
• [selected links on applying](https://medium.com/@cMadan/advice-when-applying-to-faculty-positions-and-on-academia-in-general-7c8b3652b9d4）
• sample docs collected by Jeff Ross-Ibarra
• sample docs from Future PI Slack

Postdocs

There is some general info on finding jobs and asking questions on this page.

Non-Academic

• preparing for non-academic careers
• researching companies (see also “informational interview”)
• Resumes vs. CVs
• Note that for jobs posted on usajobs.gov (many of the federal government agency positions), the applications go through filtering by HR before reaching the hiring scientist. Often they are looking for keywords that match the job description, so some careful prep is good to make sure your application isn’t filtered out by HR. (Some more info and resources on this would be good to fill out…)