Jobs & careers discussions: basic assumptions
Somehow, I’ve fallen into the niche of giving career advice and talks. This is not something I intended (I blame Darcey Gillie), but what I’ve said has been well-received and it’s wonderful when people come back to say that my advice helped them. But as I move my writings over to Substack, it’s a useful time to refactor those articles. An essential part of any of my advice is that you should know where I’m coming from and what my assumptions are. Rather than repeatedly write these at the top of every article, I’m gathering these all together in one place, for easy reference.
Here is what you need to know when I talk about careers and jobs.
I am not a professional
I'm not a career advisor. I’m just a guy who has had “ a lot of career” including unsuccessful job searches, bad interviews, etc.
I don't have the time to give individual advice, review CVs or mentor people. Also, I don't have any jobs for you. Please don't ask.
I can’t help but be myself.
This advice is informed by my experience as a job seeker and interviewer, as well as that of friends and colleagues. As a consequence, it’s largely from the point of view of a technical person (bioinformatician, genomicist, computational biologist, biostatistician, people who do number/computer things to data from living things), who was in a university but is now in industry, biotech or pharma, largely in Australia and UK. Others experiences may be different.
There is no “one weird trick”
While it’s natural for you to want shortcuts or a foolproof solution - do THIS and they’ll hire you immediately - there’s no such thing. There are no panaceas or golden bullets here. Just trends, tendencies, observations and Pareto principles - the optimal thing to do in most circumstances.
Actually, should anyone offer you “weird trick” advice, take that as a red flag. They’re either ignorant or lying.
Luck is something but it isn’t everything
Which leads us to the role of luck.
Finding a job is a random effects model, a numbers game. There's so many things going on that, so many competing factors that can interfere for or against you. (Your application got lost. The recruiting manager went on holiday for a month. There’s an internal candidate. The HR system hiccupped. The funding isn’t pinned down. The job ad doesn’t reflect what they are actually looking for.) You can do everything right and not get the job. It's difficult, but don’t take any of it personally because it’s not.
People often hear about luck and quickly flip into saying (or assuming) “It’s all luck”, as if luck was the only thing that mattered. That’s not the situation. It’s a big factor but it’s not the only factor. A person who doesn’t apply for jobs or who doesn’t have the right qualifications can’t get lucky. Having the right set of skills, having a good job search strategy, doing a good application, doing a good interview - these all matter greatly.
And there are upsides to this. If you can be unlucky, you can also be lucky. (An interviewer knows you from a previous job. You have a vital skill that’s not listed in the ad. There’s been a poor response to the ad and you’re one of the few applicants.) Feel free to roll the dice. This is a casino, you have to play to win. But you can tilt the odds in your favour. Allow yourself to be lucky.
Deal with the world as it is
There are a lot of forums and places on the Internet where people endlessly critique and try and correct “the system”: Companies should reply to every application. Within the week. They should tell me why I wasn’t accepted. And there should be more jobs …1 But that’s not how things are and all of this is just shouting into a void, achieving nothing and not getting you a job.
The world is the way it is. You can complain or you can do something.
What is it that you want?
The world is full of default paths. Masters students get pushed towards PhDs, PhDs towards postdocs, principal scientists towards directors, engineers towards management. These are the easy paths, these are the ones that you can thoughtlessly glide along, like a raindrop skating down a window.
And there are also lot of people who want to turn you into things, for whom it would be convenient if only you were some other type of person. Bioinformaticians get turned into database managers, data scientists into programmers, health analysts into data cleaners.
Do you want that? It’s okay if you do. But if not, you don’t have to be those things. You can be something else, do something else. You can stay off the management path and stay technical. You can avoid software engineering and stay in analysis. Know what you want to do. That direction can change, and if you feel directionless? Maybe it’s time to change2. But decide what you want to do or someone else will decide for you.
Have options
You’ll have a better career and a better life if you have options and you make choices. Work to make sure you have options.
Hello, r/biotech.
Thanks to Anna Cupani for this.