eHarmo-NeuroJobs

If you've never used an internet dating service, you were probably not single in NYC in the last 5 years.  It's positively de rigueur here, but for those of you unfamiliar, here's how it works:  You create a profile for yourself, with pictures and text--it's like facebook, but instead of Mafia Wars and Lil' Green Patch updates you're throwing out your best comedy to answer prompts like "5 things I can't live without" and "If I could be anywhere, I'd be..."  Potential suitors who like what you have to say send you a message, or a "wink" if they're shy.  If you like what they have to say, you write them back.  Usually, though, you don't.  Since I now have a fancy live-in boyfriend, I thought my days of internet dating were over, but it turns out I was wrong.

NeuroJobs, as mentioned earlier, is the online career service offered by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN).  It's very, very good.  In addition to hosting a user-friendly, streamlined search engine, it sends you email alerts when a new post with your special keywords comes along, and allows you to upload your CV so that potential employers can check you out.  If they feel that your Classy Institutions and number of first-author publications are up to snuff, they put in a request to NeuroJobs to contact you.  NeuroJobs then plays matchmaker, asking you if you'd like this potential employer to get in touch.  If you think you might want this job, you say "yes," and you exchange witty emails for a day or two, and then one of you suggests a bar in the East Village or Lower East Side that's trendy but not too trendy, and...oh wait.  That's the other one, isn't it?

I'm only sort of kidding.  I posted my CV, and a few days later I got an email from NeuroJobs that said, "University of ______ expressed an interest in considering you for the following opportunity," and just like when I got that first contact from an eligible NYC bachelor, I did a little dance, singing "somebody LIKES me!!"  But just like when I noticed that the eligible NYC bachelor was 20 years my senior and listed The Da Vinci Code as his favorite book, I had to decline this university's advances due to its location in a part of the country I haven't yet accepted as being inhabitable.  I'm working on that, though.

I'm still optimistic that NeuroJobs is going to come through for me, and find the perfect match.  The big SfN meeting is coming up in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the NeuroJobs Career Center there will have to offer.  Hopefully, it will work out so that I'll get to have a live date interview, we'll totally hit it off, and soon we'll be featured in the NeuroJobs commercial...

Becca and Classy Institution:  matched October 20, 2009.  Tenure-track position started July 15, 2010.