On the Market: SfN Wrap-Up

Totally awesome science aside, there were kind of a lot of FAILs at the meeting this week:  wi-fi FAIL...shuttle bus FAIL...food court FAIL...and I'm afraid I've got to add another one...NeuroJobs FAIL.  The SfN NeuroJobs Career Center was literally an enclosed area with 10-12 computer stations whose Internet Explorer default page was the NeuroJobs website (from which most users had navigated away in favor of gmail and facebook).

Thank you, SfN, but I do have a computer. 

Looking back, it was probably naive of me to imagine that SfN would be doing any kind of concrete matchmaking, or that search committee members would be taking time out of their busy conference schedules to meet with potential candidates.  NeuroJobs "live" is likely more suited to people looking for post-doc positions than faculty positions, especially those in town from abroad who can't all be flown in for a job talk.  I hope it works out for them.  *sniff*

Some other items of note:

• I took PhysioProf's advice and did not seek out faculty from departments I've applied to, at risk of looking like a brown-nosing, shameless self-promoter.  I did, however, tell just about everyone I ran into that I was OtM, which led to some very interesting conversations, some of which will be turned into full blog posts.  One PI in my field whom I've known for several years responded that she wished her department had an opening for me, but that they weren't currently hiring.  This of course was probably could have been an empty nicety, but it certainly beat a sarcastic "heh--good luck with that," so it made me feel good.
• I also took DrugMonkey's advice and stopped by the NIMH booth to talk with the Program Officer for my K99 application that is under review right now.  I unfortunately caught her as she was leaving to meet with someone important-looking and didn't get to do much but introduce myself, but I hope that even that will provide the tiniest glimmer of happy recognition when funding decisions are made.  According to a grad school friend who now works as a Review Officer, the best thing I can do is wait until my score comes, and if it seems potentially borderline start communicating with my PO to see if there's anything I can do to bump it into funding range.  This is especially important for me because K99 applicants can't have been a post-doc for more than 5 years, and if I don't get funded this time around, that's it for me.  I'm too old.  Past my prime.  Over the hill.  Waaah. (As an aside, it's not exactly clear when "being a post-doc" officially starts.  Is it the day you defend your thesis?  The day you begin work in your post-doc lab?  The day you receive your PhD from your institution?  The order of these events is not always the same.  Anyone know?)

I've got just over a week until I get my score, and until then (and beyond), I'll keep checking the job ads and applying to anything that has potential.  I'm also starting a new experiment that I'm really excited about, so I'll have lots to keep me busy until the interviews invites come pouring in.  Pouring!!*

*this is me remaining upbeat and optimistic, despite certain conversations had at the meeting...stay tuned.

PS--one thing that I thought was a big SfN WIN was the #sfn09 Twitter-fest.  I loved seeing everyone's sciency thoughts throughout the day; it was endless 140-character fun.

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.

Searching Highs and Lows

Are you a chemical engineer? Nor am I, but browsing through the job ads on the Science and Nature websites kind of makes me wish I were. Business is booming! But why do I know this?

I have not quite mastered the art of the Advanced Search. My three sources for job ads (not including my thesis advisor) are Science, Nature, and NeuroJobs on the Society for Neuroscience website, and I haven't found any to be completely user-friendly (if you know of any other good resources, by all means share!). Of course, the paranoid part of me is wondering whether this is some sort of test; if I'm not savvy enough find the right job to apply to, I can't possibly be qualified to fill the position, now can I?

I went through a similar period of self-doubt when I applied for a K99-R00 Pathway to Independence award from NIMH earlier this year. The NIH grants website is nearly impenetrable, and you need to cross-reference the guidelines there with a 250-page pdf manual, out of which you must extract the scattered instructions specific to your particular grant. It's a real exercise in Not Repeatedly Smashing Your Laptop Into the Wall, and I quickly became certain that it was all part of an elaborate filtration process by which most people would, in frustration, give up on science altogether. Wheat from the chaff, you know?

So here I am again questioning my worth, only now it's according to the ease with which I come across listings for The Perfect Job. How useful I'm finding these search engines varies by website, with Nature coming in dead last. It's terrible. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to sort out tenure track faculty jobs from, say, post-doc jobs, and there are a LOT of post-doc jobs. Thousands. When you put "professor" into the search, it comes up with post-doc jobs that ask you to send your application to Dr Joe Scientist, Professor of Chemical Engineering. To try to eliminate post-doc jobs in your results, you can use the "-" symbol to leave out anything that says "post-doc" in it, putting the expression "-post-doc" in the search bar along with "+neuroscience". However, this poses at least two problems, the most important being, do you know how many different ways people choose to write the word "post-doc"?

Well, there's "post-doc", "postdoc", "post doc", but then you need to also include "postdoctoral", "post doctoral" etc., etc....it's a pain! The second problem is that you end up ruling out ads that say something like, "minimum 2 years post-doctoral experience required for this very excellent tenure-track faculty job." And then you still need to narrow things down so as to rule out all the Chemical Engineering positions.

Science is much better, with a nice big button that says "Faculty Jobs". Thank you! That was easy, wasn't it? Once you click through you get a nice list of the job posting, plus the school and location. You can narrow this search with "neuroscience" or "neurobiology" or "psychology" (my big three), to get a pretty streamlined list of jobs you may want. Neurojobs is basically the reverse, since all posts are at the very least neuro-related (no chemical engineering positions here!), but then you need to narrow with "professor" or "faculty" (apparently there are far fewer post-doc positions listed here). You can also easily filter the jobs by "academic", "not-for-profit", "industry" etc, in case your experience with the K-99 made you never want to write another grant again. It should be noted that Neurojobs is free for SfN members, but $25 A DAY if you're not.

One thing that seems so obvious to me is that there should be some kind of uniformity in the way these jobs are listed. For example, when the department chair goes to list the position, he or she should have to click a box that says "assistant professor" "post-doc" "technician", etc., rather than making up the name of the job. That way job searchers can easily search by category, and not have to guess whether "Position in Neuroscience" is something we'd like to apply for.

Hmmm...perhaps I should be looking in these sites for openings in web design?