>>GARTH FOWLER: As you prepare for your postdoctoral experience let’s compare two people that
approached their postdocs very differently.
Amanda has just started her postdoc.
Before her first day, she received a formal letter with her compensation and benefits
information.
In addition, Amanda sat down at home, and using some resources she downloaded from the
APA, she created, a ‘plan’ that would outline goals for her postdoc experience.
This plan identified not only short-term goals for the work she would be doing, but longer-term
career goals.
She considered the possible careers she might want after her postdoc, and focused on the
skills, knowledge, and abilities she would need for those careers.
Amanda makes an appointment to meet with her advisor to discuss her plan, and then puts
in her calendar a reminder to review her plan every 6 months.
Hunter, Amanda’s classmate, has also recently started his postdoc at another institution.
He also received a letter with his compensation and benefits information.
On Hunter’s first day, he was shown his working space, and met his new colleagues.
Once Hunter had put his belongings at his desk, he and his advisor sat down and talked
about what he would be doing and his schedule.
The next day he comes to work, starts his computer, checks his email, and starts
to work on the project his advisor assigned to him.
Today, most doctoral graduates will do a postdoctoral fellowship, however, quite often there is
little or no explicit discussion of what exactly you are to learn and what skills you are to
improve during your postdoc.
Simply put, most postdocs, especially those doing scientific research, have very little
structure or formal training – which might sound exciting after years of graduate school,
but comes with a price.
A study, conducted by the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, found that postdoctoral
positions that had oversight and formal training resulted in higher advisor ratings, fewer
work conflicts, an increase in publication frequency, and overall greater level of satisfaction.
In fact, those postdoc that reported having structure and formal training had the same
level of satisfaction as an individual who was earning at least $20,000 more a year!
As the end of Amanda and Hunter’s postdocs drew near, they compared notes.
Amanda was very satisfied with her postdoc; It had been very well defined, she felt she
developed the skills she needed for the career she wanted, and she was starting to apply
for jobs, all in the same field, feeling confident she would probably get at least one interview.
She was happy she had taken the time to create a plan.
Hunter, on the other hand, enjoyed his postdoc, but was unsure about what he was doing next.
He was not sure he had the right experience for the jobs he wanted, and was frustrated
as he was trying to rewrite his CV into cover letters and resumes for a bunch of different
jobs.
He felt uncertain he would get interviews at all, and was not sure what he would be
doing next – most likely another postdoc.
Amanda’s experience did not happen by chance.
Amanda took the time to write a plan that created structure, identified goals, prompted
her to research different career options, and provided clear requirements for success.
A plan like this is called an Individual Development Plan, or IDP.
Hi, I’m Garth A. Fowler, Associate Executive Director of Graduate and Postgraduate Education
and Training at the American Psychological Association.
This video is the first in a series that will discuss and lead you through how to develop
your IDP.
Some of you may already be familiar with IDPs, especially if you work in the field of human
resources or I/O psychology.
IDPs have a long history in business and government, where they are used to help employees identify
their professional goals and how to achieve them in the work environment.
Over the past decade, IDPs have found their way into scientific and research education
and training, specifically helping postdoctoral scholars identify career goals, and more importantly,
make a plan to achieve them.
IDPs are a tool that rely upon self-assessment, identifying your career goals, your values,
and your skills and abilities.
When done correctly, they provide a framework for developing career milestones that move
you towards a desired career outcome.
They also provide an outline for periodically revisiting your plan, and revising it as your
interests and career options change during your training.
The IDP process is iterative – meaning that you will move through stages repeatedly, taking
the time to assess your progress and your changing interests and career objectives.
You will start by assessing your values, skills, and interests, (pause) which will lead you
to explore a set of career options that match them.
Through learning about career options and jobs, you will compare what it takes to be
successful in that career with your current skill set.
This leads to the setting of goals of improving your skills and abilities needed to achieve
your dream job.
Finally, you will implement your plan to achieve these goals, using milestones to measure your
progress.
After working on your IDP for a period of time, you will want to once again assess your
skills, interests, and values.
It is important to revisit the process again on a regular basis, as career goals evolve.
Revisiting the IDP process, and revising your plan, helps to ensure that you continue training
and making progress towards a rewarding career.
It is important you start with a self-assessment of your skills, (pause) (pause) interests,
and (pause) values, because this is what will help you start selecting which career paths
are a good match for you.
You might find you are interested in many different careers, and for some, you might
already have the necessary experience to be successful.
For others, you may find you need to acquire new skills or improve your abilities.
You may also find the job you had originally wanted might not match your interests or values,
or the training and experience you are receiving now will not necessarily prepare you for that
job.
There are no right or wrong answers to the self-assessment.
You might be tempted to try and match yourself to your ‘dream job,’ but instead think
honestly about the outcomes you value, what tasks you find rewarding, and what motivates
you in your work and professional life.
Other videos and resources in this series will help you with these steps.
After you have an idea of your skills, interests, and values, you will need to start researching
careers and jobs.
Don’t just rely on your basic assumptions of what it takes to be successful in a specific
career.
For example, think about a faculty member at large university.
What would it take to get that job?
To answer this question, let’s look at a job ad for a faculty position.
Here is a typical ad for a behavioral neuroscience position in a department of psychology.
Reading through the ad, we see what this department wants in its newest faculty member.
First, you’ll have to be successful at conducting research in the neurobiology of behavior.
Specifically, they are looking for researchers in translational areas, such as addiction,
aging, learning & memory, obesity & eating disorders, or psychopathology.
Also notice, you’ll have to have management skills to oversee a research lab, which means
supervising staff such as graduate students, lab technicians, and postdocs.
The University is trusting you with money, both in the form of start-up funds to get
your research program started, and the money you’ll bring in later from your grants,
so you will need some budgeting and financial skills.
Finally, you’ll have to have teaching skills, and be an active member in helping to guide
the department in its teaching mission.
After critically analyzing this advertisement, and assessing your skills, interests and values,
does this position - or any other like it – still appeal to you as a possible career?
The only person that can answer these questions is you.
And it requires an honest assessment of your own performance, and getting honest feedback
from mentors and others that help objectively assess your performance and work.
With these questions answered, you can start to develop a plan – one that will work to
improve your skills and abilities needed for your career goals, and provide you experiences
necessary to develop the competencies to apply for jobs that you want.
Your written IDP will contain explicit short-term and long-term goals, with milestones along
the way that will help you assess your progress.
Finally, you need to implement your IDP and evaluate your progress, which only emphasizes
the importance of goals and milestones and assess your progress.
And as we discussed before, you should ask for feedback and periodically and review and
revise your IDP.
As you continue gaining new skills and abilities, you may find new career options becoming of
interest to you.
In addition, our lives are constantly changing, and those changes can impact our career goals,
and what options work best for us.
Amanda did not chance upon her successful postdoc, she planned for it.
She was thoughtful about her career prospects, taking the time to assess her own skills,
knowledge, and abilities, and how they would help propel her into the career she wanted.
She wasn’t luckier than her colleague Hunter, she was just more prepared.