While we may not be on campus, the OITE is committed to continuing activities on your behalf in the virtual space. We now have a dedicated webpage to help keep you informed – https://www.training.nih.gov/coronavirus_info  All of our online offerings will be posted here; be sure to watch for group sessions on wellness, resilience, and mindfulness meditation plus career and professional development opportunities.  We have tried to schedule events at times that are conducive for trainees on any campus to easily participate. We are still open for business and look forward to seeing you in our virtual workshops or during our one-one-one career counseling appointments. Appointments can easily be made online…

The current outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has created a high period of stress for people around the world. Everyone reacts differently to stressful situations; how you are responding to the outbreak depends in part on your background, your community, your support system, and any preexisting mental health conditions you may have. It is very normal to be feeling stress during an infectious disease outbreak due to  fear and worry about your own health and the health of your loved ones. Increasingly, as we move through the days of this situation, stress is also extending to financial fears and worry for people, especially those who are working in hard hit…

Job searching can feel like a full-time job and sometimes it is a drawn out and frustrating process for the job seeker. Make sure you aren’t extending your search by making some of these common mistakes. Mistake # 1 – Only Applying for Jobs that are a 100% Match Job ads are often written for that elusive unicorn of a candidate. They very contain every qualification and skill that the employer could dream of wanting. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t apply if you can’t check off every bullet. As long as you are about a 70-80% match and feel confident about the main priorities, then you should go ahead…

Google Alerts* will email you results from various saved searches. You can customize the type and frequency of your emailed search results depending on your personal preferences. It is a free tool to use and you can save up to ten different alerts (1,000 if you have a Google account). Many businesses, especially public relations representatives, often use such alerts to keep abreast of news stories about their company’s competitors, trademarks, etc. Google Alerts can help you during a job search as well. Here are some alerts job seekers should set up: 1. Your NameYour online reputation often precedes your first face-to-face impression. Any job you apply for will research…

In science there is often a looming question: do you try for hundredth time or do you try something else? The answer, of course, is that it depends. It depends on what is most important, it depends on why it didn’t work, it depends on the goal, it depends on the options, and it depends on the significance. The issue is complicated further by considerations of other people, their expectations, their involvement, and sometimes their money. Change can be scary but deciding to make a change is equally terrifying. Deciding to change careers or change an aspect of one’s career follows many of the same considerations as an experiment. When…

The importance of a good fit comes from the goal of achieving synergy. The first major principle of fit is that the sum is greater than its parts i.e. fit between two entities is more indicative of success than either entity on its own. The second principle refers to the benefit of compatibility of attributes vs the level of the attributes and the third principle addresses misfit. In a straightforward example, someone may be a high-level cognitive science graduate student, but that may not be as helpful in teaching a microbiology course (principle 2). That is not to say that a cognitive scientist can’t learn and teach microbiology. In fact,…

If you are a fellow at the NIH as a post-bac, graduate student, or post-doc, you are probably thinking about your next step after your fellowship, which likely involves a job search. There are many competing fee-based services available in the marketplace outside of the NIH. However, before you seek a service that would charge you an expensive fee, we invite you to check out all the FREE career resources through the NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education . Many services are available to help you with your job search from deciding what you want to do, to reviewing resumes/CVs, and even practice interviews. If you are preparing for…