If you have been following our Calendar for Career Success in 2012, then July is the month where you should be making some decisions.  You have done some exploring of career options, gathered information on different jobs and interviewed a variety of people to gain a better understanding of what a particular

• The importance of teamwork and time management: In order to work well with your team it is crucial communicate clearly to avoid duplication of effort.  My time management s

If you attended the 5th Annual NIH Career Symposium last Friday, you heard about how many professionals in a wide variety of industries got their job.  You probably heard more than a few panelists say they got their job by “luck.”  However, if you listened to their whole story, you would have realized that they made their own luck.  What you did not hear was a panelist say, “I worked in the lab all the time.  One day, this person that I had never seen before came into the lab and said, ‘Hey, you want this job?’” 

Post written by a guest blogger Anne Kirchgessner, Career Counselor in OITE. In my role as a career counselor in the OITE Career Services Center, I often hear postdocs say something like “My mentor hasn’t done anything to help me get to the next step.” The sentiment is understandable.  Your PhD advisor may have taken a more active role in your search for a postdoc position.  Maybe your advisor made a call to get you your current position, or may have referred you to a colleague or collaborator.  This sense of security using your PhD mentor’s contacts may fail when yo

Post written by a guest blogger Lillian Kuo, Postdoc at NCI. It’s time for the 5^th Annual NIH Career Symposium on Friday May 18^th, 2012!  This is an action-packed day of panel speakers and skills blitzes to provide insights into the myriad of professional career options for biomedical scientists.  Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the event.  Before the Symposium:

As scientists, we are familiar with giving talks.  We can give a meeting talk of ten minutes, a group meeting for 30 minutes or a department seminar of an hour.  We make our slides, we prepare notes, we practice and then we stand before our audience and present our work.  This process is not that much different than talking about yourself, but the data changes to:  Who are you?  What do you do?  What are your research interests?  What are your career interests?  Now the trick is, can you do it effectively in 30 seconds?  What about two minutes?&n

If you have been following our career development calendar on the blog, you know April is the time to plan your 2012 meeting or conference attendance.  If you are relatively new to this experience you should watch our web tutorial on atten

If you have been following the blog calendar, you have been thinking about your career, and maybe have even met with a career counselor.  That means (hopefully) that you have a few ideas about career options, and some questions that an informational interview might help you answer.   Now that you have filled in your networki

This is the ninth in a series of profiles about recent NIH postdocs who have found an array of jobs, from academia to industry to communications and beyond, in the U.S. and abroad. What do they do now, and how did they get there? What challenges did they face, and what advice do they have? Read on to find out.

Name: Kai Cheng

Current position: Supervisor of genotyping services assay development, The Jackson Laboratory

In the beginning of January, we posted a calendar with monthly steps to move your career forward.  The February task was to meet with a career counselor.  Here at OITE, we have two career counselors on staff.  Anne and Elaine&nbs