Nano, by Saad

The air has a new crispness to it, the leaves are swirling to the ground, and Vanderbilt’s football team is giving the home fans very little to cheer about.  Fall is here, and if it’s your (anticipated) final year of graduate school, fall is when the search for a grown-up job begins.  The amount of information out there on job hunting and interviewing and résumé writing is endless.  After reading up on this subject for a few months, I think I can post some short articles focusing on what’s relevant to early-career scientists.  Here is the first piece.

I. The Wisdom of Feldman (or, What is a core competency?)

Over chicken wings following his student’s PhD defense, Dr. Feldman shared his thoughts on breaking into the post-PhD world as a scientist.

• On cold contact: “I get two or three emails each day from people who want to work with me.” Cold contacting busy research leaders is not the ideal way to get to working with them, but if you go that route… “For postdocs, contact someone who works on a related subject, explain briefly what you can do for them, and leave it at that.”

• On academic jobs: “In academia, papers are the currency.” After you finish reading this post, get back to work on your manuscript.  Do not pass Go.  Do not visit I Can Has Cheezburger?.

• On industry jobs: “Emphasize your skills.  SEM, TEM, anything you know how to do that is relevant—communicate that.”

I want to expand on the last point further.  Academics hand out their curriculum vitae (CV), a multi-page document listing their education, work and research experience, awards, publications, and professional service.  For a non-academic job, you will probably submit a one-page résumé.

The purpose of your résumé is to earn you an interview. So what do you put on it?  Certainly, emphasize your achievements in present and past work: active verb phrases like “improved earnings by 10%” or “wrote successful proposal and received $1M grant.”

BUT the other competent applicants for the job will have achievements as well.  What will differentiate your résumé?

I spoke with Sue Sarkesian of The Resume Group, who offer a free phone consultation to better understand you as an employment candidate, what your goals are, and what your search process is.  She looked at the résumé I sent her and had a lot of useful feedback.  The key message she had was this: translate your “story” (skills both hard and soft) into a list of “core competencies” that will resonate with people who think in business language.  Most résumés get looked at for 10-15 seconds max.. have a summary at the top that has a “hook” (2-3 sentences) and your “core competencies” – basically, you want to just outright tell the next company, “hey these are the skills/experience i have which translate to your business and why you should hire me.”

What is a core competency? From wikipedia:

A core competency is a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way it, or its employees work. It fulfils three key criteria:

• It provides consumer benefits
• It is not easy for competitors to imitate
• It can be leveraged widely to many products and markets.

A core competency can take various forms, including technical/subject matter know-how, a reliable process and/or close relationships with customers and suppliers.

Guess what?  People can have core competencies, too.  If you are an expert in some measurement technique, like NMR, you possess a core competency, since NMR know-how is a unique, useful, and broadly applicable skill.  From looking at some of the examples posted on The Resume Group’s website, I want to add that “soft” skills related to communication or working with people can also be core competencies, if you bring a unique attitude or experience to the table.

Here are some good resources to have in mind as you prepare your résumé.  Remember, this is hardly an exhaustive list.

Write it like a pro: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/03/18/how-to-edit-your-resume-like-a-professional-resume-writer/

Most violated rules: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2005/09/12/5-most-violated-resume-writing-rules/

Example (pdf): http://www.theresumegroup.com/images/stories/samples/resume_sample2.pdf

If you liked this post, or even if you hated it, leave a comment to express your thoughts.  And consider signing up for email alerts (see upper right of page) to be notified when I post the next article in this series.

I will put this series of posts in the category “Job Hunt” so they can be pulled up easily using the list of category links to the right.