 Good afternoon and welcome to the keynote session of our PhD connections conference. We're so glad you're all here today. Before I go any further, I want to mention that cart live captioning services are being provided for accessibility. My name is Kirsten Elling and I'm the university career centers coordinator for graduate student career advancement and the embedded career counselor at Rackham. This conference is co-sponsored by the University Career Center Rackham Graduate School and the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the University of Michigan Medical School. We have a long list of people to thank for bringing this event together and since we don't have printed programs for our virtual event, we hope you'll refer to our webpage and join us virtually in thanking our collaborators. On behalf of the entire conference planning committee, I want to congratulate each of you for investing time and energy into this opportunity to explore your career options. In addition to this event, each of our offices offers regular programs and tailored services designed to support and prepare you for a range of career opportunities. We hope you'll continue your momentum from today by taking advantage of these resources, which include individual career counseling, professional development workshops, internship opportunities and certificate programs, such as the DEI professional development certificate program to name just a few. Please refer to our respective websites for more information on the resources available to you to support your career exploration, career development and job and internship search needs. We'll be sure to share these links in the chat during the session. I'd now like to introduce Dean Mike Solomon, who is the Dean of Rackham Graduate School and the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Graduate Studies at the U of M. He is a professor of chemical engineering and a professor of macro molecular science and engineering and has been a member of the Michigan faculty since 1997. Dean Solomon, thank you so much for your involvement in and support of the PhD connections conference, and for your ongoing commitment to supporting the full range of career options available to students. Please join me in welcoming Dean Mike Solomon to our virtual stage. Thank you very much, Kirsten. I'm really delighted to be here. Hello and good afternoon all. I would also like to add my welcome to you for joining our PhD career connections conference and to offer also my thanks to our partners who are working with us to present this important event. We really rely on our partners and just the willingness and their willingness and their energy to join with us in this really important event and undertaking. As the name of the conference implies, our hope is to help you as doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows envision connections between your training and career paths beyond the academy. You know, of course, the format of this event is much different than it was when we first launched PhD connections. Back then we were gathering person in the Rackham building. You know, the pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our academic and professional lives on top of placing intense personal demands on each of us. Although there's still much uncertainty about when the pandemic will be brought under control, I'm hopeful that increased vaccinations will progressively allow us to participate in the intellectual life on campus this summer and in the fall, like this event. As we move forward in this way, it's not too soon to think about what will change because of all that we have learned and experienced in this year. I do think that there will be lasting changes. These may not, these may include not only increased acceptance of remote work options but also changes in our ability to engage with each other remotely. This in turn I think could mean shifts in how we pursue networking, interviewing and career exploration itself in ways that we do not yet fully understand. This is possibly a tipping point for the landscape of global careers that you're launching to think about today. These changes come as my colleagues and I at Rackham and across campus, we're already leading a charge to re-envision graduate education at U of M in a way that among other things, more effectively prepare students for the broad range of career opportunities in which advanced training and research and scholarship is an asset. In September 2019, we launched Rackham strategic vision for graduate education. While so much has happened since then that we could not have foreseen the graduate school has leaned very heavily during this time on the vision that we embrace them to really guarded our choices and our decisions. To that end, we have continued to work with program faculty to effectively support student academic and professional development needs. We have sought to reduce barriers for students to pursue interdisciplinary experiences and degree credentials, including graduate certificates, and we have encouraged innovation and mentoring other avenues for academic support. Most importantly, however, is that all our decisions and efforts have been guided by an idea of reimagining the graduate academic experience as students centered in faculty led with Rackham support. With this in mind will continue to actively engage in providing resources and programs to help you and your academic and professional development needs to support your future aspirations. We know from our own program data that well over half of you who are in the doctorate will pursue a career in a role other than that of a faculty member. I'm very excited that we can host this week's panels and workshops with a range of professionals who have employed their PhD and an array of fields. I would like to take this chance to welcome them and thank them for taking the time to join us and share their insights. I hope that you as student postdoctoral fellows will find the discussions beneficial, and that you will continue to take advantage of all that Rackham offers to help you in pursuit of your career goals. I'm going to turn things over to Bandy Gardner, the coordinator of career and professional development and the Office of Graduate postdoctoral studies at the UN Medical School, who will introduce our keynote speaker, which I'm very much looking forward to. Thank you very much for joining us today. Maggie over to you. Thank you Dean Solomon, and thank you to the entire PhD planning committee for all of your hard work putting this conference together. I'm very excited for today's keynote and for the events of the coming days. Today, it is my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker Melanie Cinch. Melanie is a pioneer and a giant in the field of career and professional development for graduate students and postdocs. She currently serves as the executive director of the Women's Leadership Center, the director of the Career Development Center, and as interim assistant dean for academic affairs at the University of St. In addition to all of her work as an independent consultant speaker trainer and published author. Previously, she was the director of education at the Jackson Laboratory for genomic medicine. She was the founding director of both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Career Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard University and the Office of Postdoctoral Services at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also has served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Health during the planning and launch of the Office of Intramural Training and Education. Her career has been peppered with honors and awards including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Impact Award and the Leadership in Action Award for her groundbreaking work at Harvard University. Her book, Next Gen PhD, a guide to career paths and sciences, which I might add is available at both the University of Michigan Library and the Ann Arbor District Library, leads readers through the career landscape for PhD holders, helps the reader realize the value of a PhD and guides the reader through helpful self reflection and exploration exercises to find and prepare them for future careers that align with their interests, their strengths, and importantly, their values. Melanie has been invited to give hundreds of talks and keynote addresses at over 80 different institutions. We are delighted and honored to have her here with us today. Throughout the keynote, please take advantage of the question and answer or Q&A function in Zoom to submit questions and upvote questions that you would really like to see answered. Thanks, Gina and Laura, we'll be monitoring your submissions and ask questions with the most interest at the end of Melanie's keynote. With that, please join me in welcoming Melanie Cinch to our virtual stage. Thank you for being here, Melanie. Thank you so much for that warm welcome Maggie, that was so generous, and I'm so excited to be back here with the University of Michigan colleagues and friends and graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, faculty and guests. Thank you so much to Dean Solomon for joining us briefly and I would be remiss if I did not mention the co-chairs of PhD Connections, Kirsten Ellen and Gina Schrader. They have been phenomenal in helping me to prepare for today and to put together such an amazing event as this week for all of you. So thank you for having me. My career actually began at the University of Michigan's Career Center, so I'm really excited to know that Kirsten is now embedded at Rackham, helping all of the graduate students there with their career decisions and career planning. I think that's a wonderful step, but I found through my part-time job as I was a graduate student at Rackham. My part-time job in the University Career Center opened my eyes to the occupation of career counselor, and that's where my path really began. And so I owe so much to the university and it's a pleasure to be back with you today. So I'm going to share my screen with you now and talk with you a little bit about the options that are available for PhDs trained in a variety of disciplines. So I'm pleased to present career options for PhDs opening the doors of opportunity at the outset of the conference. So I thought it would be interesting to take a look at registrants today. So I wanted to first share a snapshot of who's joining us. In terms of the breakdown between PhD students and postdoctoral scholars, approximately 75%, 76% of today's attendees are PhDs currently, and a quarter of our attendees are postdoctoral scholars. So it would be interesting for you to see a breakdown of disciplines who are joining us. So the life sciences represent the lion's share of attendees today, followed by engineering students and postdocs in the physical sciences, social sciences, humanities and computational sciences. While some of my remarks will be specific to those who are studying in the sciences. I wanted to stress that all of my remarks can be applicable to folks who are studying in the humanities. So I am trained as a humanist first. So I was in the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies when I was at U of M, and have studied Ukrainian history, and so I wanted to stress that, you know, I'm, I'm a humanist by nature. And the second graduate degree is in counseling and so it's important for all of you to know I think that this talk really is applicable to all of you and I hope sets you up for an exciting week of meeting with panelists and hearing about their stories, hearing about their pathways into careers. I actually wrote next gen PhD as a guidebook or a handbook for any PhD anywhere who's interested in making a career decision. And so I wanted to share that with you just to let you know. Most of my remarks will be applicable to all of you. I also thought it would be interesting to ask you why did you choose the event. Most of you, of course, mentioned the research that goes on at U of M that it is second to none world renowned research institution. Some of you mentioned your specific program or the faculty advisors that you would have the opportunity to study with, but look at the size of the font of the phrase career development. I wanted to share that with you because so many of you mentioned how important it is that U of M focuses on the development of its graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. And that was indeed a reason for so many of you choosing this university. So I thought that would be interesting to share with you just why you are attending today's talk and this week's events. Most of you are exploring your options right now. So we know that the landscape for academic positions has changed over time when I say academic, I mean tenure track jobs that has changed dramatically over the past several decades. So many of you when asked what you're interested in doing next what your next career goal is stated, I'm interested in tenure track positions, plus, and you would name other career options that you're interested in. And so, you know, I think this week will enable you to explore those options to hear more about the backgrounds of different professionals and different occupations to try to understand more about how you enter different career fields. Many of you indicated an interest in exploring options but also applying for positions. A few of you mentioned changing career directions. However, I submitted questions to the staff and colleagues that worked on today's event. Because I thought it would be interesting to ask you more about why you're really here today. And so wanted to share some quotes from today's attendees about what really brings you to today's talk. How do you make your profile or resume fit into an on academic job. How do you identify your interests and career paths that fit them, plus your skill set. How do you spend your graduate school experience. If you have a poor relationship with your advisor and did not publish as much as your peers. Those are common concerns. What advice do you have for individuals who must navigate career goals with family and partner influences. Every day, my career goal seems to change. And finally, I'd like to find a job that I don't hate that pays me as much money as possible. So, I think that's a good goal. So it's important to be in a job I think that you don't hate. I wanted to share a few excerpts and thank you all you attendees for completing the survey that was sent out. But wanted to share a few sentiments about what people might like to hear about today. And we will discuss some of these areas. In terms of your specific experience. I wanted to stress the resources that you have available at your them to assist you in navigating any of these questions or your own personal questions. Another one of the attendees sent in a question to me that was of all of the universities that you have worked at or attended, or even visited, which has the best reputation for career exploration, and why. And I can show you why you have them tops my list. There are so many resources that you have them starting with University Career Center is a wonderful place for you to go for assistance in starting the process of exploration, starting to understand what's really most important to you in a job and work with someone one on one. There are more different options. So Kirsten Ellen is actually embedded in Rackham. She works through the University Career Center but she is available for individual career counseling appointments and collaboration with Rackham. But the University Career Center also offers workshops on career and job search topics. They have databases that you have access to. And importantly they have an electronic alumni network. And we will be talking about networking throughout today's talk. In terms of resources directly through Rackham, the professional and academic development resource headed by a little shrimp, it's really important to offer core skill development workshops, a diversity equity and inclusion professional development certificate internships, program and public scholarship and more. And so I encourage you to visit with them and find out more about the resources there. The last resource, though not the last resource available at the institution, but I want to mention today is the Office of Graduate Post-Occupial Studies through U of M Medical School. They also offer individual career advising appointments for exploration panels and workshops and cohort based learning and development programs. And just a shout out to Mario Reardon and Shoba Supermanian who worked there and alongside Maggie and wanted to share that they have opportunities available for postdocs as well. With all of these resources, I think it's important for you to determine your eligibility by checking on the websites. There is more information on each site for you to understand what you personally have access to in terms of services. But I think U of M is absolutely at the top in terms of resources for students and postdocs. I wanted to share with you now a little bit more about my story. I have been a career counselor for about 20 years and I focus primarily on PhD and postdoctoral options, career options for PhD trained professionals. And through those 20 years over my 20 years of counseling, spending time one-on-one with PhDs and postdocs, I've heard several misconceptions that I wanted to share with you today. They actually formed the basis of my research project. So while I was at Harvard, I actually met a labor economist named Richard Freeman, who was working at the labor and work life program at Harvard. Richard actually studies the science and engineering workforce in the US and has for a long time. And I shared with him some of these misconceptions that I heard from faculty at Harvard, but also from PhDs and postdocs that I worked with. One is that all PhDs want to work as faculty members. I think this is a common misconception. Another is that the only jobs out there for PhDs are faculty jobs. This, I think, is not only a late person's perspective, but also the perspective of many doctoral students and postdocs. And finally, there are no faculty jobs. So this is not true. I know that right now we're facing one of the most difficult tenure track markets that we have pretty much in the history of the academy. But some PhDs and postdocs are still finding faculty jobs, so faculty continue to retire. So we'll just gray that one out. PhDs have no employable skills. I often hear this in counseling appointments that PhDs feel that they don't have skills that employers would really look for or be attracted to by the nature of their study because they feel that their study is so narrow. PhDs are not using their research skills and non-faculty jobs. And finally, PhDs outside of the tenure track are not happy in their work. So while I heard these ideas shared throughout my time as a counselor and working closely with university faculty members, I would actually assert that most PhDs aren't sure of what jobs exist for them. So that's the first point that I would want to make. Second, PhDs have many employable skills that I recognize just by meeting them and talking with them about their work. PhDs are using their research skills in most jobs. And finally, PhDs are happy in their work. Now, when I had my conversations with Richard and shared with him, you know, these are my assertions, I had to tell him I have no hard data to back this up. And so I wanted to embark on a research project with Richard. The two of us work together to develop a survey research project to explore these assertions. And the research questions then are, what skills, if any, are developed organically during graduate post-doctoral training? Are these the same skills that are required for success in different patients? Where are PhDs currently employed? What are the primary activities in which PhDs are engaged at work? And are PhDs satisfied in their work? These are the questions that I heard repeatedly in my counseling appointments. To build out a survey, I actually relied on exploring demographics. I wanted to share specifics about the educational backgrounds of the doctoral candidates that I worked with and surveyed post-doctoral training and then ultimately employment. To participate in the survey, which I actually conducted in 2015, I wanted to look at a recent sample. So I looked at the previous 10 years of PhD graduates. So to participate in the survey research project, the respondents had to have graduated between 2004 and 2014 with a doctorate in the physical life computational engineering or social sciences. I had to work, study to train in the US, and I relied heavily on social media to get the word out about the survey project. So it was open for about a month. And after that month, I had collected about 11,000 survey responses. I was really excited about that response rate of those 11,000 plus just over 8,000 of the responses were usable. And of those that were not usable, they primarily graduated outside of that deep range. So if they had received a PhD prior to 2004, they weren't eligible for the survey research project. I knew that I was on the right track when people who had graduated prior to 2004 wrote to me directly and said, I want to be a part of the survey. I am a PhD and I am so happy in my job. I have to tell you I want to let other PhDs know that there is life after graduate school. So I was really excited about that because I felt that I was on the right track. In terms of the demographics of the sample, I wanted to share this slide with you. So most of the survey respondents were women. If you work in survey research at all in your work, you'll know women are much more likely than men to respond to surveys. So my primary response that I received regarding citizenship were from US citizens of permanent residents. So if you look at that number of 17% of international scholars that number is quite low. Right now we know that if we look at the postdoctoral population, for example in the US. We know that more than 60% of our postdocs in the US right now are international scholars. So I think that number is low, possibly because of my reliance on social media. I just wanted to share that that number is higher if you look at the large data sets through the National Science Foundation, for example. That has the best data sets that we have in the US on doctoral education and where doctorate recipients end up in terms of careers. But I found that when I worked with PhDs and postdocs they were looking for much more granular data. So I, that was another reason that I embarked on the survey research project but that number represents those people in the sample who are underrepresented in their disciplines. That number of 10% I'm actually very pleased with because if you look at that time period at the NSF status sets, looking at PhD graduates from 2004 to 2014. It's about 12% of the people who are from underrepresented groups who graduated in that time period of the PhD. It's about 12%. So I was really excited about that outcome because I relied heavily on my connections with different groups of scientists across the country, like the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos, Native Americans and Science and the National Society of Black Engineers and similar organizations. If you look at the bottom I just wanted to share that 70% of the people in the sample were married, 26% were single and 2% were divorced. So if you know anything about the divorce rate in the US you'll know that 2% is incredibly low and just wanted to share that it might be interesting to note that this is a very young sample. And so while the US rate of divorce is closer to 50%, these people were just married because the age range was so low. And so that number 2% may change over time. And then about one in three people in the sample had kids. In terms of career goals at the start of the PhD and postdoc, I also asked that question. So what were your career goals at the start of your doctoral program? I included these four choices. So faculty position, a research position, an industry research position, and agencies for another kind of position altogether. In the sample, 87% of people indicated that at the start of their PhD program, they were interested in the faculty. So if you looked at the same and asked the same question regarding people in the sample at the postdoc, I expected that number to change somewhat. But actually 82% of people who began a postdoc at the start of their postdoc they indicated an interest in a faculty position. The numbers in the other categories jumped up. So more people were interested in research positions, maybe outside of the academy, or other types of jobs altogether. And so that's important for us to know that as time progressed and as people continue to study in their postdoctoral positions, their career interests started to change. And I remember that one of my research questions was also about skills. Now, I would argue that by the very nature of doctoral training. There are so many particular skills that are developed. But again, I needed very concrete data to indicate that PhDs developed skills beyond their discipline specific knowledge. I looked at some papers that had been written in our field about PhD skill development. There weren't many. And so I looked outside of that realm and I looked also at skills that were highly valued by employers. And for that information I looked at the National Association of Colleges and Employers and also looked at the National Postdoctoral Association and skills that they argue that all postdocs should emerge from their training with. And I developed a list of 15 skills that I think PhDs develop over the course of PhD training. In addition to discipline specific knowledge, I argue that PhDs have the ability to gather and interpret information, analyze data, manage a project I think it would be difficult to complete a PhD if you do not have the ability to manage. So the role in written communication skills, of course, the ability to work on a team, make decisions, manage others, creativity and career planning is here as well. So in terms of career planning and awareness skills. I know that this is an area that RACM and the University Career Center and the Office of Graduate Postdoctoral Studies focuses on helping you with to understand how do you go through career planning, where do you start, where do you even start if you have no idea of how to begin this process. For that I again encourage you to take advantage of the resources available at U of M. They are vast and they are here for you. So what I wanted to look at while I developed this list of skills for the survey. I wanted to ask respondents, do you believe that you developed these skills through the course of your PhD. But also my second question was, do you believe that these skills are required for success on your on the job. So in your occupation. Next slide, I want to show you the outcome for those two questions. So if you look on the left hand side you'll see 95% of the respondents believe they require discipline specific knowledge during their PhD training. Yeah, of course that makes sense. But also the ability to gather and interpret information analyze data, and then the numbers start to drop off a bit. So oral and written communication skills still hide but the ability to learn quickly creativity, innovative project management a little bit lower. And then when I asked what percentage believed that those skills were important for success on the job. 80% of the respondents said discipline specific knowledge was important for them, and their job. It's such an important message for you, I think, to know that you are studying, not in a vacuum you're not studying in vain you're not engaged in discipline specific research. Not just for the sake of making the body of research bigger in your particular field, but that discipline specific knowledge can be applied in so many different occupations and I think that's important for you to know the ability to gather information was important at analyze data, but then look further down or on written communication skills. 93% of the respondents argue that oral communication skills are important for success on the job of course that's true. So you can be PhD trained. But it's critical for you to be able to communicate your findings and more research outcomes to lots of different audiences. One of my favorite skills that's listed on the right hand side, if you look at the percentage 89% of the respondents said the ability to learn quickly is helpful for them in terms of success on the job. To argue, there is not an employer out there who would not appreciate your ability to absorb material quickly. And that is the hallmark, I think, of doctoral study that you have the ability to learn and absorb material so quickly. That is valuable to employers everywhere. So after the survey research project came to its conclusion, I met up with a few researchers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and we actually wrote a paper together with this graph. So this maps out the skills needed for particular career fields. The difference between research intensive careers and research related careers. You can see, for example, that with consulting. There are different levels of skills required. If you look at the bar graph you'll see under discipline specific knowledge. It's quite low and not as important in consulting. For example, full setting teamwork and project management. So that kind of difference is something that you can investigate this week, as you attend the panel discussions, you can really dig into what skills are required in your particular field. What is time management? Is it written communication? Will you be writing quite a bit for any particular career field that you're considering? Or will you be making decisions? Will you be managing projects? Will you be collaborating? Or will you be analyzing data? So those are questions that I would encourage you to ask the panelists this week at the different panel discussions. If you look at the outcomes, so where the people on the survey project are employed, I thought it would be easiest to start with faculty employment. This tenure track rule is one that we are all very familiar with. You work closely with your faculty advisor, your PI, and it's important to know, I think, a little bit about the sample in that application. So in the sample, 22% of people in the sample were employed in tenure track faculty positions. Now remember, I was looking at a time span of 10 years. So that would enable some of the respondents to have gone through postdoctoral training as well. 13% were in non-tenure track faculty positions. So adjunct positions, maybe moving around from university to university. I think as we look at these numbers, 22% seemed a little bit high to me and 13% being a non-tenure track faculty position seemed low. So I thought it would be interesting for us to compare that to other data from the same time period. So we looked at the most recent NSF data for outcomes in 2015 for the same time period. So people who are on the PhD between 2000 and 2014. It would be interesting for you if we looked at the largest discipline represented today, or group of disciplines, and that is those of you studying in the life sciences. So if we looked at PhDs in life sciences over that time period, 7% of them ended up in tenure track jobs. So we can see that my survey research is imperfect because I think there is definitely social desirability bias in the survey. And that is to say, people who are who were in tenure track faculty jobs at the time might have found it easier to respond than people who are in non-tenure track faculty positions. If we want to look at the number of people in the US and non-tenure track faculty jobs, I actually looked at a study by the American Association of University Professors as the point of comparison. They looked at a study, they conducted a study of contingent faculty. So contingent faculty being primarily adjuncts, but people in visiting appointments, people who are in non-tenure track faculty roles. So they looked at every single faculty position in the US. So of all faculty jobs in the US, the AP found that 68% of people in faculty jobs are contingent faculty. Clearly higher than 13%. But why is that number so high? That number is so high because so many of our universities in the US now have had challenges financially and have moved to hiring more adjuncts, possibly moved to orinating tenure lines. And this is over the past several decades and have come to rely more on contingent faculty. So it can be a financial question. Still, if we look at the number of people in our sample, 22% are in tenure track jobs. That leaves 78%. So 78% of the remaining PhDs are employed outside of the tenure track role. But where are they employed? And so I wanted to share with you the sectors where PhDs are employed in the sample. So again, the sample size is just over 8,000 and we have nearly half of people in the sample employed in education. 12% are employed in biotech and pharma. 12% are employed in government agencies. 6% more profits, 4% consulting firms and so on and so forth. And so I wanted to show you if we dig down and look at more granular data, where in terms of education, where in terms of that sector are PhDs employed. So most of the PhDs in the sample are employed at research universities. 66% working in research universities. 23% are working in liberal arts colleges, 5% community colleges, 4% K through 12%, 1% in comprehensive and regional universities and 1% medical schools. The way that I parsed out the data was actually looking at standalone medical schools. So when I say research university, that includes research universities that may also house a school of medicine. So why are PhDs employed largely at research universities? I think, for several reasons, I've spent so much time with PhDs and individual counseling appointments that have heard from them that it is familiar that they are familiar with this environment, the environment of the research university that they often have started families, as we saw, we had many newly married people in the sample, many people with young children. So they may be putting down roots where their research university is in terms of their doctoral study or their postdoctoral study. But also I think it's an environment that they find enriching. I think it's intellectual stimulating. I think being surrounded by people who are engaged in education can be rewarding. And so for lots of different reasons, I think people who are PhD trained might like to work at a research university. However, if we know that the people in our sample did not work necessarily in a tenure track role, what were they doing in a research university setting. There are specific job titles that I can share with you now on this slide came directly from the survey. People who are interested in remaining at the research university or on a college campus in general should know that colleges and universities are much like small cities. There are so many different options available to people. There are many people with whom I worked my colleagues at Rackham my colleagues at the University Career Center, who are PhD trained love their jobs, and they have the ability to advise and assist current doctoral students current postdoctoral scholars with their career decisions. There are people who work as academic advisors. There are PhDs who work as grants administrators. They might work in an associate dean role, work on career curriculum development for a particular discipline. I work in public affairs. I've worked with lots of PhDs who have enjoyed writing for universities and so it really depends on what you're interested in what you're good at, and what you care most about in terms of the job. But I encourage you to check out the university. If you are interested in pursuing a tenure track role, which many of you indicated that you are in addition to other roles. You might check to see what people who have been most recently hired at your university, what kind of profile they have. So, look at the CBs of the faculty who are hired most recently in your department. What kinds of publications do they have, where have they published, and what kinds of grants did they come in with, when they were hired, because that should give you a roadmap to those people who are being hired for tenure track roles. Otherwise, if you spend time with a career advisor or counselor, you will come to understand what is most interesting to you, you'll understand and learn more about different opportunities, you'll learn more about career exploration. And one way that you can do that is through looking at the Chronicle, the Chronicle of Higher Education so Chronicle.com will introduce you to lots of different opportunities on the student affairs side and on the academic affairs side so the two different sides of the house. As we move to the biotech and pharma sector. We'll see that half of the people who entered this sector are working in biotech firms, 39% are working in pharmaceutical firms, and 11% of people in this sector are working in devices and diagnostics. And again, in terms of jobs in industry, I've met with many, many science, life sciences, PhDs, physical sciences, engineers who might say, Well I'm interested in industry, and not know much about it or where to get started so even that over arching idea, or sector of working in a more profit world is sort of a black hole. So how do you find out more about different occupations. So once again, in industry, there are so many choices for PhD trained scientists. I might need to do some more research in terms of understanding the landscape. So, what does regulatory affairs mean, what do regulatory affairs specialists do, how do they get into the field. Wanted to work in marketing in a particular for profit sector. How do you break into that field. What is medical science liaison and what do they do. What do you think about business development that would be attractive to you and how do you find that out, which would be interested in working as a patent attorney, or patent agent, what is the difference. So, to answer some of these questions, I encourage you to attend the health care biotech and pharma panel that's taking place tomorrow at 12 o'clock. So it's taking place at noon. I have pictures of professionals like now who will be part of the panel discussion, who work in those fields now, and they can share their career path with you. Bring your specific questions to the career panel. They also wanted to share a few other opportunities for you to learn about the for profit sector. One is to learn more about finance. So what kinds of occupations exist in finance and that panel discussion is taking place also tomorrow but at 4pm. So wanted to encourage you to continue to check the PhD connections website for the times and the bios of all of the speakers. Continuing to the week, there is a career panel on technology with some exciting speakers. That's taking place on Wednesday, April 7 at four o'clock. And on Thursday at 4pm, there is a career panel on consulting. So, again, with PhDs I have heard from many of my counseling appointments. Oh, you know I'm interested in consulting I've heard that it's a good fit for PhDs but I don't quite know how to get started I don't know how to go about my job search what's different about it. What our case interviews for what I often hear is I don't know anyone in that field. And these events represent a fabulous opportunity for you to get to know people in the field and stay in touch with them. So, you know, being in touch with people after you have conversations with them. Like this week, hearing about their, their pathways through the career panels is important. But you can also start online. You can start by looking for people in different professions on LinkedIn. You can network on LinkedIn effectively starting out via email and then moving eventually to a possible phone call or zoom call. And then down the road hopefully meeting back in person with people in different fields. You look at the government sector. And this is the second largest sector that you remember from the graphic of people in different sectors. 37% of the respondents to the survey are in federal agencies, a percent are in state agencies 3% military and 2% mobile. With this, these responses from the survey respondents on their particular occupations. I found there was a core thread through all of the people who are employed in the government sector and that is a seemed to be working in their disciplines directly. So if you look at these occupational titles field application specialist astrophysicist neologist chemist watershed ecologist. These scientists are working in their very fields. So if you are interested in looking at work in different areas. To continue your research, I would encourage you to look at federal federal agencies or state agencies. But that said, there are also opportunities outside of your discipline within the government sector. So working as a writer, working as a person who reaches out to the public and shares information about work. There are a lot of opportunities in government agencies. To hear more about people who are working in government and federal agencies. And the panel on Wednesday. So this Wednesday, April 7 at noon. And remember to bring your questions because this is, again, a sector that has a particular culture, but it also has a particular process in terms of application. And you can ask very specific questions of the panelists. So today I wanted to look at the fourth largest sector in my study and that is the nonprofit sector. The sector is the most diverse in terms of types of institutions. So you might work at a research foundation of professional society. Intergovernmental or not governmental organization, nonprofit research Institute and museum. For example, if you are interested in nonprofit work and you want to be dedicated to a particular cause, check out the Association of independent research institutes. So that is an organization of all of the independent research institutes in the US. And the website is AIRI.org. So I encourage you to check out that organization because there are so many research institutes in the US that are focused on a particular mission that you might be attracted to. So if you are a mission driven person, I would encourage you to look at different organizations, what they work on what they stand for, and look at the job opportunities listed there, because oftentimes they are looking to hire PhD trained professionals and lots of opportunities, different kinds of job titles in the nonprofit sector. So I encourage you to look at the program education, and even working in the education sector as director of postdoc affairs, but also working in those research institutes. I have several friends who work as directors of postdoc offices in the research institutes in the US to explore the nonprofit sector. This is a wonderful panel. This is a discussion on Thursday, April 8 at noon through the PhD connections conference, so I would encourage you to check that out with very interesting and varied careers represented at that panel discussion. So before we leave this section and move on to some of our other research questions I wanted to share with you some of my favorite job titles for the survey. There are so many interesting job titles that I had not been aware of, but that made sense to me so volcanologists came up as a potential job title or as a specific job title. That makes sense to me that there are of course scientists who study volcanoes video game designer can be appealing to lots of different PhD candidates. Nutritionist and you know as I said I hadn't heard of that occupation but of course there are people who focus on the nutrition of animals in the zoo aerospace physiologist. But some of the occupations I had never heard of and didn't even really understand like the nano fossil biostrategic which exists and may be interesting for some of the candidates in earth sciences, geology, and so on and so forth. But as a affairs officer, you know there are so many exciting opportunities but, for example, you know you may be wondering how you could ever embark on a career search when you are not sure what job titles exist out there. I think the panel discussions this week are one way that you can find out more about job titles and different pathways, different steps that people take in different careers. Just through reading, through reading, through conducting research, you know, working on your own career and embarking on career exploration is just like your research, it will take time, but it is definitely worthwhile, and will help you to be exposed to career fields, different occupations and different job titles. So reading through different professional societies, reading through different places where jobs are listed, you will learn more about jobs available. So in terms of finding careers that are right for you, there are several steps that I would encourage you to take. So the first is to think more about yourself. So what are you truly interested in, what are you good at, and what do you care most about in a job. Again, you do not have to do that in a vacuum, you can work with a career advisor or career counselor through the University Career Center through RACM, through the Office of Graduate Postdoctoral Studies. Or you can work on it with friends, colleagues, peers, family members, people who know you. The conversations can be so illuminating. So I would definitely say start that process now. Once you do that, I would encourage you to start to network. Many of the PhDs that I've worked with over time have told me, well I don't know anyone, and I don't have a network. It's not true actually in next 10 PhD, I have a graphic that was developed by my good friend, Laura start, who is the director of graduate student career development at Harvard. She created a graphic that will help you to identify all of the contacts that you currently have. So while you might feel like you don't know anyone, you know you're not sure where to start. But you actually have an existing network that you can tap into today. And that might include your alumni from fellow alumni from your undergraduate institution, your peers, or people in your, your cohort at U of M. That might include the staff and faculty at U of M that might include people who are on the staff or faculty at your undergraduate institution. And that's just on the educational side. So you also have immediate family, you have extended family, you have friends in your personal network. You have people who are in your day to day life. I have actually met some PhDs who have developed networking contacts at dog parks. So that can happen. I met my husband on a plane. So that can also happen. So you could meet a partner somewhere. But on a plane when you're at a conference. I know that, you know, so many of our conferences now are virtual, and it's quite easy to connect with people like today. You know, someone through email through connecting, you know, at a conference at a panel discussion in a chat. It's really important for you to remain open to recognizing the networking opportunities that are all around you. Check out professional associations. So in addition to your disciplinary societies, which are super helpful for maintaining your standing in the field and for remaining up to date on changes in your field as you go through your research. Professional associations also exist for almost every occupation in the US. So in the US, there are just over 14,000 occupations, and there are professional associations for most of those. So for example, we talked about regulatory affairs a little bit ago, when we were talking about positions and industry. There is an association for regulatory affairs professionals. We talked about technology transfer. That is another field that you might be interested in that is helping faculty and graduate students and postdocs take their discoveries and transfer them to the marketplace. So tech transfer offices exist at research universities and institutes. And that is true for U of M. And if you are interested in tech transfer, there's a professional association called the university, the association of university technology managers. With any professional association, you will find the websites tend to be very good. They tend to have access to career portals. So possibly job listings that you haven't seen or that won't be listed elsewhere. That's true for my field. But also, they have real people who serve on their boards. And those are people that you can connect with, if you're just starting to explore a new career field. If you're interested in writing, for example, and you find the National Association for Science Writers, go to the board of directors for the National Association of Science Writers, and you might find the names and personal emails of people who are in that field. The nice thing about professional association board members is they're all volunteers. So they all have permanent day jobs, and they're committed to growing the profession. So they're a very easy group to approach your questions about the career. So how do you get into the field and how do you get started and what do people look for. So I look in terms of asking questions, for example, at the career panels. I also have a list of potential questions that you can ask professionals in next-gen PhD. So it's just a starting point. You will have your own personal questions that you want to ask as you attend the career panels this week. But you will ask, you could ask about how people got started, what kinds of background or training they have, and where the field is going, what they like about their jobs, what they don't like is an important indicator for you as you're making a decision. Another way that you can find out about different careers is through volunteering, collaborating, you can find internships. I've actually worked with some PhDs and postdocs who have found connections through collaborations. They might have started out as research collaborations, kept in touch with the people that they collaborated with, and those connections turned into jobs. So I encourage you to think through that. With volunteering, you don't really have to volunteer for that much time. So that's the nice thing about volunteering, you can set your own schedule. So don't think that you need to abandon your PhD program in order to find out more about different career fields. You can do it at your own pace. You can set short term measurable goals for yourself. Like this week, I will find two people on LinkedIn who work in museums, for example, and I will contact them by Friday at five. And so that is a short term goal. It's manageable, and it's also measurable. So you'll know that if Friday comes and goes and you have a contact with two people, two professionals, you'll know you haven't achieved that goal and you can set a new deadline for yourself. And then manage your time. So managing your time is important. Give yourself enough time. If you find that you are about to defend in a few months, and your time is short, you can share that with your career advisor. Or if you are in your first or second year of your doctoral program and you're not sure which way to go. That's fine. You can work backwards. So from the time that you think it will take to complete your degree or your postdoctoral training. Work backwards from that date to today and set short term achievable goals for yourself to manage your time most effectively. If you are going on the market and I know that several of you said that you are. There are several things that you can do to prepare yourself for the market. Read through job descriptions carefully. So if you are applying for any type of position, there is so much good information that can be found in job descriptions. There's so much good language phrases information that should appear on your CD or in your cover letter. So read carefully, and you can actually go some of what people are looking for through job descriptions, then edit your resume or your CD for the reader. Depending on what you're applying for to tailor your resume or your CD. So I can't tell you how many people I've hired over time, who have sent in resumes or CDs that weren't written for the job at hand. And it takes time to do but it is critical for you to spend time doing this because you will set yourself apart from other candidates. If you understand the job and you write for the reader of your CD. If you're looking at faculty positions, for example, and you know that you would only like to work at small colleges, you wouldn't submit the same CD that someone would submit to do that, for example, to a large research institute. You need to really focus on your teaching your teaching experience your teaching skills classes you have the ability to teach. And so it really needs to be tailored. I would also join LinkedIn. If you are not on LinkedIn. It is a fabulous platform for across all occupations across all sectors. This includes the Academy. You can just keep your profile up to date and include a picture if you can because most employers will want to connect a face to the name and that is something that you can do fairly easily now, even with your phone, you can have a friend take a fairly large picture of you with LinkedIn, I would encourage you to use it broadly so you can join different organizations you can follow organizations you can look at job listings on LinkedIn, but do try to increase the size of your LinkedIn. So, after today I encourage all of you to join connect with me on LinkedIn, because after you connect with me, you'll be able to see all of my connections on LinkedIn. That's how LinkedIn works. It's a web. It's a network of people of contacts that you can use and connect with and talk with talk with about their jobs. So, connect with me after today's talk. My LinkedIn profile is open so the connections. I'm open to all connections. If you want to follow up with me after today's talk my personal email is also on my LinkedIn page, so you can find it under contact information. I continue to network, as I mentioned, every time you attend a talk online, every time you connect with your advisor, or not every time but let your advisor know what you're seeking and the kind of job you're looking for your advisor can help you if he or she has any connections in the field that you're looking at may not. And so I do think I think it is reasonable for your faculty advisor to know of resources on campus. They may or may not know of other people or have a network of connections in fields outside of their own. So, it's important for you to recognize that. You can definitely do this with the career advisors and counselors on campus. And that's crucial. It's crucial for you to be ready to respond to lots of questions about your background, your education, your training and research. So follow up with all contacts. So follow up on all interactions that you have with people. If you find you have a great conversation with one of the panelists or you're really intrigued by one of the panelists on this week, you might try to find out that person's email I found almost all of the panelists on LinkedIn. So contact them on your own, you know through Gmail or otherwise, and let them know you were present at the panel, you really enjoyed the discussion and you wanted to know that if they could follow up on the phone with you for 20 or 30 minutes in the next few weeks, because you've had some follow up questions that is totally appropriate. It happens all the time. So be afraid to reach out to people after you have positive interactions, because that is how most of us found our jobs. In terms of going back to the research questions, the primary activities at work. And remember that I argued that most PhDs are engaged in research. So according to the sample, three out of four PhDs across the country and all sectors are engaged in research either basic or applied. So they're regardless of the kind of field that they're in. And I know this is true for my colleagues and career counseling. We conduct research in our field, we have journals conduct research all the time of the sample one in three people are engaged in teaching in some way. So I thought that was meaningful to because I have been able to teach through giving talks, and you might be able to teach to present to share information orally if that is something that you enjoy, and lots of different positions. So I'm going to ask you quickly. What percentage of people you think indicated in the survey that a PhD was required or preferred for their non faculty job. So, this is a quiz. How many people said that a PhD was required or preferred for their non faculty jobs in the sample of just over 78%. 78% indicated that a PhD was required or preferred for their practice. So when I asked the same question about a postdoc was a postdoc required or preferred for their non faculty job. 28% indicated postdoc is required or preferred for their current position. So what do those two statistics tell us. So first of all, this statistic of 78% tells us that employers of all kinds of all sectors value the PhD, they value PhD trained candidates. And second of all, 28% requiring or preferring a postdoc or postdoctoral training indicates that a postdoc is not required for all occupations. It is required for some, and that's where your research comes in. Right. So you want to find out is a postdoc required or preferred for what you're looking for. And that's really important for you as you embark on this exploration process. And finally, before we leave and go on to your questions. I wanted to share our PhD is happy out. But it would be interesting for you if I wrote this down by people who are in tenure track roles in non tenure track roles, or not employed in a faculty position. So of those three, which do you think are the happiest. So it turns out that the most satisfied people are not employed in the faculty position. But I'm just being silly because it's if you know we look at satisfied and very satisfied taken together. More and tenure track roles are very happy. But look at the bottom total. So 42% are satisfied and 38% are very satisfied. So 80% of people in the sample across all types of positions are happy in their jobs. And so I just wanted to leave you with that today because I think it's crucial that you know that people are able to find satisfying fulfilling work at the conclusion of your PhD or postdoctoral training. And so, if you find that you need more assistance and would like to read more check out next gen PhD. And thank you so much to those who worked on me work with me on this project. And I look forward to taking your questions now. Hi Melanie thank you so much. Hi, I'm Laura Shreham I work at Rackham as the director of professional and academic development we got lots of questions from our attendees. Our first question is you talked about transferable skills and your research on skills. How important is it for people to include the skills you talked about on their CV or resume when applying to jobs. Is it just a given if you have a PhD that you have those skills or do you need to indicate that in in your resume or CV. So that's a great question. And my answer is it depends. So, if you are looking for writing job, for example, and you're putting together a CV that is tailored to a position in writing, I would actually create a category called writing experience or science scientific writing experience or something similar to highlight for the reader, the fact that you have done significant writing through your PhD. So it depends on the skill set. I don't think, for example, you need to create a category listing all of the skills that I listed, but you could definitely mention them in a cover letter. So I think it's about your ability to learn quickly and absorb material quickly. I think that's an appropriate place for your different skills. And again, I would read job descriptions very carefully. When I was applying for this job at the University of St. Joseph, I was looking at and talking with the provost about the assistant dean role, and there were some very specific skill sets. That were analogous to the list of 15 that I showed you in the job description. And I alluded to them in my cover letter with concrete examples and anecdotes that provided evidence of my development of those skills. So you can do that as you write a letter. And that's probably how I would handle it. Melanie, thank you so much for your talk. Hello everyone, I'm Gina Sharetta and I work on Laura's team. Our next question Melanie is, are there any patterns relating to age in terms of PhD graduates capacity to gain meaningful employment, whether on university campuses or outside. What if someone is a graduate of 50 years or older and are there particular challenges that one might expect. That's an interesting question as well. So, with your age being a non traditional non traditional aged PhD student, I think your age is much less important than your experience. I think you can use your life experience as an asset, and I would really frame it that way I would think carefully about everything that you that you had done prior to enrolling in a PhD program. You can frame that for the reader on your CV, and then include all that you have done throughout your doctoral training. But again, I would focus carefully on the job at hand, because I think your age matters much less and I have found this I've seen this, then the differences that you can bring to a position. And then in a couple of you can also state, having been a professional or having been through possibly different career fields. You have the ability to maybe take a broader view, or have the ability to see the big picture and bring different perspectives to the work at hand. So I would really focus on what you do have to bring to the table, because I've seen PhD candidates of all ages be successful in the way. I also had a question from an international postdoc so this person is interested in pursuing a research development or administration role, specifically in the education sector and they are wondering if an internship is required prior to job application because they've been told that internships, or pro bono work for job experience is restricted for them as an international postdoc and to even broaden this I know oftentimes our international students, you know have concerns around gaining job experience given restrictions around employment for them during graduate schools so what advice do you have for that Melanie. I think. So it's important. It's crucial of course for you to check in with your office events international students and scholars. And I apologize if that's not the name of it at you event. But it is important for you to recognize what the restrictions are based on your visa type, but that said, I think you still have the ability to gain skills in different areas. While you may not be able to gain experience in a different organization, you might still be able to develop the skills that you need through your department through your research through your work. If you are looking to enter business development might look at ways that you can contribute to your department ways that you can. Look at the field and try to understand what skills are the most important and try to replicate those in different ways, taking on new projects that are academic. So they work for you. And don't. You wouldn't run into any problems with your restrictions but that would bolster your application strengthen your CD. I'm looking to my colleague. Dr Kirsten Ellen to see if we should be wrapping up here for closing remarks or one more question. Maybe one more quick question. Well, we will turn then Melanie we have one question from a participant for PhD is taking 10 year track positions versus industry. So biotech pharma etc, which sector is generally better off finance. Which sector is better off financially. Well, you know, it's been, it's been a tough year it's been a tough year for, you know, for the academy. It's been a tough year in response to COVID it. I know that we've been hit our universities been hit fairly hard, you know, in terms of enrollment, but, but opportunities and industry can also be fairly volatile, and, and could be unstable it depends on your line of work and what you're looking for. I once attended a talk where it was the Dean of pharmacy who was speaking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he said, while industry jobs may not. He said that while there may not be great stability in industry there's great mobility. And I think that's a really important message for industry because I personally have seen now over time so many PhDs move around into different positions in industry fairly easily. So a large pharma is downsizing. And PhDs be picked up by, you know, smaller spin offs or biotechs like that, with no trouble at all. So I would say, you know, it depends on what you're looking for personally in terms of environment culture, those are very different places. But in terms of stability, you know, tenure track roles, yes, it's, you know, they can be lifelong, but you know industry can be very rewarding as well. Thank you so much Melanie for that informative and inspiring keynote. And to everyone who shared their questions I think we got, we got to most of them, but it really helps to deepen the conversation when we have questions so thank you so much for, for everyone who engaged that way. So big thanks to Gina and Laura for moderating the Q&A. This is just the first session and an exciting week of panel sessions focused on a variety of industries. As Melanie mentioned, including government consulting finance healthcare, biotech pharma technology and the nonprofit sector. Many of you have already registered for some of these sessions and we really look forward to seeing you there. But if you haven't yet registered registration is still open so feel free to register for as many sessions as you'd like. And we're going to share we've shared the conference webpage before but we'll share it again in the chat. And then finally we'd like to ask you to provide your feedback on this keynote session via the link provided in the chat we always love to get feedback on our programming so we can improve for next time. And with that I just want to say that I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the PhD connections conference, and encourage you all to network and engage with each other throughout the week as Melanie said you never know what what connection can can lead to you know interesting information or another connection so please do engage fully. I just want to say thanks again to Melanie and to everyone who worked to put the conference together, and I hope everyone has a wonderful afternoon.