 everyone to four linguists in government panel on this wonderful Thursday. My name is Emily Pace. I am the principal linguist at a company called Expert System USA that provides NLP solutions to federal government customers. And I am also one of the LCL organizers. I'm joined here for our panel today by Sarah Clark from the US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory by Bill Marcellino from the Rand Corporation and Cecilia Castillo-Iometsi from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which for those of you outside of the DC area runs the DC Metro. And without further ado, we will go ahead and get started with introductions from our panelists. So Bill, would you like to start and introduce yourself to the crowd today? Hi, I'm Bill Marcellino. I actually have a rhetoric degree from CMU from Carnegie Mellon University, but my coursework and my sort of education was in social linguistics and corpus linguists. So I end up being a linguist, I guess in sort of practice and in training. I work at the Rand Corporation. So I'm a senior behavioral and social scientist. Rand is an FFRDC, a federally funded research and development corporation. So not federal employees, but we have long senior relationships and we fill in as doing public policy research for government. And here I do mostly some qualitative work, but mostly machine learning and scalable analytics approaches to large data sets. So like a lot of social media analysis, that kind of stuff. Over. Thank you, Bill. Cecilia, would you like to go next? Sure, I'd be happy to introduce myself. So my name is Cecilia Castillo-Iometsi. I'm a graduate of the Georgetown University social linguistics program. I did my master's in doctoral degrees in social linguistics with of course concentration and discourse analysis. My interest in actually my current research and work is still within the area of discourse and narrative analysis, interaction and social linguistics, critical discourse analysis, immediate discourse analysis. I think I have managed to be able to bring that to the workplace. And what could I say about myself? My training was very much influenced by the work and guidance of Ron Scollum. He was the one that introduced us at the time of immediate discourse analysis, next analysis, which in a way gave us the tools to work in the public sector, at least for me. And I got to see the beginning. So G. Ossie Muricks, that now is visual analysis, which is very nice. And I do a lot of that work at my work. And before working at the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, I'll work for four different mayors in DC government at Executive Office of the Mayor. Thank you so much, Cecilia. And Sarah, would you like to go ahead? Good morning, I'm Sarah Clark. And before I give my short bio, I just wanna say thank you for inviting me for the panel. I'm kind of fan-girling over here over Dr. Marcelino. I read a lot of your work. And I am super excited to hear about the Washington Transit Authority. I can't even imagine that sounds like a huge job. So I'm super excited to be here with you fine folks. So my bio, I don't have my PhD yet. I'm actually currently getting it. So I'll soon be Dr. Clark, let's hope. But I have my master's in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And I work currently for the US Army Corps of Engineers. I work, there's a higher record, right? So US, USACE, and then I work for the URDIC, which is Engineering Research and Development Center. And then one of the seven labs in there, the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. So I am a social scientist, but also that's kind of my broad title, but I am, my detail and my duty is strategic communication officer as well as knowledge management representative. So I work with our fine engineers and researchers to strategically communicate internally as well as externally with our stakeholders. So I am a sociolinguist and I work with identity as well as kind of dip my toe in eco-linguistics because we do a lot of emergency response as well as environmental planning. So just kind of a broad, cool thing that I get to do. So I would say that, you know, I get to do X, but that kind of changes daily. So yeah, nice to meet y'all and excited for the panel. We're excited for the panel too. Careers in government are always an exciting space. So I wanna start with the, you know, one of the questions that is always top of mind for linguistic students, which is how did you find your current position? And maybe Sarah, you wanna take that first. Sure, yeah, absolutely. So I will preface my story by saying it's a bit unique, but all of our stories are unique, right? So if you have kind of trouble as I'm talking about how I find my position, if you have trouble kind of seeing yourself in it, I preface it to say it's unique, but that's kind of a cool thing in government is you can kind of write your own story as long as you're kind of creative. So anyway, so for me, when I got out of the military, I, so as I was transitioning out of the military in 2016, my husband, who is a mechanical engineer who also works for Searle, he was securing that position. So he actually happened to mention to his boss that he had a wife who was going back to grad school for linguistics and they were like, let's do it. So they actually set me up for an interview as a research assistant, because Searle is co-located here in Champaign, Illinois with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And we have, from the engineering department, obviously because we're an engineering lab, we have a lot of engineering research assistance students come over and just do kind of a myriad of work. But so I got the research assistant position, as you can imagine, and I was a research assistant for three years. But the cool thing is, is that I was the first linguist ever to work at Searle and to work with an Erdek and the first linguist in the department of linguistics at UIUC to work at Searle. So I kind of had to pave that path. And again, unique, but it's a good thing, right? If the front door is kind of closed, you go in the back door side window, right? You pave your own way. So that's, and then from there, I was a research assistant, like I said, for three years. And actually in May of 2020, I was converted over to a federal employee. So now, like I said, my official title is social scientist, but I do communications as my day-to-day in my research. So it's kind of neat. And I get to do my PhD work kind of in tandem with that. So I hope that answers the question. If I've missed anything, let me know. No, that's great. And you've just touched on one of the themes that we've talked a lot about over the course of linguistics career launch, which is the power of networks to find opportunities and to understand what's out there. So thank you so much for that. Cecilia, would you tell us how you found your current position? It's so funny because I love the fact that Sarah said, you know, it's a weird story, but I can tell you that the current position, I was actually solicited by the institution. So by the people that were actually working already in this particular position, probably three times before I actually considered it, seriously, they reached out to me. And they said, look, we love you, we like you, we want you to come and work with us. Maybe you can build this program. But at the time, for the three different times, I say no. I said no because what I was doing was really exciting. I was actually developing a good program and also I was being responsible in terms of putting myself out there when I actually could bring something additional, when I actually could do something bigger. But what is interesting about this that I'm sure our audience will be interested is how I got into my first position which was working at the office of executive, well, executive office of the mayor. And that was just by accident. I happened to go to an event that somebody met me. I was about to finish my dissertation and I just introduced myself, said who I was. A year later, they called me. I mean, out of the blue, I mean, called and said, hey, we want to invite you, maybe you can know more about the institution. And right there, I didn't realize it was an actual interview. And right there in the spot, they said we would like a person with your profile, your linguistics trained person. They thought linguistics was translation which was a totally different story, but they were about to develop a program or language policy in the city. And so they wanted somebody with the skills. And I was shocked because I thought I was just going to visit the place and I came out with a job offer. I went to my mentor, Ronis Cullen, and I say, you know what, this happened to me. What should I do? I want to be a professor. I wanted to follow the career. I was already in the market. And you know what he said? He said, you know, why not? Try it. Try it. If you don't like it, you can go back to academia and it has been 16 years after. So I didn't go back to academia. I accepted the position. I learned how to do things, but I actually brought linguistics to be something that people would recognize, although I became a kind of cultural broker in terms of not giving them the theory, but actually saying, look, this skill set that I bring to you could be able to be used to understand this particular problem. All right, thank you so much. I love that story. And I love the part about how you made that connection. And then a year later, and I think that just really goes to shows that, you know, building a network is sort of, you never know. And it's just so great to have those. And then a year is sort of nothing in the span of a whole career. And those kind of touch back points will be so important for so many people's career journeys. So Bill, would you like to close this out here with your story? Sure. And yeah, I think like all of us, it wasn't an easy obvious fit for a linguist at Rand. I think I'm still the only person who would qualify as a linguist, at least in sort of formal training. I had a network dimension to this. So I applied when I was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon University. I applied for essentially a paid internship at Rand. So they have this graduate summer program. They do summer associate program. And it's really sort of a hiring pipeline for them. And so I reached out cold called a military sociologist for Miller who was kind enough to think I would actually bring some value. And I'm also a former US Marine. So one of the things I always tell people, younger people, undergraduates or graduate students is that you have to be able to sort of combine things to be attractive. So I also had this prior identity as a US Marine. So that made as a budding social scientist but also a military member. That was something that was good. I did two summers there. My second summer I also work with another Marine, Ben Conable who was a senior political scientist at the Rand corporation. So I built up experience, built up a network while I was there, did good work to show that I could be hired. And then later on, I applied as an anthropologist. So I was like close enough and social linguistic anthropologist. I mean, it's not two sides of a similar coin. And so the important thing there is I had to represent myself as more like a general social scientist and not as a linguist which like nobody knows what discourse analysis is outside of this room, right? Nobody, none of that a linguist means you speak Arabic or you speak Farsi. So really being able to translate what you do, I think authentically like you can't be like, you can't BS people but sort of like authentically translating what you can bring to the table is important. The last thing is I was able to show I was genuinely a mixed method researcher. So I had this corpus linguistics aspect that I'd published in I was doing work in for the Marine Corps and sort of like traditional ethnographic and discourse analysis, sort of qualitative data. And again, they don't know that they know qualitative data analysis or content analysis they don't know discourse analysis or that kind of stuff. So I think building up a network as a graduate student and then being able to represent myself as having standing out from other graduates by having other dimensions or multiple skill sets that are not always together was important over. Thank you so much. So again, networking and even starting that networking and grad school so important for so many people's career paths. And I wanna pick up on something Bill that you mentioned which is the job title linguist in a government context. We get a lot of questions about what job titles do I search for? How do I search for jobs? And in industry, there are a lot of jobs appropriate for linguists that don't have linguists in the job title. In government, you have a slightly different problem because as you mentioned in the government context a linguist is a real job title but it's somebody who is a speaker of a certain language like you mentioned Farsi or Arabic who would be doing work in that language and something like translation and interpretation and analysis, et cetera. And so let's talk a little bit about job titles and also about sort of in general explaining what you can do as a linguist in this world where linguist is a job title but isn't your job title. So whoever wants to start with that, please go ahead. I can go, Sarah. I think one of the things that I would recommend I know it's important to look at the job description and sometimes you don't have that linguist word, right? What I would recommend to is to a combination of the things to get involved in what you'd like to do. And that has to do a little bit of what they're working but I will go further than that. Not just meeting people or knowing institutions but actually engage with them in some sort of form. I know Bill mentioned, I mean, he started as an intern that's not a possibility. Unfortunately, a lot of those positions don't pay and that's another thing that you need to be very careful of you don't... I mean, yes, it gives you experience but sometimes you have opportunities that they can pay you to do that. But the point I'm making is not just to network in terms of knowing people or maybe creating a meeting for an informational interview, go beyond that. Try to get involved with organizations that you will do a preliminary investigation in terms of what you would like to do. The other thing that I will recommend especially in the DC area, and that was my job actually when I started working, there are legislations in place that had to do with things that we would call linguistics. So for example, we have in the District of Columbia the language access law. And the language access law, mainly what it says is that government agencies need to provide services to individuals that speak a different language. They only talk about language, but we are linguists and we know the language is just a semiotic system, right? And so that's your first job to say and that what I, at least in my personal experience that has been one of my biggest accomplishment which is the mystifying this conceptualization or language in the sector as a code, Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, English to really make them realize the language is a complex semiotic system that is constituted by many other things and that includes interaction. So the second part that I will recommend the first one is getting engaged, getting involved, do something, have a role in different organizations if you are able to do that. And the second thing is be aware of things that could create jobs for linguists. So for example, you have policies in the district of Columbia, you had the language access law of 19, what is that, 2004, right? And Prince County, you have another legislation and Virginia, you have another legislation. So look for those little threads, right? Things that you are familiar, look at the news, look at what is said that different organizations, institutions, public sector, private sector, government sector are doing. Look at your pool of graduates, so like you have now, right? Many of us continue being engaged with the university in different ways and sometimes I teach at Georgetown, sometimes the environment to give this title presentation. So talk to those people in terms of, not much in terms of network, but in terms of, how would you go about now, right? Not just me sending a message, but actually getting involved. The other thing in terms of what you say, what can you explain in terms of how you do your work is, well, do it. I mean, once you are inside, just do it. Just, I remember at the time, people didn't know anything about visa simulings, linguistic landscape. And I did a project that I incorporated ethnography, analysis of signage, interactions. I have a group of interns that actually went to different sites to observe people's interactions with individuals that provided some service encounters, right? I didn't know, I mean, I had to explain to them in different words what was said that we were analyzing and at the end where we were analyzing, it was human behavior to be able to have an impact on whatever things. So just to present it, one of the things that I have learned, once you have results, money will come. So they sponsor and they give me money and budget to be able to develop projects that then allow me to hire people. Maybe in a short-term basis, because one of the things that people think that is that if you get into an institution, as an intern, you may have a job, it happens for the lucky ones, but most of the time it has to do with funding, it has to do with whether or not the position exists and so forth, but at least having that opportunity or having people inside also may open the opportunity to literally open the doors for other people that may have the skills that some of those that are in the site need. So those are the three things, engage, find out, just around this in terms of policies or things that you can actually find place to have a job and actually get in when you get in and do something concretely. So they can see what skills that you bring. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And Sarah, I think you had been chiming in as well. Did you want to add anything? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm in the R and D sector. I think I forgot to mention that in my bio, but the Army Corps, we do a lot of different things. Emergency response, environmental planning, social science, the end of a lot of our research, there's an actual soldier, a warfighter that needs that technology, right? But there's a lot of things that kind of go into that. So we need social science, right? Cause we're dealing with people at the end of the day and we also have a national mission as well. So we do a lot of civil works, things like that. So there's a public aspect to that. So all that to say is that just like Cecilia was saying that being creative in how you kind of conceptualize your, what you're looking for on USA jobs if you want to work as a Fed, is really important. And actually I'm going to drop my three letter philosophy of how it's helping me kind of navigate the federal sector. So maybe something easy to remember, but to be honest, as Cecilia was talking, it's kind of the same things of what she said. So apologies for the repetition, but maybe this will touch on something that'll help. So three letters and in the military we love our acronyms, right? So see me later for social science research on acronyms. That's one of the things I do. Whoa, it's exciting. Anyway, so car, three letters, right? Creativity, be creative. Think about like Cecilia was saying what you like to do, what is involved in your kind of your breadth of research like Bill was saying, discourse analysis. Well, it's called a different thing that's kind of people can resonate with. We're all linguists. We understand that you co-construct as you're finding yourself in conversation or et cetera to be creative. And the second is applicability. In the DOD especially, our research needs to be applicable to a mission. So figure out kind of a mission or something that you would like to do. For example, let's say that you wanna work with the public for emergency response, for example. There's a lot of good linguistic connection there, right? Signage, how we talk to people, how we announce an emergency. There's a lot of things there. But they take a little, you know, seven degrees to Kevin Bacon to kind of get to, right? To link up what you do. So the third one is roles. Roles are super important, especially in the DOD. We love our hierarchies, right? But roles, you can make your roles kind of work for you. If you're like, I wanna work for the DOD. I'm creative. I understand that like I need to work in a communication field, let's say. And I'm applicable. I wanna work for emergency response, but I don't know how to push that belly button. What do I do? The roles are gonna work for you, right? So for example, within the DOD, there's a role called a PAO, a public affairs officer. They interact with the public. They take all the research, all the things that we do in the R&D sector especially, and kind of push it out and translate it into something that the public can digest. Now, if you want literally that role, okay, cool, that's a job opportunity there. But my point is I was making is that if you wanna ask a question or you wanna get tagged up with a researcher or you wanna know more about a mission, find a PAO. They're on, listen on all government websites, or not all government, at least all DOD websites. The ERDIC has one. There's an inbox. You can just ask the questions. Hey, I'm a linguist. I wanna do social science. These are the missions that I really like. I saw that you did X mission. You have X technology that I think that I could support. Do it, talk to people, build that network. But just like I said, concretely, know the roles, know kind of the hierarchies. Now, some of them are a mess. There's a lot, but those are kind of the belly buttons that you wanna push to kind of get in there because sometimes finding a researcher or project that you wanna work on is a little covert. So you need to figure out kind of that pathway. But the other thing I would say too is that within the DOD, especially when within the federal sector, we have paid, yes, they're internships, but they're also research assistants. We have a program called ORISE, which is for a lot of STEM careers, but sometimes there's a social science job posting for there. And those are just kind of tools in your toolkit to be like, oh, I'd like to do this thing, or even if there's not a job posting that works for you, you can kind of now know, how to orient yourself and navigate. And those job postings, those, because ORISE is its own organization, they will have like PAOs or somebody that you can talk to to be like, hey, I don't see a job posting now, but can you give me information for the future? Anyway, so like I said, car, remember it. It's really good creativity, applicability and roles. Super important, especially when within the DOD, over. Thank you so much, Sarah. Bill, any thoughts to add on this? Yeah, so I think what Cecilia said about, this is human behavior, like we study human beings and we have expertise in human behavior. It happens to be linguistic behavior and we most often look at things like text documents or transcripts or even like live human behavior in actual settings, but it's all human behavior. So like government is familiar with sociologists, is familiar with psychologists, is familiar less to a lesser degree with anthropologists. And those are sort of like the big three places disciplinary they're drawing from, but we count to and you can represent yourself as a social scientist. And so I think the key, one of the keys then is to one, represent yourself as a social scientist or a behavioral scientist or as a qualitative or mixed method data analyst and then to look for jobs that have those names in there. So again, not linguist, but if you go to Indeed or if you go to any of those ones and you search for qualitative data analyst, qualitative data research, if you look for behavioral sciences, if you look for social sciences and also if you can do it mixed method, and certainly, and that's one of the things too, I've noticed is more and more library of Congress, conditional research service, they want people that can combine scalable, analytical skills, you're still spaced for pure qualitative, they can be really helpful if you can do some coding, if you can do web scraping, if you do something that deals with quantitative methods as well. Second thing is that when you represent yourself and when you communicate with potential hires, again, they're not gonna know our insider discourse community language. So you've gotta be really careful. And even like with like research approaches, like I work with a bunch of scientists at Rand, I bet one in three of them have any idea what ethnography is as an approach. And they certainly have never heard of like grounded theory, like they wouldn't know like the kind of, you know, phenomenology, those are not, I think good broad usage words, but they do know research methods. So what you can say is things like, I have a lot of experience facilitating focus groups, or I'm really experienced field interviewer, and I've also run a lot of group interviews, for example, and that kind of thing. So, you know, showing them that you, so one, looking for these jobs that are behavioral social science jobs, which they're asking for, and then showing that you have a toolkit that would incredibly let you give value. Now, if you're a senior person and you've got like all kinds of chops, you know, in some area, that's great. If you're newer, you have to show instead, I have these, you know, these skills, maybe domain areas as well. Although, you know, domain areas are like, you know, domain knowledge, it gets, you know, one day you're like an expert in Russia, and then the Soviet Union falls, and you're like, oh, crud. But then it comes back again, because of Putin, and then, you know, whatever, like a couple of years ago, if you were doing Middle East and North Africa studies, you know, expertise there, you'd be in demand. Now, not quite so much. You know, if you spoke Mandarin and had skills. So just be aware of that. But like, if you can combine those together and articulate them, you have a much better chance of being noticed and hired. Over. Emily, let me add one more thing to what Bill is saying. And that's, in terms of my experience, and I don't know if my presenters could agree with this, but as I started my career, I did things. I had to have deliverables. I had to execute projects, initiatives, plans, and so forth. As I'm moving ahead in my career, I become more of a subject matter expert. And now I'm not allowed to do it. I would love to do it, right? But now I'm expected to direct, to monitor, to guide. And so what I want the audience to remember, as Bill said, once you identify what people will call transferable skills. So it's not the role you have. It's not the title you have. It's actually what is said that you are required to do. We have above and beyond these skills for any work environment, especially writing, researching, analyzing, reading graphs, observing. We have a bunch of theories that we don't even know what to do with them and how to explain them. All those things imagine is you really toolkit. So what tools are you going to use for this particular job? And as you learn it, you become a master. And then you will able to guide. And the point of guidance, that's when the creativity comes tremendously, because at that point you have experience. So I'm saying this because as you go about to identify what you would like to do, I will convey the advice that my mentor gave me all the time, which is, make sure that what you do, you love. You love it because what is going to happen as you do it, you become an expert. And if you hated it, guess what? You are going to hate yourself. So make sure that the skill set that you start when you enter, that you really execute is something that you can see yourself in the future to build, to change, to modify, to guide, to scratch out and create new things. So in that sense, don't think of roles, don't think of titles. Look at what skill set is needed and see if this is something that you want to do and flourish in it. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. That's, I think for so many people trying to figure out their paths, the idea of having something that they love now that they can carry through, I think is such a good thread for people to be able to follow. So we've talked a little bit about what all of you do and some guidance on finding those jobs. And I wanna ask a bit of a logistics question that we've heard from some students over the years, which is what is it like applying for a government job and how is that different from applying for an industry job when it comes to things like timelines or resumes or any of those, sort of any of the components that make up that actual application process? If Cecilia, maybe you'd like to go ahead and start with that and tell us your perspective on government hiring as a process and what some of the differences our attendees might be able to expect. Well, one of the things that I would recommend is if you're able to when you're applying in a particular place, see if you can reach out to, you will most likely have a whole department that is a recruiting department. I can tell you from the institution that I'm working with now, they have a division that is called talent acquisition. And that division is separated in different areas of expertise to fulfill requirements that are stipulated by funding by the federal government in this case. So for example, we have a team that will recruit millennials. You have another team that will recruit veterans. You have another team that will recruit women. You have another team that recruits individuals with disabilities. Depending on the different jobs, you guys are looking at those categories to be able to be in compliance. So that's one thing. Part of the process, you will be assigned or is assigned a manager, a recruiting manager and then a talent acquisition person, which is the recruiter. And then you have a person that actually is the person that will communicate with you through the process. If you have individuals working in the institution, make sure you connect. Why? Because they will able to give you the inside scope of how things work. Also, it will be good for you. And that's one of the most difficult situation is to negotiate your salary. It's always important to understand how the salary, I believe they call them schedules. Salary schedules are divided. There are different salary schedules for different levels of a skill set and different educational training. So make sure you understand that to see what is your beginning point, what is the mid-range and what will be the top level of salary. Also understand your value in terms of your career, your education. If you already have some experience and mind your experience doesn't have to do with paid jobs, experience also has to do with what you know how to do. So bring that many times students don't put that they have a one year working with a human rights department, for example, because it was not paid. So my advice is a very cumbersome process. Usually takes, if you go fast in the process for at least six months and that's extraordinary, you go depending on the industry, you go through different levels of security clearance. And depending what you do, you also get through a process of ethical analysis, you know, because sometimes some of us deal with sensitive information and you don't want to be prone to be vulnerable to any kind of information sharing. So know the industry, do a little bit of research on it, understand the schedules of hiring. So you know how to negotiate your salary. Usually your recruited manager will be able to provide that information if you ask, but you need to know what to ask. But if you have somebody inside, if you have a contact, make sure to reach out and just say, you know, I'm applying to the institution, could you give me a little bit more information on how it works? I had a similar situation with somebody that wanted to work in government. She's now working in government and I actually sat with her to explain to her the different schedules and how her job, how it was classified, had to do her resume. Resumes also are very specific. There is a process of actually having a form when you fill with questions. There are certain formulas in terms of how you present yourself and never ever, ever exclude your PhD if you have a PhD, you have a higher education. Sometimes people feel that maybe people wouldn't understand. Talk to your recruiter manager and talk to your connection and see how can you translate that information into concrete transferable skills. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of that sense of how it is. Thank you for that. And as I put in the chat, and I just wanna highlight this because Cecilia, you touched on this point that six months is fast for the application process for government jobs. And we've talked a lot about timelines in industry so far this month. And what we've been telling people for industry jobs is that six months is sort of the long end for the industry application process. So for those of you who might be considering government work or government work and industry work as two options, keep those different time scales in mind because it will be important for when you decide to start applying. Other thoughts on the government application process to share? Yeah, Bill. And just to make clear too, government can be kind of broad, so there's like federal jobs. We actually have the government but then even municipal or federal government but there's also things like UARCs and FFRDCs. So university-affiliated research centers and FFRDCs like I work for at Rand or CNAs and Renewable Analysis or MITRE. Those are all big players. They have a lot of folks but it's not federal employment. It's private and non-profit employment. And then there's contractors who are directly servicing government. So yeah, it's industry but everything you're doing is marching to governments and you're serving government. Those are not for profit, those are for profit. They're often called Beltway bandits. I think there's a lot of variety. Like I think there's some good work you can do in there. There's also some maybe not the best work possible but that's I guess up for everyone to figure out for themselves where they value that. But so just think about that as sort of like three different pathways, these for-profit contractors, these not-for-profit supplementary things, UARC and FFRDCs and then actual direct government jobs. And then a second thing is that, yeah, I had a similar experience, took me a long time, six months for me to even get a response back. So I applied to Rand and six months later, like, okay, you wanna come in for an interview. And then the higher decision after that was a lot longer. So it was not a fast process at all. And I had been forewarned about that so I didn't, I was anxious about it. A big thing that was important for me, and this is gonna be more relevant for a research position, but public policy research, which is probably what you're gonna be doing if you're working in the government. I mean, like you might be doing something like direct and applied, but to say a lot of this work is public policy research. Like, government wants to know before we spend money, like we don't wanna like go out and spend, we ought not to spend, you know, 10 years and billions of dollars on teacher testing and then figure out, you know, oh, actually teacher accountability is important, zip code's important to student outcomes. Ah, we just wasted a decade and a lot of money and resources. So towards that end, you have to be able to communicate research findings to policy makers and to people that are in positions of execution and decision making. So a big part of my application was a job talk where not only did I meet with, I had a whole day at Rand, just like meeting after meeting with different possible, you know, colleagues and teams that I might work with and for, but also I got kind of got grilled. I went in and presented some work, some of my dissertation work. And the real point was to somehow thread the needle between showing that I was a scientific insider that could use disciplinary language, at least that they recognized and show that I was an expert in methods and research design, but also not use academic gobbledygook and talk plainly and clearly as if I was talking to a member of Congress, as if I was talking to a senior officer in the military, as if I was talking to a senior executive in like an SCS or like a GS-14, a government service worker. And so that was a really, that's a hard thing to somehow be this rigorous scientist, but also use like plain language talk so that no one's confused. And I'll tell you one thing, learning, I think learning bluff, bottom line up front, but if you're in this world, you better be able to not, to flex out of the academic thing of, here is the question I had, here's how I thought about I would do it, here's my research design, here's our click of data, here's what the data is, here's the message and then the very end, well, here's what I found, that is backwards in this world. In this world, we wanna know, we found that, I don't know, monkeys are really good. And if you have monkeys in neighborhoods running around free, everyone's gonna be happier and it's probably gonna go ahead and increase, I don't know, health and longevity by X percent. I mean, that's probably not true, I made that up, but the point being quickly tell people what you found and why it matters. And then afterwards you can show why your work was rigorous, is trustworthy and how you got there. And that's also too a fine thing because different audiences will want more or less detail. One last thing I wanted to share too is when I got my foot in the door at Rand, I got put on multiple projects where I worked as I was doing like literature reviews for military health projects. I did not get to do the things I was passionate about for a while. I spent three years sort of like, okay, boss, and like I just got put on projects, I did stuff, I did my absolute best. I can remember like on my first project being asked to like do, to look at my literature review for like reliability and validity measures, like quantitative reliability. I'm like, oh yeah, sure, Cronback's Alpha, our measures, got it. And I was like quickly learning on the fly, doing like work every night to really understand something, because I didn't get trained for like confirmatory research methods and measures. But the point I guess what I want to make is that over the course of three years, I was able to eke out, forge out, and then build the kind of research agenda I wanted to do. So I proved I value the institution. I did the work that maybe it was good work, but not I was passionate about. And now I get to like build machine learning models and look at like massive language data sets to understand how Russian trolls go after us, that kind of stuff, but that did not happen on my first go, over. Thank you so much for that. And we've had, I think this is maybe a good question and answer to transition into a question that we've gotten from the chat that I know Sarah was gonna go ahead and chime in on, which particular advantages and disadvantages to working for the government. And we'll say here, we'll use government as sort of a broad term to encompass everything that Bill brought up. So those, you know, for-profit contractors, not for-profit support organizations and directly for the federal government. So maybe Sarah, if you wanna go ahead and start with those advantages, disadvantages of this enormous sector. Sure, thanks Emily. So just to add before I dive into that, everything that, you know, sustainability Bill had talked about is definitely true, you know, within federal employment as well. But I did wanna touch on something I put in the chat about student positions. I know I brought that up before about how we have, you know, we do have student contractors, thanks Bill, I forgot that language. We do have student contractors, we have, you know, interns, we have all things like that. Sometimes, especially at my laboratory, when you work as a student, it's a little bit shorter of a process when you convert into federal employment. So that's kind of, I mean, I know that's the long game, but sometimes that can really help. And, you know, especially within the federal sector, in the DOD, you know, more narrowly, is that there's a lot of opportunities there, but you gotta be creative, right? So if you wanna be a student contractor, you know, in the anthropology section, you kind of have to make that case of like, well, linguistics is part of this, so on and so forth. But for working as a federal employee, I don't know if anybody's ever heard this cliche, how much you're familiar with it, but the first job is the hardest. Once you can get into the federal government, it's a lot easier to kind of move around because then, you know, we actually have a, I think it's three years. If you're a federal employee for three years, it's a heck of a lot easier to move around and you just have a lot more opportunities. So the first job is the hardest. So if you're really interested in working, especially for the federal government, be patient on the first one. And then once you're in, it's a lot easier to move around. So I just wanna make that point that there are a lot of opportunities, but you gotta find them. They're a little covert. Again, know your roles, so you can push that belly button. So advantages for working for the federal government. Oh my goodness, there are so many. Sure, there's disadvantages. It's a big beast, right? It's a big machine, but there's so many advantages. There is, you know, you can work in nine to five, you cannot work in nine to five. For example, in my organization within the Arctic, we have what's called flex schedules. So like if you have kids, you can work early in the morning, late at night, and then take like, you know, the time that they're at home if they're small, for example, that's really flexible. Now the cool thing is that's actually not super traditional. Like a lot of times in the government that has not been a thing, but with COVID, that's kind of one of the silver linings is we're all kind of shifting to that, you know, more flexible schedule, which is really nice. So anyway, I'm jumping ahead, but all that to say is that the advantages are even getting better. So the security of a government position is fantastic. You have, you know, vacation every year, like, I mean, it actually goes up as the longer that you're in. Like for example, when you first come into federal employment, you get four hours of pay period. So you get like eight hours a month. If you're in for, you know, 10 years or whatever, it goes to eight hours of pay period. It's awesome. You get like a month off every year. That's great, right? And you also get, there's ample support for, you know, childcare and as well as, you know, PME, professional military education, as well as professional development. That's so underscored, like highlighted, like do it in the federal government because especially in the R and D sector where I work, because people, we want to make, you know, educated, smart, wonderful people, take what we already have, the good, the goodness we have and make it more awesome. So like for example, in my organization, Arctic There is a long-term training program where they'll pay for your PhD and there are, you know, free classes. There are, if you're co-located with the university, like I am for UIC, we get to go there for free. So they give us classes for free. There's a lot of programs that we have and again, it depends on the organization, but within the Arctic, we have a lot of student, you know, partnerships, educational partnerships with like University of Puerto Rico, for example. And so there's just many opportunities to kind of build yourself as well. So that's really underscored and highlighted in the federal government. So yeah, the advantages are many and I could talk like all day, oh and retirement, that's a big one. So if you work in the federal government, you know, for so many years, you actually build up retirement, right? So you don't have to just retire and, you know, rely on Social Security or whatever, you know, savings. There's a pension program. There's, you know, TSP, the thrift savings program, forgot my acronyms, where you are building your retirement as you work and that's critical. I mean, I know a lot of big corporations have that, but a lot of people in the civilians or a lot of corporations in the civilian sector don't have that. So a lot and lot and lot and lot and lots of advantages. So I'll shut up and let the rest of the panel member talk about it. I think most people actually cover it, but I was taking notes in terms of what it has been said. So I can say again, in terms of advantages, I think there are more than disadvantages. So three things that I can think of. First of all, is the space to growth. Usually government institutions are large. And it allows you to not only move to different departments or different divisions, but also to develop new areas of expertise. So to give you my example, I started with executing policy and I moved to implement policy and now I'm creating policy. So at that level of, and you start moving in terms of your career as you become a senior quote unquote employee. The other thing that is important in terms of government kind of jobs is that you are able to move from the industry to consulting quite easily if you want to follow that. So you have a lot of turnaround, especially when there is changes in governments, both local and federal, where a lot of the people are let go, especially when you are mid-management or above. And then you go into consulting and you are still doing something, perhaps not for that particular institution because you have certain regulations to follow or not being able to charge for services that due expertise can develop something independently. And then you can actually go back, perhaps when there is a new administration or there are new projects that are picked up that you are the expert. And the other thing, and I think that's what actually you said Sarah is the beauty of the pension. Believe me, the moment you enter, you don't go down. You go up, up, up, up, up, up. And what I haven't done it, and mainly because so I was trained, who I am and so far, but usually what you see frequently happen is a professional enters, learn certain skills and does a lateral move, but higher. And so in that sense, you acquire new skills, new sets and new amount of money. So your salary increases. Then you continue in that position and do another lateral move. Or you can do a promotion, you can just go to a similar industry and get a similar job and you will get, if you fulfill the eligibility requirements, you're also your salary might increase because your responsibilities increase. So that's the good thing. The bad thing is a very hierarchical institution. And my personal experience, at least with government, it was more noticeable that with the industry that I'm now, is that you have this thing called political appointees. And so what you have is not a Mary-based institution totally because what you have, you can go as far as you can in terms of your lateral move, but then the people that are at the top are the main team of whoever is in power. And so you need to be part of that team or you need to have help with campaigns. So you need to have it more politically savvy, which many of us don't, I don't think. But so that's a difficulty in the sense, but if you know how to manage yourself, there is a thing that is called career. And so career protects a lot of the low level, mid-level individuals. And then it's up to you if you go to what they call ad-will, which you are a manager, director. In this case, you have a chiefs. And you are ad-will, which means the institution at any moment can come and tell you, clean your desk, you have 15 minutes. And literally you go clean your desk and they thank you for your service and you can let go at any time. So in that sense, you have to be conscious of what you're getting in. So for example, when there is a change of administration, they'll be surprised that your position is cut. I was gonna add a couple of things to what's been said. So, and I'm talking from the FFRDC, URQ perspective. And so I guess that for me, the big advantages are flexibility that goes even beyond what Sarah was talking about, massive flexibility. The downside then is that you really have to make your own way and there can be some insecurity with all the flexibility. So, and I think Rand is a hyper example, but it's true at MITRE or other places. And that is, I can do whatever the heck I wanna do. I don't have any hours, I don't have to show up anywhere. I have a boss who I talk to every two years, literally. I just do anything I wanna do as long as I'm doing something like good and useful. I have complete freedom, which is like really cool and really liberating, right? But I can do that. The flip side is I either have to bring in research work. I have to bring in like sponsor dollars. So like, I'm talking, so one of the sponsors I work with is Army Contracting. And Army Contracting, like trying to get a handle on, like getting all the data up the cloud, analyzing it, all this unstructured text data in their contracts and like no idea what to do with it. Okay, well, hey action officer, we just did this thing here, let's do some more. I think you should do about half a million dollars. Well, here's a description of the project, let's sign this. And so I do a little bit of salesmanship to get, to like kind of like if you're trying to get a grant or something like that, you know, to do research with. Or you can be like really good in demand and people are just like, hey, I have a project, I need you Tony, I need you Susie to come on and work on me. But you gotta find work somewhere in this sort of open marketplace. And literally at Rand, we actually have, it's called an open marketplace, labor market. Like you have to, you know, charge, I have to charge 40 hours a week of work. And I've been really lucky, it has been hard for me ever. But for some people, that is really challenging. There's all, I always have a few clients who are, I'm sorry, colleagues who are like super smart people. And like this to them is panic inducing. And like the second chance, they like zoom back to academia because like they got a job every day and they have to worry about, you know, finding work. So any clip to you, if you're kind of a self-starter and like that you have like lots of freedom to sort of make your own way, great. If you want more sort of like structure, maybe stability, that kind of thing might not be the best thing for you. And that's a little in contrasting to government jobs where, you know, there's a lot of security, a lot of safety, show up here, you kind of know what you wanna do. And while it's heartening to hear what Sarah was saying about moral flexibility, I will say for most of my friends who are working with DOD organizations, operating units, if you're at a combatant command, if you're helping NATO, well, that's actually not US but whatever, if you're working at the Pentagon, helping someone with the Pentagon, it's probably gonna be 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. butts in seats and there's not a lot of flexibility there. So I value my flexibility enormously at Rand, over. Thank you so much for that look at some of the advantages and disadvantages. I think some of them sound similar to what we've talked about already this month in terms of industry. And as we've said so far, the government is a big space. So we're kind of getting into our last section here. I do want to encourage people to put questions in the chat or to raise your hand if you have something that you'd like to say. And I wanna ask one more question while we're kind of waiting for some of those audience questions to come in. We've talked about the government being a big space and that government organizations can be very large. And I think part of what we hear from students as well when we're talking about government work is like, oh, well, I don't know how I feel about working for the government because I don't know that I wanna be in the defense space or I don't know. And Bill, you sort of talked about this as well with like the Beltway Bandit mentioned. And so I'd like to ask about your perspective of working from the government, from that side of it and from how you see your role in this large organization. I mean, not even organization, many organizations that make up this huge space of government and what you might say to students who have concerns about whether or not government work in general or certain types of government work are a good fit for them. I think that's actually a really good point. And I'm a U.S. Marine still in my heart. I feel very comfortable supporting like U.S. national security policy. And so I do most of my work as national security work. I'm mostly supporting DOD, the Army, the Marine Corps, combatant commands like UCOM, European command. That being said, I spent for the entire Trump administration, I did not do any work for the Homeland Security. I just didn't feel like that's where I wanted to be doing work. I didn't feel good with a lot of the aspects of what they were doing there. Now in the Biden administration, I'm actually doing some work trying to track, trying to build models to track the migration of right wing and violent supremacists in the U.S. like domestic extremists in the U.S. So I was lucky enough to have the sort of flexibility to sort of pick and choose. And I always forget about education projects or health projects, like those things to me. There's, I don't have any moral qualms. I'm very clear about those ones. But I think there are probably our jobs where you really got to think long and hard. Do I feel good about supporting the U.S. Army? Because what Sarah said is, wherever you're working in the U.S. Army, whatever you're doing, at the end of the day, the U.S. Army projects power for the U.S. overseas. And there was a warfighter at the other end of everything you're doing and you're supporting. And if you're not okay with that, that's cool, but you can't do the kind of work. Over. So Emily, I will say the following. I think, I mean, given the premise that I have presented before and that was given to me by my mentor, which is be careful what you do because that's what you become. So be mindful of truly doing something that you feel comfortable with. In terms of my own career, it has been all oriented to social justice issues, equity analysis. Right now I do monitoring or compliance with Title VI, which is discrimination. I have always been interested in issues of migration. And you had to also consider, especially for those individuals that are at the earliest stages of their career or who you are, really plays an important role in what you decide to do. So that is not a secret formula to do that. Just something I always remember, somebody who was telling me when they were dying. If you look at a person in front of the mirror and you say, I can live with you and what you did, even if you've made mistakes and you fix them in your life, you'll be okay. So follow and do and that's how you will know. I mean, sometimes we have certain perceptions. Sometimes what you, I remember my mentor was telling me, be careful because some institutions will try to change research. For example, so you need to be responsible to your own training and to your ethical standard. So at least for me, I can tell you, and I have always said that in other presentations, I have been very successful in love of terms who says that if you manage to do something that you love and get paid for it, you're having very successful. So I have done that. And so just take time to think about it and feel comfortable with it and apply your skills. I mean, you spend, especially for PhDs, how many years of training that could actually help to do something? I just want to pop in as well. And, you know, totally agree with what Bell and Cecilia said and just to add kind of my own two cents on here. So it is all about finding what you love to do, right? And so if, you know, you can kind of square those things, you know, and you find a zone that really works for you. If you can't kind of square, you know, if you have some issues and things like that, then just to be completely honest, maybe, you know, it doesn't work for you. And that's okay, that's all right. You know, you don't have to be behind every issue and be behind every, you don't have to. It's fine, you know, but whatever you do, you know, kind of shake out and find that works for you. Yeah, make sure that you're passionate about it. Like the reason that I work for the government, I am, I was in the military, I was in the Air Force and I feel very passionate about helping my community, my veteran community and then my, you know, former military community find how we form our identity. That's what my research is in, is how we form our identity, how we talk about our identity, how, you know, our identity influences, you know, mental stressors like PTSD and TBI and things like that. I'm very passionate about helping my community, but that, you may have a different passion. My point is, is find your passion and go after it. And so, you know, all the things that, you know, that the military is big play, or the military, the government is a big place. And so my passion in this little sector doesn't necessarily square away all the other questions that we have about facets of the military, of the government and the things like that. Are we gonna solve that in one panel or me as one person? No, but I am very much a rolled up sleeves kind of person of if you wanna change something and you have an issue with something, go get dirty. Go get right in the middle of it and change it. Do whatever you can, you know, find your passion. And if it's something that you're passionate about, changing, do that too. You know, you don't like something about the military. Okay, go change it. Do the research to change it. So I think that that's really something that, you know, can kind of help you figure that out too. So that's just my two cents on that one. Yeah, that's so great. Because, you know, one of the things that we could, you know, we could talk about government careers, I think, for the whole day, you know, especially if we started to get into, like, local and municipal government too, which we haven't really touched on. You know, you have that, you have the state level and you have all of these types of federal and federal related employment that we've talked about. And so I think what's really great in what all three of you have said is that, you know, you don't look at it as this one giant block that is all of the levels of government across the US. You know, you found one path and within government you found a way to pursue it. So whether that's supporting the veteran community or finding social justice issues or, you know, those decisions that Bill was talking about, if this is an issue I'm comfortable working on and this is an issue I'm not comfortable working on. You can find the space to do that. And so I think the thought that all of you have brought to this is such a great resource for the people watching now and if you're watching the video later, just sort of, you know, think about how many ways there are to find that path and to not just write off this sector because, you know, there's one thing you don't like about it, get in there and try to make some change. So what I want to do in these last few minutes is just open it back to you for, you know, any final parting words or pieces of advice that you might have that you haven't gotten to mention so far, anything else for our students to take away from this government panel. I would just... Okay, I'd like to share. Go ahead, Sara. Cecilia, I think we're on the same page. We keep trying to talk at the same time. So please go ahead. Okay, mine is very short. What I will remind everybody, we have been focusing on how you go about to get a job, but keep in mind that people are looking for you. So new, I mean, for example, to give you an example of something that I was relatively surprised, which is in this institution that I work, I mentioned they have a whole division of talent acquisition and they are recruiters. They have individuals whose main job is to look at LinkedIn profiles. I mean, literally, they go LinkedIn and they are the recruiters. And so make sure that you have a digital footprint that is respectable and professional and that you actually represent yourselves accurately. One of the things as a hiring manager, I have seen people applying for jobs, for example, and the position requires 10 years' experience and then you'll have a person that just graduated from a reputable university, right? But they don't have that. But what I want to say is keep in mind this is a two-way relationship. So employers are actually looking for the perfect profile. Make sure that you are seen. Make sure that you have a presence and make sure that your presence is accurately portrayed. And don't be afraid. Engage, engage with people. Learn, get involved. You, I mean, look at what happened to me. I just attended this place people knew or what happened with the second job. I mean, people knew of my work. People have worked with me and they wanted to steal me, right? But then I was the one deciding my career. I was the one that I did. And I say, okay, now, I think I will consider this possibility. So Sarah, I don't know if you want to add. I was being quiet in case Bill and I were on the Save Wayne link and he started talking to me. So, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's not a one-way. It's not, you know, you knocking on doors and things like that. No, no, no, no, no. As Bill said in the beginning and as Cecilia just mentioned, advocate for yourself. Go to conferences. Go to conferences that may not be linguistic. For example, I work in communication. Go to the National, what is it called? NCAA National Communication Association. Go to things that are tangential to what youth, you know, just the small circle of linguistics and talk to people. Like, I mean, even casual conversations are fantastic. And also apply, when you're applying to conferences, I know as a graduate students we're supposed because I am one, as graduate students we're like, apply, apply, apply. Go to all the conferences, apply, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes we have a very narrow view of what we apply for. I'll put another example out there. So I'm a, what's called a knowledge management representative. Basically, I kind of control the flow of knowledge which sounds really big, but it's super cool. So I'm able to kind of, you know, store knowledge and pass along knowledge and things like that for my organization. So there's a conference called KM World and it sounds kind of hokey, but it's actually super cool. So all these KM people that do knowledge management, they get in a room, they talk about it. I actually applied this year and I'm going, it's in DC. And I actually applied and the title of my abstract was how socio-linguistics can work for KM. It was accepted because it's so important. So don't be afraid to just be like, okay, this seems super weird how it's gonna connect. It's so not. And people want your research. People want your talent and your skills because it's really, you know, their linguists are really broad. I mean, you guys know this. I don't have to preach it to y'all, but just just get out there and get out there and things that you may not think like KM, that doesn't seem like related, but it totally is. And people want that type of knowledge, that type of talent. So yeah, absolutely what Cecilia said and absolutely what Bill said earlier, advocate for yourself, get out there, be loud about the awesome things that you're doing and it will resonate. I promise you, especially in government. Oh man, we need good people and especially people who understand how behavioral sciences work, social sciences and linguistics is so kind of flexible and we can kind of squishy, we can kind of move in any way that we want. So yeah, definitely get out there and advocate for yourself. All right, thank you so much to our panelists, the Cecilia, Bill, Sarah for coming and spending this time with us today. If you're interested in hearing about another side of government, you might wanna stick around for our civic tech session that we're having next, that will start at 9.30.