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Essential Skills

Up to Career Guide for Scientists
The skills you need to make the most of your career in science.
Choosing an Advisor / PI / Boss
Mentoring Skills
Communication Skills
Negotiation Skills
Computer Skills
Networking
Grant Writing Skills
Professional Ethics
Management Skills
Teaching
Marketing Yourself
Time Management



The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers
in NIH Funding Crisis
Chronicle of Higher Education , September 2007. "[F]or many of today's graduate students, the future could not look much bleaker. They see long periods of training, a shortage of academic jobs, and intense competition for research grants looming ahead of them. 'They get a sense that this is a really frustrating career path,' says Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. So although the operating assumption among many academic leaders is that the nation needs more scientists, some of brightest students in the country are demoralized and bypassing scientific careers."
How to write a great research paper
in Communication Skills
Great advice from Simon Peyton Jones at Microsoft Research.
How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors
in Mentoring Skills
by Marie desJardins. "This paper attempts to raise some issues that are important for graduate students to be successful and to get as much out of the process as possible, and for advisors who wish to help their students be successful. The intent is not to provide prescriptive advice -- no formulas for finishing a thesis or twelve-step programs for becoming a better advisor are given -- but to raise awareness on both sides of the advisor-student relationship as to what the expectations are and should be for this relationship, what a graduate student should expect to accomplish, common problems, and where to go if the advisor is not forthcoming."
After the Offer, Before the Deal: Negotiating A First Academic Job
in Negotiating Your Salary And Position
By Chris M. Golde, Academe, January-February 1999. "What is a fair salary? Can I ask for moving expenses? When can faculty members negotiate reductions in their teaching loads? These are the kinds of questions graduate faculty often hear from their students who have just been offered academic jobs. Besides training young scholars as teachers and researchers, we also mentor them in their search for jobs. As a result, we're expected to know the answers to such questions. In this article, I offer suggestions to the just-appointed faculty member who seeks to be a savvy participant in negotiating the terms of a first job."
The Noel Smith-Wenkle Salary Negotiation Method
in Negotiating Your Salary And Position
"Salary negotiation is something at which hiring managers are usually a lot more proficient than the people they hire. In the interest of leveling the playing field, here is a method for salary negotiation that has worked for me and many others."
Negotiating Offers for Faculty Positions
in Negotiating Your Salary And Position
A guide from the UNC Office of Postdoctoral Affairs.
Negotiating: Please Sir, Can I Have Some More?
in Negotiating Your Salary And Position
ScienceCareers.org "Whether you're a fresh Ph.D. searching for a lab in which to do a postdoc, or you're trying to land a junior faculty position and create your own lab, negotiations are crucial in developing your scientific career. Reaching satisfying compromises with the head of a lab or the department chair requires first-rate communication and social skills. Professional bargaining, for example, could win you promises of more start-up funds, additional space, or extra equipment. At the postdoctoral level, good negotiating may mean you wind up taking away part (or all!) of your project when it's time to leave. But negotiating doesn't start and end at interviews: Interacting with an employer, department chair, or lab director takes place throughout your research career."