Essential Skills

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."
Academic Scientists at Work: Where'd My Day Go?: in Time Management
ScienceCareers.org - "'5:30! I hardly got anything done today,' your colleague with the curly red hair shouts at you as she passes you in the hall. You think you didn't get anything done either, yet there the two of you are standing in the hall yabbering about how the day went by and nothing got done. You both complain that there was no time to finish your experiments, write your test questions, revise your hot manuscripts, meet with your advisees, help with graduate-student recruiting, design the new Web site for your department, order the food for the department poster session, and pick up the kids from soccer practice at 7:00. But, as you look around, some of your colleagues seem to have it all under control. How do they do it?"
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 Choosing an Advisor / PI / Boss
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: 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."

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