PostDoctoral

Every work niche has its own weird language. On this special #CubeLife edition of PostDoctoral, we're translating some common office expressions to help you master the lingo from day one – and distinguish a compliment from impending doom.

You know you need to "translate" your PhD experience into "transferable skills" to land a nonacademic job. But what does that really mean? We went to career advisor Annie Maxfield to find out.

A little about our guest:
Annie Maxfield has been helping PhDs pursue their career of choice for more than 10 years. She is the Director of Graduate Career & Professional Development at UT Austin in the Texas Career Engagement Center and Leads the Design and Development for ImaginePhD, a free and confidential online career exploration and planning tool for humanities and social sciences.  She grew national employer education and recruitment for doctoral students by establishing the Virtual Master’s & PhD Career Fair for the Graduate Career Consortium and worked with the Modern Language Association’s Connected Academics Initiative and the American Historical Association to develop Career Diversity Faculty Trainings, Humanists@work, and the MLA Doctoral Student Career Planning Guide. A long-time advocate for doctoral students, Annie is most passionate about changing the culture of academia to embrace all PhD futures as viable, valued and visible.

The stakes are high and the stipends are low. Learn how to prepare financially for all career contingencies from Day 1 with guest Emily Roberts. 

About our guest:
Dr. Emily Roberts is a personal finance educator specializing in early-career PhDs. Through her business, Personal Finance for PhDs, she equips graduate students, postdocs, and PhDs with Real Jobs to make the most of their money. She gives seminars at universities and for associations, interviews PhDs on her podcast, serves as a money coach, and creates courses and workshops on taxes, investing, and more. Emily holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University and lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and two children.

Surprise! A special series brought to you by PostDoctoral: #CubeLife! Where we detail the mishaps, misunderstandings and misadventures of modern office culture. This week's topic: Outlook. It's not just a perspective. It's a way of (office) life. 

On the inaugural episode of PostDoctoral, we tackle the question "How do I make the most of my graduate school's resources and career services offerings?" We turned to Dr. Susan Carvalho to learn more about how graduate schools are evolving their career services offerings to adapt to the changing PhD landscape.

A little about our guest:
Susan Carvalho serves as Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Alabama, where she oversees recruitment, admissions, financial support, new program proposals, professional development (including Career Center partnerships), and academic policy related to the University’s master’s and doctoral programs. She also serves on the Council of Graduate Schools’ Humanities Coalition, an ongoing initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation that seeks to understand and support the careers of PhD’s in the humanities. In addition to her UA role, Dean Carvalho serves as a senior advisor to the American Council on Education’s Internationalization Laboratory, which has guided the work of over 150 universities in strategic planning for international activities. In this role she has mentored universities from Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the US. 

They say you need a mentor to survive the shift out of academia and into the rest of the working world, but how do you find this person? To help answer this question, we reveal our own awkward missteps and turn to a mentor among mentors, Liz Fusco, for advice on how to approach finding a mentor.

A little about our guest:

A communicator by nature, Liz has worn many hats throughout her 20+ year career, including: marketing generalist, writer, entrepreneur, strategist and client nurturer. Whether she's crafting an integrated marketing strategy for a leader in healthcare technology or telling the social world about the tastiest tortillas on the market, her goal is the same: Reveal the heart and soul of the company. Discover what makes them desirable. Give them a voice. Make people believe. When she's not stewarding creativity on behalf of clients, you can find Liz spending time with her family, cooking for friends or burying her nose in a book. For more from Liz, check out her blog: sounapologetic.com 

Meet your hosts, Rebbecca and Rosie, and find out what inspired them to start a podcast dedicated to your post – in a world post PhD.