As 2025 comes to an end, Jim and Lauren put together a wrap up episode to reflect on 2025 and look forward to 2026. It was helpful for both of us to do this episode to realize how much we did in 2025 and also recognize that there is still so much to cover as we look forward to 2026…..   We want to thank you all for listening and we look forward to the 2026 Propelling Careers Podcast Season! 

• Audience demographics, gender, age, and location – we now have listeners in over 50 countries!
•  Top 10 episodes by listens since podcast started
• Jim and Lauren’s favorite episode and why
• Hardest topics we did in 2025
• Favorite question in 2025
• Surprises in 2025
• Lessons learned in 2025
• Goals for 2026 

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

In the spirit of continuing with the reflecting theme that we have had over the last few episodes, Jim and Lauren planned this episode to give advice for how to use the holiday “slowdown” to help you as you set goals for 2026 and strategize for how you will accomplish or at least make progress on these.  We hope you find this episode helpfuland we hope you enjoy listening. 

• Why are we doing this episode: 
• Self reflection
• Do a Gap analysis
• Reflect on feedback received
• Do you have unfinished/incomplete goals?
• Do you have ongoing or evergreen goals
• Relevance to Ultimate goal (career, etc)?
• Goals come in different forms and timescales
• Develop a or update your skill development plan

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

Given the holiday season Jim and Lauren put together an episode about giving thanks.   We talk about different ways you could give thanks as well as what we are thankful for. We hope you enjoy listening!. 

• Why should people focus on giving thanks
• Advice for how people could give thanks
• When to give thanks
• What are we thankful for professionally and personally 

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

Welcome to Propelling Careers Podcast episode 85. Given the holiday season and the various networking opportunitiesthat come with it, we thought we would do this episode to provide advice for how to network during these various events/activities. We will cover advice for how to connect with your current network and build yours also. We hope youenjoy listening. 

• Be authentic as you engage with people
• There are many different events and opportunities to engage with and build your network
• Advice to prepare for different types of events
•  Networking can occur in various forms – in person networking, online, email, informal events, etc
•  Advice for how to engage with a potentially large cross-section of people
•  Thoughts on individual outreach vs general messages to your network
•  Other ways to engage your network - sending holiday cards / emails / annual summary email / notes
•  Leveraging LinkedIn to engage your network
•  Your elevator pitch  
•  Leveraging this time for informational interviews
•  Advice to follow up

 Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

This episode 84 is a follow up from the last episode, episode 83. In this episode, we share a few more lessons learned during the last few months of recruiting that Lauren has been involved with.  Jim and Lauren hope that you find these two episodes helpful especially if you are in a job search.  We hope you enjoy listening. 

• Timeline wise - things sometimes move really fast 
• If you cannot move quickly / start quickly, let the organization know
• Interview fatigue is real – how organization try to address it
• Candidates need to ensure they are prepared for interviews
• Questions candidates asked, and perhaps should not ask, during interviews   
• Candidate correspondence matters

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

The last few months have been really busy for Lauren with the recruiting work that she does for entrepreneurial  life sciences companies.  In this episode, Jim and Lauren share a few lessons learned over the last few months, to help others who are on the job search (or who are in the process of hiring).  We hope you find the advice in this episode helpful and hope you enjoy listening. 

• So many applicants – advice to stand out
• Some orgs hiring a few people per role…. so not all “roles are posted”
• Advice to understand what job titles could be a fit and how to broaden what you consider
• Insights on referrals 
• LinkedIn outreach by recruiters

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

This episode focuses on ways to help your network help you especially if you are in a job search. We put this episode together to provide advice to make it easier for people to help you and we cover tips including these below. For many people, this might be their first real job search so they might not have thought about these tips before. Even for seasoned people, this job market is different than previous ones, so they may find these tips helpful also. We hope you find the advice in this episode helpful and hope you enjoy listening. 

• Why are we doing this episode
• Be specific in your ask, Don’t be so vague
• Be open to feedback
• Have details in your LinkedIn profile
• Leverage LinkedIn to identify potential connections
• Provide info about your background to your contacts when making connections
• Revise Materials and Send ahead
• Don’t put time pressure on the person you are asking to help you 

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice weprovide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

In this episode, Jim and Lauren cover tips, including these below, to make mentoring relationships more successful.Jim talks about this topic a lot and Lauren has also covered it in some of her talks. This is a really important topic and we are looking forward to this discussion.  We hope you find the advice in this episode helpful and hope you enjoy listening. 

• Quit taking it personally (Q-TIP)
• Get a reality check
• Set goals and expectations together and re-evaluate often
• Always be prepared for a meeting
• Ask for feedback but make sure you have several ideas on hand  
• Seek out secondary mentors in addition to your primary faculty mentor
• Stay patient, mindful, and connected
• Realize that mentoring is a two-way street
• Remember that you are an adult and this is your career
• Use the resources available to you

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

This episode will continue from episode 79 to continue to focus on advice on questions Jim and Lauren get often about career readiness, self-advocacy, and how to mentor up. Both episodes 79 and this one, are Inspired by a recent Q&A session Jim had at BCH. We hope you find the advice in this episode helpful and hope you enjoy listening. 

• How should postdocs handle mismatched expectations between themselves and their PI or institution? 
•  What are some practical ways to navigate competition in academia, including in-lab competition, whilemaintaining collaborations and a supportive network? 
• How can postdocs manage career uncertainties, especially when deciding between academia and industry? 
•  What are some red flags that indicate a postdoc is at risk of burnout, and how can they proactively prevent it? 
•  How can institutions better support postdocs in maintaining a healthy work-life balance? 

 Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

Jim and Lauren both get questions about career readiness, self-advocacy, and how to mentor up. Inspired by a recent Q&A session Jim had at Boston Children’s Hospital, in this episode, we answer the questions from the audience, and other advice to help our listeners. We hope you find the advice in this episode helpful and hope you enjoy listening. 

• Why Jim was at BCH?
• Strategies we have found most effective for prioritizing time and energy to balance research, writing, mentoring, and networking? 
• Advice for postdocs to set realistic short-term and long-term goals to stay on track in academia
• Common time-management mistakes postdocs make and how these can be avoided
• Advice for postdocs to approach difficult conversations with their PI, especially when there are disagreementson research direction?
• Advice for how postdoc can maintain a healthy work-life balance and professional boundaries when their PI has high expectations, including making requests at all hours and occasionally overstepping personal boundaries? 
• Steps postdocs can take early on to prevent authorship disputes 
• Institutional resources or best practices for resolving authorship conflicts 
• Developing productive relationships with colleagues, your boss, and other people you engage with in your work

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.

As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!