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5. The Importance of Advisors and Professional Networks
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Chapter 5 The Importance of Advisors and Professional Networks A job search may feel like a lonely enterprise, but it is always conducted within the context of a web of social relationships. You work within a discipline with its own language, conventions, and structure of communication. Your own research has undoubtedly been strengthened by communication with other people; in some fields it has been conducted as part of a team. You are leaving a department with one social structure and culture to enter another. You will be explicitly recommended by several people, and those who are considering your candidacy may hear about you from others. Whether you find these facts reassuring or alarming, by taking account of them as early as possible in your graduate career, you can strengthen your prospects in the job market. If you have not paid sufficient attention to them until now, it is not too late to focus on them. Networking is crucial, not only to get a job, but also to succeed at it and at your research. Some candidates are put off by the potentially exploitative aspect of networking, as well they should be. The goal is not to use people in a one-way exchange, but to engage in a mutually beneficial relationship. During graduate study it’s critical that you change your self-concept from that of a ‘‘student’’ who primarily learns from others to that of a ‘‘colleague ’’ who is actively engaged in his or her chosen discipline. If you view yourself merely as a job-hunting student, you will see networking as a petitionary activity, be hesitant to contact people, and perhaps run the risk of being bothersome. If you view yourself as an active member of your discipline , you will view networking more appropriately as an exchange of information , contact people confidently, and usually make them happy that they got to know you. Advisors and Mentors It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of an advisor in an academic career. When you enter the job market, and perhaps for years, you will 32 Planning and Timing Your Search often be viewed as ‘‘X’s student’’ or ‘‘Y’s protégé.’’ In some fields, the postdoctoral supervisor is extremely important. If your advisor or supervisor is well known in the market you want to enter, thinks highly of you, spends time with you, is savvy about the employment market, and is enthusiastically supportive of your job search, you will be likely to think highly of the importance of the advisor’s role. Your first job search may well go more smoothly because you will be able to discuss your goals with your advisor, who will in turn perhaps make phone calls that will pave the way to interviews . While such a situation is generally enviable, you may also need to make a particular effort to distinguish between your own goals and your mentor’s goals for you, if you feel they differ. Making choices that are disappointing to the advisor will be particularly difficult. You also may rely too heavily on your advisor’s intervention and fail to master job-hunting skills as thoroughly as does someone who gets less assistance. If you are blessed with such an advisor, make a particular effort to learn from that person how best to make efforts on your own behalf. If you are doing postdoctoral research, your current supervisor can play a role in your search similar to that of an advisor. However, in addition to supporting your career development, a postdoctoral supervisor is also often dependent on your work to complete research. It may not be realistic to expect that person to enthusiastically support you for a position which would take you away before you completed the time you’d committed to the postdoctoral position. You may have a less than ideal advising relationship. Perhaps your advisor is not particularly well known, brilliant but unskilled at interacting with other people, so formal and distant that you are honestly unsure what he or she thinks about your work, or, in fact, disappointed in your work and not hesitant to tell you so. Whatever the characteristics of this real human being, you can probably improve the relationship, profit from the individual ’s greatest strengths, and, if necessary, find additional mentors. If things are not going well between you and your advisor, your natural tendency may be to avoid talking with him or her. Resist this temptation! It...