Hi ya’ll! Still active and updating job sim links and creating new ones for ya. How are you using the site? Have you shared with a friend or colleague? We hope you find it useful.

We recently presented about InterSECT job sims at a few universities and the responses from PhD students was encouraging! We are so glad the PhD community finds job sims helpful for their career exploration.

In the presentation about InterSECT Job Sims, we shared that you can approach career exploration like doing a personal research project. Be curious, ask questions, collect data on yourself, and evaluate what you learn about yourself and what you like to do (or do NOT like to do.)

Here’s what a few folks shared:

• “I had never thought of the process of looking for a career in a new industry as possibly being more similar to the research process … (e.g. vis a vis opportunities to be creative, follow your curiosity, have fun). This reframing has really made the whole job search process appear a lot more approachable and enjoyable to me.”
• “Thank you! Your advice was invaluable during this time of my life. I feel more confident and calm about the nonacademic job market after attending your workshop!”

Wanna read more about this perspective how on finding the next career is just like following the bread crumbs for your research project? Here’s an article – “Using Your Research Skills for Career Exploration” by Tina Solvik, PhD (CarpeCareers blog from Inside Higher Ed)

Did you know we have a job sim to help you assess your org and team to help you advocate for Work From Home (WFH) Policies? Yes! What timing. As many workplaces are figuring out hybrid or not, and how to do it – check out this job sim for tips to advocate for your team.

Check out the “Mediation” job sim / Human Services job family / Humanities Job Sim Library.

You’ll go through tasks to conduct a reflection on your organization. Here’s an excerpt from the job sim:

“For this job sim, you are a business partner for an organization discussing post-pandemic work-from-home (WFH) policies. Due to the unusual circumstances of 2020 and positive news of available vaccines, your organization is revisiting pre-pandemic policies as well as considering allowing employees to continue working from home in some capacity. Mediation will be required to bring your stakeholders (employees, managers, and leadership) and their interests in this process together to build a new, well-structured plan.”

Some folks have tried it and started conversations with their managers. If you give this one a go – Good luck!

Exciting news! We’ve been working with science policy and advocacy professionals on a few new job sims. Check these out!

Science Policy: Develop a Course – this is based off a course for graduate students and postdocs at UCSD. It’s dynamic and helps develop a lot of skills and language in policy. If you’re interested in building a similar course at your university – definitely check this one out.

Advocacy: Power Mapping – rooted in the civil rights movement, this job sim helps you to map the players. Knowing who holds influence and in what way helps you to ask better questions, talk to a broader network and anticipate challenges. Use this one for graduate student and postdoctoral advocacy on campus, too.

Policy: Writing Legislative Science Notes – Missouri Science and Technology fellows write legislative science notes to inform congressional members. Community members write science notes to shed light and inform different types of organizations about what’s important to them. High schoolers are writing science notes to learn about science policy and how engaged citizens of all ages have the power to engage with their lawmakers.

We’ve created more job sims for ya! These sims were possible because of a collaboration with ImaginePhD and the Graduate Career Consortium. When you’re done trying these job sims, check out sample resumes and cover letters in these job families on ImaginePhD. All the resources are free and help you figure out next steps to pursue your career.

• Design a creative brief for social media marketing, Communications job family
• Develop a prospect profile, Development
• Non-academic lit review for DEI, Consulting

Thanks for continuing to check out our resources. Hope you enjoy testing out the new job sims.

It’s been a while! Hope you’ve all been doing well. Thanks for checking back in and using InterSECT job sims to explore jobs for PhDs. I thought I’d try out a video blog this time.

So, what’s new with InterSECT job sims? I share details on the new job sims that have been added. These sims were possible, because of a collaboration with ImaginePhD. When you’re done trying out these job sims, and want to sample resumes and cover letters in these job families or want to figure out next steps to pursue this career, check out the resources on ImaginePhD!

• Museum curation, Training job family
• Interviewing experts, Journalism
• Fact checking, Digital Publishing and Journalism
• Creating pitch decks, Development for NonProfits with a social enterprise focus.

What if your goal wasn’t to explore new career options, but to become a scientist in a work place you enjoy? Or being a researcher who chooses to work with people who inspire and uplift them. Or being a __________ in an environment that energizes them.

I was listening to a podcast with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits (link below). He posed that people’s actions and habits reflect their identity and not their to do list. For example, what if you aimed to become a runner rather than aimed to finish a marathon? This new way of thinking can motivate you to achieve goals that you’ve failed at before. In focusing on who you want to be, you then in turn, choose actions to realize that potential in yourself. It comes more naturally.

I thought about this idea this morning as I sipped my coffee. I’m not a morning person, but I got out of bed with my alarm, for once, rather than snoozing it till eternity. I adjusted my goal from “waking up early” to “becoming a person who has time to read in the morning”. This new way of thinking helped me focus on my identity rather than things I needed to do.

What would this look like for you? How would your daily goals change? For example:

• Identity: Be a person who is curious about other workplaces to do research/teach/science communication? Action: Talk to other people in other sectors (rather than just someone who needs to update their Linkedin?).
• Identity: Be a writer. [how do you make room for this in small, achievable ways?]
• Identity: Be an activist.
• Identity: Be a student leader.

Defining your identity in the workplace is an extension of identifying what’s important to you. You might be a person who knows right away what kind of boss you want, team you want to work in, work-life balance you need. If this is you, remember to check in with yourself and acknowledge that your values can change. And if lots of things are important to you, and you’re unsure about what factors contribute specifically to your identity at work, others have found it illuminating to talk to their friends, family, peers, and mentors to get insights into what they enjoy most about work, and the type of work they find to be fulfilling.

Hope you have fun as you make these discoveries. Celebrate the incremental successes. I know I won’t wake up every morning at 6am, but I will celebrate the days I do. And for the days I sleep in, I’ll remind myself that I needed that, too!

-Thi

Did you know that we now have a science job sim for each career area in the myIDP? If we were playing that game, where you’re trying to cover all the pieces on the board, we’d have Bingo!

myIDP is an online career planning tool where individuals answer questions about tasks they like to do at work and tasks they think they’re good at. Then, individuals get to see how their responses match with different career areas. Doing the myIDP self-assessment helps you identify possible careers of interest. Then a likely next step is reading about career areas online. One of our goals in creating this online job sim library was to be the next stop in your myIDP journey. InterSECT gives scientists a chance to try out these different careers.

You can now test out a specific task for each career area. With each job sim, you can:

• perform tasks that professionals in that field would perform (selected tasks are typical, entry level tasks for PhD-level professionals)
• get a better understanding of processes involved in certain tasks (like what it takes to lobby your congress person or how you go about triaging papers as a journal editor)
• find and examine different types of information (do you like to work with student evaluation data, policy data, business financials, clinical trial information, etc.)
• create different work products

Collaborators at several universities worked hard to create these simulations for you. Thanks to all our collaborators! If there’s a task you’d still like to see, let us know.

Finally, we are working on completing a job sim for all the Humanities and Social Sciences job families, so stay tuned.

-Thi

We are celebrating! It’s been a year since we posted the first simulations on InterSECTjobsims.com, and three years since the first job sim was developed. We are celebrating the amazing community of graduate students, postdocs, faculty, staff, and professionals who have contributed to this project. Individuals have tried out the sims and given feedback, and developed and submitted new job sims to the library. Professionals and employers have given informational interviews and taken the time to read and vet the simulations. I was a little nostalgic, and also curious about the data, so if you are, too, take a look at our journey below.

Summer 2016 – Started interviewing PhDs in diverse science-related careers and prototyping job sims.

Fall 2016 – PhD students and postdocs beta tested the job sim experience, complete with the self-reflection sheet and SMART goals check list.

Summer 2017 – Completed the development of 10 science job sims in 6 career areas. Collaborated with individuals at 6 universities. PhD students and postdocs started creating job simulations to contribute to the online library.

Summer 2018 – Launched intersectjobsims.com!

Fall 2018 – ScienceCareers published an article about the job sim library. InterSECT job sims was selected for presentation at two nationwide conferences on graduate education.

Spring 2019 – Partner with ImaginePhD.com, a career exploration resource for humanities and social science graduate students, and started creating job sims for their job families.

Summer 2019 – One year since launching this online library! In the last year, 12,000 users from 100+ countries have checked out this career exploration tool.

We now have 8 humanities-focused simulations and 35 science simulations from 23 different authors across 11 institutions. And there are more on the way! Special thanks to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for the initial grant funding through the Career Guidance for Trainees, and UC San Francisco’s Office of Career and Professional Development for partnering on the beta testing. Thanks also to ImaginePhD.com for support and Washington University for continued support.

For me, it’s been a wonderful experience to see a community of students, postdocs, staff, faculty and professionals…and InterSECT job sim explorers…come together and contribute to this online library.

-Thi

“How can we use InterSECT at our university?” is a common question I get from educators and grad student and postdoc group leaders. Using the InterSECT job sims in the classroom setting, with interactive peer group, has been one of most useful ways for users to interact with InterSECT.  We are happy to share sample lesson plans we’ve used at Washington University in St. Louis (WU), University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and most recently at University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). We hope they can serve as inspiration or a model, and feel free to adapt it.

The professional-led flipped classroom – the WU Graduate School collaborated with the WU Office of Technology Management (OTM) to highlight internship positions in intellectual property and marketing. Participants who signed up for the 90 minute session completed the job sim before attending the in-person portion. Then in-class, the participants split into two groups to discuss the different job sims, completed the self-reflection, and conducted a group informational interview. After the session, grad students and postdocs commented that they the session gave them a better idea of what tech transfer entails, and they could determine whether they wanted to apply for the different internships (or not). The OTM staff members also commented they they enjoyed the rich conversation. The WU Postdoc Society co-sponsored the event. Here was one of the marketing emails:

Ever wondered what it’s like to work at the OTM? Try out an OTM-related job without leaving the bench! Join us for the InterSECT job simulation series! Here you can try out a task in a job, get feedback on your work, and talk with professionals in the career field. Think of them as advanced informational interviews.

Our first session will be with the Office of Technology Management (OTM), and the tasks featured are:
– Market Analysis (Business-Related), led by OTM Trainee and former Marketing Intern
– Freedom to Operate Analysis (Intellectual Property), led by a Patent Agent at the OTM

The WU Biotechnology and Life Sciences Advising (BALSA) group also collaborated on a flipped classroom experience to invite two medical science liaisons (MSLs) to lead an InterSECT session. The flipped classroom format was similar as described for the OTM session. One difference it that since the focus was only the MSL job sim area, the groups split up to discuss the different tasks (conducting research into clinical professionals’ interests and creating networking emails). Two memorable comments from the conversation were, I had no idea that MSLs did so much networking. I don’t think that’s the job for me -and- I wish I did this before completing the MSL certificate. It’s so helpful.

The info session – At UCSF, we invited grad students and postdocs who were interested in exploring the InterSECT job sim library to meet for a general info session. After learning about the job sim process and benefits to completing the experience, they were encouraged to work in groups on different career areas and share their informational interviews with each other. The participants were also encouraged to set SMART goals and complete the experience in a month. Peer groups ranged from 2 to 7 individuals. Some of the groups gelled more than others, and it was organic. One of the comments from the group experience was that they were excited to work with peers and it was comforting to find a community to explore with.

The in-class experience – At URMC, the grad students and postdocs completed the job sim together in-class with more time (3 hours) to discuss in groups and present findings to each other. Here was the lesson plan:

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Describe key tasks and terms for a selected career field
• Explain the benefits of doing a job simulation
• Determine if you would like to further pursue a career field
• Identify next steps to explore a selected career field

Before class:

Explore the 5 career areas on intersectjobsims.com and identify the area you would like to work on during the in-person session.

In class:

2:00-2:30 pm, Introduce the job simulation process. Select teams.
2:30-3:45 pm, Complete the job simulation. Create posters and summaries.
3:45-4:00 pm, Break. Complete the self-reflection sheet individually.
4:00-4:45 pm, Group presentations.
4:45-5:00 pm, Discuss career options and next steps.

We’ve had a lot of fun trying different classroom formats. Have you tried a group workshop or experimented with small peer groups? We’d love to hear from you. Share it with us!

-Thi

A graduate student recently asked me, “What do I do next?”. She planned to do more informational interviews, but wanted to know how to make the most out of this entire InterSECT experience. It was wonderful to hear that she planned to do informational interviews, because students and postdocs tell me that it’s the most useful part of the InterSECT experience.

In terms of next steps after doing a job sim, here are suggestions depending on your goals.

If you want to get context for the job simulation, I strongly encourage you to talk with a professional in that career field about the job simulation tasks. The job simulations are discreet tasks that may represent one particular type of organization or firm. For example, are business analyses and presentations the same for pharma companies versus start-ups? Do writers pitch articles differently if they work in a non-profit organization versus if they freelance? An informational interview can help students and postdocs learn about the actual workplace and how team dynamics might affect a role.

If after doing the job simulation (and the informational interview), your goal is to discover a different career path, yes, please try other simulations! To help you narrow down the types of careers or skills you enjoy, pay attention to the types of data you like to work on or the websites you like to read (e.g., business-related, finance, or regulatory or user experience).

If your goal is to delve deeper into a career area and build a network, consider creating your own job simulation. For each job simulation, we encourage you to interview 2 or 3 professionals. In addition to learning about the job itself, now you have a co-copyright on a job sim to add to your resume. Several students have created job simulations from internships they already completed as a way to spread knowledge.

Whatever step you decide to take next, remember to reflect on your goal and whether your next step will help get you there. Let us know what works for you!

-Thi