A Secret Cloaked By Stereotype: Sales Is A Great Career

Career Story by Alison Billroth-MacLurg, PhD, Scientific Sales Representative for STEMCELL Technologies

A career in sales has been one of the best choices I could have ever made for myself or my growing family, but oftentimes is overshadowed by a grimy stereotype that hinders people from applying. Whether it was while buying your next car or during an important experiment in the lab, we have all met that bad salesperson that enforces the stereotype: interrupting your day, putting their needs first, acting on enforced assumptions all with big green dollar signs in their irises. This stereotype was laced in warnings when I left six postdoc offers for the job: “it’s a waste of a PhD”, “money isn’t everything” or “I just don’t want you to regret your decision.” In the interest of this career story, freshen your caffeinated beverage, put the stereotype on the shelf next to the papers you have been meaning to read, and focus on a new concept: Scientific Sales is secretly a fantastic career. I'm going to tell you a few reasons why.

Back to Back: Grad School Hustle Advice from an Extrovert & Introvert

News Article by Shannon Loelius and ELissa Flores, PhD Candidates

How to “hustle” in grad school essentially refers to networking, but also encompasses daily interactions that you may not classify as “networking”, but that really probably are. This includes asking professors questions (outside of class), bouncing ideas off peers (for your work or thought experiments), as well as the more traditional “networking” activities (meeting with people at conferences, meeting speakers, sending cold emails, etc.). This article will focus on the “how to” aspect of hustling. Most importantly, we will address this from two very different view-points: that of an introvert and that of an extrovert. In this article, we have discussed networking/hustling in our own ways. We hope this will be helpful in tackling the nebulous activity of networking or – the more term benign term – hustling.

Enhancing Career Services For Graduate Students

News Article By The Gwen M. Greene Center Communication Staff

The Gwen M. Greene Center for Career Education and Connections is committed to enhancing individual career readiness, connecting organizations and talent, and transforming our communities through education and collaboration.

Graduate Student Career Development and Fostering Graduate Student-Alumni Connections

News Article By Dan Curran, PhD Graduate Student and Sustainability Officer of the River Campus Graduate Student Association

            A major incentive for students to pursue post-secondary education is career development.  While departments do a good job of preparing students to pursue a career directly in their field of study, the reality of the current academic landscape is that most students who want to stay in academia will not be able to. Finding jobs in industry or following a non-linear career path is dependent on having a diversified network and a suite of soft-skills. These realities are applicable to graduate students in all fields of study, so it is the University’s responsibility to provide graduate students the opportunity to develop them. From my and others’ experiences, there is a seeming lack of commitment on an institutional level from the River Campus towards graduate student career development when compared to that of undergraduate student career development.

Embrace Uncertainty

News Article by Dillon Schrock, PhD

The journey through graduate school is full of difficult lessons and uncomfortable realizations. One of the most challenging aspects to face is the inherent uncertainty of science. Upon entering a graduate program, new students often come to realize just how little they know of their chosen field, seeing our mentors and surrounding faculty as consummate experts. An important step in maturing as a scientist is to realize that those same experts deal intimately with their own uncertainties all the time. Tolerating and even embracing this vagueness is necessary for the scientific process. Finding and testing gaps in knowledge is, after all, what science is all about. In fact, some of the most exciting times in scientific discovery come from observations that challenge what we thought we knew. This perspective on the known and unknown is a critical component of graduate education.