Source Event

Friday was a day long stint talking about King’s College to prospective students and research staff.  Did manage to go to 2 presentations, one by a chilled dutch professor of Human-Computer Interaction on the subject of networking – it was the classic Nelson-Bolles model with some nice personal touches about how he had failed to network and got into the ‘wrong’ lab where he discovered several people he had graduated with – who could have told him it was not suitable.

The second one was by the equally impressive Matthias Haury who gave great examples of how and how not to set up labs, how not to pay over the odds for kit and how to avoid recruiting the wrong people. His best story was about his time at University of California in San Francisco where in a tower housing different labs on different floors there was some social event every day. He recounted how new dicoveries were passed round the research groups – informally -well before publication and they informed and stimulated discoveroes in other groups in the tower:  a truly productive period. He was a very serious guy but one who subscribed to the Jon Cooper ’science is fun’  philosophy. When 80% of all experiments in biology ‘fail’ you need a network to keep it all in perspective.

There was a great buzz about the event – a long overdue one for science careers. Slightly weird to be doing it in the Business Design Centre where I have done so many of the Careers Group Recruitment Fairs.

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Source Event

Met up with Fiona Denney to talk about what we are going to do in our workshop about the Source Science Careers Event.

Prospects Planner – a PhD student tool

Prospects Planner is probably the most widely recommended piece of Careers software in UK Universities. Like many a standard work it is seen as not very exciting.

I suggested it to a Philosophy PhD recently and was surprised at his positive reaction once he had completed it. It made me re-assess it. It is actually a very rich resource. The problem is that it requires a bit of patience and persistence to use it to its full capacity. I suspect that most students use it to generate a list of jobs that might suit them. Its really merit is in the stage beyond that where you can interrogate the precise match with a specific job title. I have heard many CA’s discuss its limitations and I have contributed to those conversations myself. For me its real merit is the way it trains students to think in this competence foocused way which can only enhance their job applications.

Mock Interview for academic post

Nice message from a student. Did not get the job he went for but felt our session helped:

“I received a call from the panel Chair earlier today, informing me that the post had gone to one of the other six candidates interviewed.

Summing-up my impressions of the day, I do believe that I expressed myself more fluidly and confidently, and felt better prepared for the presentation and formal interview, as a result of our work together.

London Hub Gradschool

Got involved in day 4 of this years Gradschool.  I was always going to do a session on Career Management, bit I got more involved than I anticipated; one of the tutors was ill so I stepped in as a group tutor.  I enjoyed this very much – great group very open and supportive of each other. 2 of them were actually King’s PhD’s form Humanities. I understand now why I see so few of these students on training courses: these 2 lived miles away from London and only came in when supervision or departmental needs required.

Paul shook my hand after my session – he liked it, even though i was not sure I had articulated my argument with sufficient clarity. I was getting lots of nods of recognition during the talk – though Luke ( i think it was) pointed out  these may have been the nods of the pre-sleep phase.

Luke’s own pedagogic method seems to be based on Baron Munchausen. Tell a series of stories of  startling character and decreasing verisimilitude.

New Academic Year

Back in the office after hols in Scotland. Pick up a thankyou e-mail – have decided to keep these – probably a sign of chronic insecurity. This one from a Humanities PhD.

“Just a note to say thanks so much for meeting last week. I found the conversation so helpful. I’m reading up on ENFP/ENFT and finding it fascinating.”

Anyway am back in the office and beginning to put this year in place.

I have a an employer visit tomorrow and will be doing some input on the Graduate School on Wednesday. Haver seen a PSe PhD this morning and have an appointment bokked for the IOP on Thursday. Am hoping that i will be able to maintain last year’s increase in numbers of staff and students seeking guidance. The figues for the Graduate Skills Programme are a bit static – but that was probably down to problems with the old GSDP system and staffing issues.