you count

It was another beautiful day today, the third warmest-day-of-the-year in a row (and not just the third warmest day of the year – who'd be keeping track?), but I was holed up in a bleak seminar room for eight hours with no so much as a breath of fresh air or a tickle of sunshine on my increasingly substantial forehead.

I attended a workshop organized by the Postdoc Development Centre at Imperial, a well-funded resource for all postdocs in need of guidance, advice or constructive criticism. The handful of staff have put it onto their flags to make it as easy as possible for postdocs to succeed in their careers, whatever they may be. They organize workshops, retreats and mock interviews, and help spiff up CVs and covering letters.

At Imperial, and I think in the UK in general, postdocs have a right to ten days a year of training designed to further professional or personal development, to acquire transferable skills and the like. These days can be taken at will, without so much as talking to the boss. I doubt anyone takes all ten days, but it's good to know that one could. I feel that Imperial is well equipped and eager to maximize its employees' potential, even if the employees will soon move on, as is almost inevitable with postdocs.

I haven't decided to move on yet, but I'm keeping my eyes open, and my open eyes are telling me that I wouldn't be very well prepared, were I to apply to jobs outside academia right now. I went to an afternoon of presentations of potential career paths organized by the London Biotechnology Network ten days ago, and today, I went to a course on how to interview outside academia. It was quite an experience.

I have never properly interviewed for a job or, to put it differently, I have never interviewed for a proper job. In fact, I have never held a proper jobs. I have bounced from one academic position to another, without much structure or proper HR. Getting the interview involved sending an email to the head of a lab whose research a found interesting, and the interview itself was a conversation about scientific projects I might like to take on, followed by a lengthy tour of the lab and an evening in the pub so my future colleagues could judge whether it'd be good fun to have me around. In the real world, things are apparently different, and not only because you're supposed to wear a suit and tie to the interview.

No, the interview is serious business and rather similar to what you'd expect from the term. One or more interviewers have a bunch of questions that they ask you to probe your motivation and your character, assess you competencies and your qualifications, and find out whether you're suitable for the job they're about to offer. I guess employing someone outside academia is a bigger deal because it involves more money, for you and for the institution.

It was eye-opening to hear what kind of questions one can expect in interviews and even more so how one should think about them. Not like a scientist, most of all. Every question needs to be approached from the point of view of the company that's hiring and with the objective of presenting yourself in the best possible light in terms of requirements of the job. It's a different mindset, and quite foreign to me. For that reason, it was good to collect a list of questions that came up during the day – in the lecture in the morning and during the mock interviews later.

The mock interviews, without any preparation on the part of the postdocs took only seven minutes but were taped on video, which helped induce a level of stress in me that I would expect to encounter in a real interview. Some questions threw me off and some I didn't even answer, waffling aimlessly instead, but it was only during the feedback that I realized how much better I could have been (to put a positive spin to the whole exercise). I have a lot to think about and prepare.

One thing I've already done. During the interview I was talking about my writing experience and mentioned my blog. How many hits does it get, was one question. I don't know, and I don't care. This blog is still mostly a personal writing exercise. It's not advertised anywhere and not popular. Visitors or, worse, numbers are not why I write. But in case I'll ever use the blog in a real interview situation, I incorporated a visitor counter in the blog code. This post is to let you know that your presence is duly noted from now on.