August Career Coach Insights

Hey there. This week we are going over the Biospace column answers. The Biospace column just dropped this week, so you can head over to Biospace and you can read my answers. But here in this podcast episode, I'm going to go through things in a little bit more detail with a little bit of backstory, which I've heard from folks you really like because it kind of humanizes the questions a little bit. So without further ado, I'm going to jump into those questions and I'm also going to tell you at the end of this about a new format for this session that I'm going to be rolling out next month. I'm going to do a live Ask Me Anything session where I will pull the questions for the Biospace column. So stay tuned. I'll tell you all about that at the end. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees. So I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach Podcast to give you simple, actionable speed, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're in the right place. All right, so the first question we're going to talk about today is one I get all the time in various formats, so you may have heard me answer similar questions, but I'm going to go through this from the lens of a specific, specific person. So this person has had a long academic career. They are an assistant professor currently, so they have gone through their PhD, their postdoc, they've gone into an academic job and they've been there for about 10 years, which means they've published a lot of papers, they've done a lot of great work, and they are seeing right now that with some of the financial pressures of getting funding and also just their career aspirations, they would like to move into biotech. So the question is, how do they represent themselves in a resume format without sort of losing all the essence of the amazing huge body of work that they have done thus far? And if you know anything about academic cvs, they are really long and the point of them is sort of to impress people with how much work you've done and maybe the breadth of the work Maybe all of the different publications that you've done, but that does not play well for an industry resume because industry has different goals and the attention span of somebody reading an industry resume is much less than someone reading an academic cv. So I'm going to go through what to trim out, how to think about that and how to approach that through the lens of an academic moving to biotech. So the first thing I want to do is encourage you to think of a resume, not an academic cv, but a resume for industry as an abstract. So you're very comfortable writing papers, writing grants, and the abstracts that go along with those. So let's think about your career through that lens. And what does a good abstract do? It hooks a reader, right? They're going to read it and go, oh yes, this is me, I want to read further. It's going to summarize the story concisely and impactfully and it's going to give you the sort of so what? Right? You're going to have the value of the paper all wrapped up into one short little paragraph. It's not the full paper. And someone would need to read more the full paper if they want the full story, if they want to look at the data, if they want to really analyze it for themselves so that we can treat as the rest of your process. Right? If you get through the application process with your resume, then you get to talk way more about yourself during the interviews. So that is where people are saying, yes, they're signing up to read the full paper. You want your resume to set them up for wanting to listen to the full story of your career. So with that little mental reframe, it doesn't seem like you're just cutting out all the important stuff, because we know a good abstract actually does encapsulate the main points, but we do want to think about who our reader is. So the person who's going to read your resume at first is most likely going to be a non scientist. Right? This is a recruiter. They have great intentions, but they don't always have have that strong scientific background. And then that same resume needs to go to the hiring manager and still make sense. So similar to an abstract, you want to write this resume at the level of an informed consumer, somebody who's educated, but maybe they don't have the deepest background in what you do. So the first thing I always say to do is to analyze the job description. Look at that job description from a very clinical standpoint. What are the pain points? I have another podcast episode and I Also have a column in biospace talking about how to analyze a job description. You really have to though boil it down to what is wrong? Why are they hiring for this role? You don't hire somebody unless you need them. So figuring out the why behind what they're hiring for is so important. This is where you're going to be able to start to pull out the language that you're going to want to then use in your resume. From the pain points that you see in the job description. This is going to enable you to talk about your academic experience as it translates into an industry setting while addressing the pain point, the why that they are hiring. Next up, unlike an academic cv, you're going to have a succinct one sentence value proposition at the top of your resume. So right under your name and contact information, why are you specifically applying to this job? And you're going to want to mirror that language, those pain points you see. So here's an example of a really good headline statement and I crafted this into the biospace article so you can go there and read it and dissect it for yourself if you're interested. But here's a great headline. Collaborative neuroscientist with 10 plus years of research Leadership, Bridging innovation and Drug Discovery. So let's break it down a little bit. Collaborative neuroscientist, that is who you are. And I'm imagining a job description where they talk about collaboration, which is almost every job description. But if you're seeing that highlighted as a pain point, that could be what you'll lead with in your headline. Neuroscientist, that's what you are. Great. How many years of experience? Well insert your own number there. It might be more than 10. Because this individual who has a long academic career is going to be entering at probably a mid senior level into biotech as opposed to an entry level. We really want to craft that leadership experience that they have. And they do. They've managed budgets, they've managed teams, they've managed collaborative projects working cross functionally within different departments, even across different schools. Maybe they've collaborated with industry partners. Partners. All of those things are really important to bring into this resume. And in our headline, in my imaginary job description, we're looking for a collaborative scientist who has an innovative way of thinking about things. And luckily that's academic people in spades and who has a knowledge of drug discovery. And also that's academic people in spades. So I love the word bridging because it allows you to bring two Things together that make it feel like a really complete sentence. And it shows the reader that you are the link between these two different skills. So if you can find the pain points, address them in that way. It makes a really strong headline sentence. So head to my Biospace column. If you want to read that sentence and really think about how it looks, it's going to be the key to getting people to want to read more in your resume. The hook, the thing that draws somebody in the next section of the resume is going to be some bullet points that are going to be highlights. You're not going to be diving directly into your past experience. First, you want to further hook a reader by telling them why they should care about you. And again, we're looking at the pain points in the job description, the most important qualifications, and you're going to tell them in very succinct, clear bullet points why you address those pain points. And it should be data driven. So here's an example of a really good bullet point that you might find in a highlight section if you're on YouTube. You're seeing me make a lot of hand signals here. Led a team of five researchers and three technicians securing $2 million in grant funding over three years. I was able to cram four different numbers into that sentence. It demonstrates leadership skills, mentorship skills, budget management skills. Right. And also managing a project over a long timeline. Three years. Those impactful bullet points are going to make it much more likely that the reader of your resume is going to keep reading down into your experience section because they're going to see that you are addressing the key pain points that they're looking for. You're using the keywords, you're using the vocabulary. So really dig into that job description. That is where all of the magic is. Next, you're going to be ruthless about trimming your publication list. This is going to hurt some of you very deeply. You will not want to do this. And I get it. You have put blood, sweat and tears into that long list of publications and they are all impactful, but they are not all created equally. When it comes to a specific job description, you're going to want to trim your list of publications to about five of the most relevant publications. For this job, a nice trick is to choose publications where the title is reflective of some of the things in the job. So, for instance, if you're applying for a neuroscientist position, if you can use publications that have neuroscience in the title, that's going to trigger the brain. The person reading your Resume to say, yes, yes, yes, they are bringing the things to the table that we want to see. Then you can always title that section, select Publications with a little side note. For a full list of publications, visit my and then you can direct them to your PubMed, your research gate, your LinkedIn, maybe where you have everything, or a personal website. So that is where the full list of publications lives. And that's more impactful too because then you can hyperlink things out. If you're doing your own website, it's already there if it's in PubMed or Research Gate. But it allows people to really easily navigate your body of work and that's not actually very doable in the context of a resume or a cv. So it's actually a bit of a better solution for your problem of listing all of your publications. And I can tell you that the recruiters are most likely not going to click through there, but the hiring managers probably will. So it's a really nice way to showcase what you've done without overwhelming the readers of your resume. Next, I want you to just look at almost any industry job description. Go and pick five industry job descriptions and look for the similarities. Almost everyone is going to use the word collaborative. Industry is a very collaborative environment and I'm not saying academia isn't, but it's a little bit more individualistic and industry wants to see that you are very comfortable working cross functionally. So how do you demonstrate that with an academic background? I alluded to it a little bit earlier, but if you can show projects where you may be collaborated with other people in different departments, your same department across schools, maybe in an industry setting, those are things you can pull into the resume to make sure that you are showing that you're collaborative and you're not just using the word, you're showing that. Yes, I have worked on a four year project where we worked with Novartis and another research institution to publish these papers. Those are the sorts of impactful ways that you can show your collaborative nature and kind of dispel the worry that is going to be going through a lot of people's heads when we see an academic candidate that has been in academia for a long time, are they going to be able to successfully make the jump and work in the culture of industry, which is a little bit different. The next mistake that I see a lot, and this is not just for resumes for academics moving into industry, this is for everybody, is wanting to use a list of keywords somewhere in the resume, thinking, well, I didn't Mention this and they might want to see this. And having this laundry list of keywords out of context somewhere in your resume. Now, while that might help you to get through the dumber applicant tracking systems, it doesn't help when a recruiter looks at your resume. So when I do a keyword search, I actually see those keywords in context. The applicant tracking system pulls up the keyword and it shows the sentence around it. If you have just made a list of a whole bunch of keywords with no context, it doesn't really help me to quickly identify whether you're a fit for the job. So if I'm prioritizing people and you have a keyword on your resume and someone else has a keyword on their resume, but it also shows the context, I might go with their resume because I'm in a hurry. And I hate to say it, but you have to play to the busy recruiter and what they are thinking. How are they using your document? So you still want to have all those keywords, but you want to put them into sentences. And that's where you're going to distribute those high impact bullet points throughout your resume. At the top of your resume, you're going to have about five that are really laser focused to the job description and sort of out of context of your experience. So that's where you're going to speak generally to the main pain points that you identify in the job description. Then throughout your experience section, you're going to want to have three or five bullet points under each of your experiences. Again, same type of language. You want to use lots of data. You want to have impactful bullet points that start with action verbs and contain those keywords so that your resume sails through the applicant tracking system. And a recruiter, when they look at it, can quickly identify how you used that skill, that keyword that they're looking for. All right, finally, you have to keep your resume concise. It is not an academic cv. So hopefully everything I've told you will help you to trim down your resume to just the essential things. But I like to compare this to a needle in a haystack. Most candidates hand me a haystack and somewhere in there is the needle. The thing I'm looking for, the candidates that get interviews hand me a very small stack of needles. I don't have to look for them. They're right there and they're the ones that get interviewed. So give me a needle stack, not a haystack. I would say if you can keep your resume to three pages or so that's fine. It does not have to be one or two pages, which I hear a lot, but it shouldn't be six pages, it shouldn't be seven pages. That gets into CV territory. Give me a concise resume and I will always ask for more information if I need it. But if you've done a good job with your resume, I'll be very excited to move you forward into the interview process where you get to explain your research, your background and your full history further. Hey, I just want to cut in to say that if you are enjoying this podcast, you may enjoy the Building Biotechs podcast from our sister company, Recruitomics Consulting, which is a talent acquisition strategy firm that specializes in helping small biotechs hire exceptional talent. In that podcast, we interview amazing people who are building biotechs. They are industry leaders in all different verticals and it will allow you to explore career paths in biotech and to get to know companies that maybe you've never heard about. So if you are a biotech fan, you are exploring careers in biotech, I highly recommend the Building Biotechs podcast. We'll link that in the show notes or you can search for it on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. All right, back to our show. All right, next question is one from somebody who just got a job in our community and they said that they're starting their new job in a few weeks, but they do have a family vacation that had been planned to come up in a few months and they were feeling awkward that they were going to try and take time off so soon after starting, even though the vacation had been booked for a little while. So what should you do? Well, first of all, it's totally normal to be nervous about taking time off right after starting a new job. It's not ideal, but it happens all the time. So I can think of so many situations where we came to the offer stage and a candidate said, hey, really excited, would love to accept the offer. I just need to let you know that I do have a family vacation, a family reunion, my sister's wedding, whatever planned on X date. And I will need to figure out how to make that work with the start date or with the vacation schedule. So the candidate just very politely put the ball in my court. Yeah, we want to hire them and we're not going to let a silly vacation stop us. So we got to figure out how to make it work. So the ideal time to bring that up is when you've received an offer but before you've accepted it just as a caveat, just as a hey, just so you know this is happening and not make it a really big deal if though you've already accepted your job offer and now you need to tell them, don't put it off, it's not the end of the world. But you do want to have that conversation with your manager probably before you start. My recommendation is to schedule a quick maybe 15 minute meeting with your manager and I wrote a script for you in the Biospace column so you can go check that out. But my script says basically I'm really excited to join the team. I wanted to let you know that I have a pre planned family vacation from X date to X date. I'm committed to ensuring a smooth onboarding and minimizing any impact to the team. Can we brainstorm on how best to manage this? So you can steal my template and you can make it your own but basically you are coming to them making it not a big deal. But like we need to figure this out. And my recommendation is to come armed with a few scenarios that you could throw out there for the brainstorming. Make it collaborative, co create the solution with your manager. Some potential solutions that you could throw out there would be to maybe do some onboarding stuff before you actually officially start. Maybe there are some papers you could read, maybe you could get all of your paperwork done. Maybe you could think about the project that they're going to put you on. You could start to brainstorm things to do for that project. Maybe you could propose to work some extra hours in the weeks leading up to or after the trip just to make sure you're fully caught up. So just be flexible and be open to some different solutions. Your manager may be just fine with it, no big deal. Or they might say, oh yeah, that does put us in a bit of a tough spot. Here's what we can do about it. And so just co create the solution with them. It's really normal hiring and changing jobs and all of that stuff does not always happen on a schedule we can predict. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, many of us plan vacations way out because it's easier or even known family event coming up. So don't sweat it. But let's get in touch with your manager as soon as possible so that you can co create that solution with them. Our final question today is something that we are going to touch on much further in next week's podcast episode. So if this is resonating with you, do not miss next week's episode. I have a special Guest talking about the stress of leadership. But here's the question. I recently got a promotion and I'm leading a team. It's more demanding than I anticipated, and I'm feeling very stressed. It's affecting my personal life so much that I'm considering moving back to an individual contributor role. Is that the right call or is there a way to make this easier? Oh, this is such a tough question because it's going to be so individual to you. But let me just put a few things in place that you can think about before you make the decision to step back into an individual contributor role. So it is so normal to feel very stressed when you first take on a team. It's overwhelming and you don't want to let people down. It can feel suddenly like all of the weight of the team is on your shoulders, and any mistake that's made, any drop in performance, anything is on you when that's not really true. And there are ways that you can sort of learn to deal with this. It's nothing I can teach in a short column or a short podcast episode. These are skills that you really need to develop over time. And I think good mentorship is critical here. I feel like a broken record because I say all the time that nobody is born knowing how to do anything. You were not born knowing how to do all the scientific stuff you know how to do. You were not born even knowing how to tie your shoes. So to think that you should be instantly good at leading a team, instantly comfortable in this role is absurd. And I just want you to sit with that and know that we all feel that dissonance when we move into that leadership position. It is scary. There are, quote, unquote, born leaders. However, most of those individuals had an opportunity earlier in life to exercise that leadership muscle. And yes, some people are just more inherently comfortable with it. But this is something that you can develop. It is a muscle that you can make stronger. So I'm gonna just tell you the two sources of dissonance that I typically see when people move into these positions. And I'm not gonna tell you how to fix it, but knowing what they are and how to get help is the first step in starting to understand what you can do to make yourself a more confident leader. The first thing that I see people doing or not doing is delegating. So true. Delegation is a skill, and it is very hard to master. It is something that I struggle with, I think anybody struggles with. And it's hard because you know what you want to happen and you can't control every action that someone else takes to get to the result. So the real trick with delegation, with true delegation, so that doesn't bounce back onto your plate, is to delegate the outcome and not the steps. And that is something. That is a process. It's not something you can learn overnight. But to be okay with whatever path somebody takes to get to the outcome, as long as the outcome is what we're looking for. And that takes some true confidence to get there. I would say that true delegation, true, true delegation is that when people say that they're delegating, they're usually talking about tasks, and then they're still trying to manage the outcome. And that's where a lot of stress builds up. The second thing that people often find leads to a lot of stress in their new leadership positions is not setting clear boundaries between what is work time and what is not work time, and your direct reports who are relying on you for answers and things like that. They may be shooting you messages at off hours because that's when they're thinking about it. They might be asking for help during times that are not convenient for you, when you'd really rather be focusing on your tasks. And you're gonna have to learn how to set clear boundaries so that they understand that you're gonna get back to them in a certain time, at a certain time of day, a certain day of the week, whatever that is. But putting systems in place to manage the boundaries is really, really important. So those two skills, true delegation and creating and maintaining boundaries, are essential to finding that work life balance or work life integration, as I like to call it, and not letting the stress bleed into your personal life. Now, hopefully your company has set up some sort of mechanism to help to get people mentorship and skills training in these areas. But if they haven't, you may need to go outside of your company to get this training. And in my opinion, it is within your rights as an employee, as a new leader, to ask for that training and just say, hey, I identified this program I'd like to do. It will build my leadership skills, it'll make me more effective, it'll make my team happier, and I think it's really good for the organization. Here's the cost, here's the timeframe. Is this something we can get approved in the budget? Ask. They can only say no, but often they'll say yes. Because many times this is pretty affordable training. We're talking about a few thousand dollars that will make the team happier, more productive. It will make you a more valuable employee. It is a win, win, win for everyone. So really consider getting that help if you are struggling. Another trick, this doesn't replace actual training, but working with other leaders in your company in an informal mentorship capacity. So maybe forming a once a month group where people can sort of ask anything about leading teams, mentorship, whatever, so that you're getting the feedback from your peers as well and you can sort of frame it in the company context. And so depending on how large your company is, this might be easier or not as easy, but that is a really nice source of support is your own peer group. And look, if you give it a real try and you get the leadership training and you try to get mentorship from your peers and you are still unhappy, it's totally fine to say, you know what? Leading a team is not for me. I know a lot of amazing people who have fantastic careers who do not lead teams. They don't want to. That is not in their career plan and that is okay. So I want to encourage you to do what's going to be right for you in the long run and not aspire to be some ideal that you think, oh well, I'm climbing the ladder. Like, of course this means I am a leader next. That is not always true. It's your career, so you get to decide. So I encourage you to get some help, get some mentorship and if all else fails, be kind to yourself and take the step that you need in your career. All right, so those were our three questions this week. I hope you enjoyed that. Next month, early in September, I am going to be hosting an Ask Me Anything where I want people to bring their questions to a live event. I'm going to answer them in real time and interact with folks that will get chopped up into a podcast episode. But I won't have anybody who's on the ask me anything sort of in the podcast. So you don't have to worry about that. We can edit all that out in the podcast episode. It'll just sound like I summarize the question and then answer it. But I think it might be a really fun way to include more people. And normally what I do is I sort of look back over the month and I pick out three questions that emerged from lots of different interactions. But I'd love to try a live session. So how do you get access to this free live session with me? You are going to have to be on our mailing list. That is the only way. I am only sending out the invitation through our newsletter. So the newsletter you can go and sign up@biotechcareercoach.com very simple head there. I'll link it in the show notes. You can sign up for the newsletter. In that newsletter I send out some tricks, usually a career development tip or a job seeking tip. I send out a little summary of the podcast for the week and I also send a summary of my other podcast, the Building Biotechs podcast, in case you want to go and listen to that because there are amazing people on that show. You can go learn from their careers and it's a really low lift newsletter. It's not salesy. I just want to make sure that you are getting the tools and resources you need and that's how you're going to get to sign up for the Ask Me Anything for next month. So get signed up for that again biotechcareercoach.com and I will see you next week. And like I said, we have a really special guest next week who is going to tell us all about early leadership. How do you get those skills? How do you build the confidence, build team trust? That is all going to happen next week, so be sure you're here. And bye for now. Thanks so much for listening to the Biotech Career Coach Podcast by the Collaboratory Career Hub. To join our free Slack group and to get access to other great free resources and materials, head over to CollaboratoryCareerHub.com and be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn Pro Tip. When you connect with me on LinkedIn, you get instant access to my entire network of biotech folks, which is powerful for your career. If you found this podcast valuable, please subscribe or follow us on YouTube so that you never miss an episode. And if you leave us an honest review, screenshot that review and send it to helloollaboratorycareerhub.com we'll give you totally free access to our popular LinkedIn course so that you can learn all of the secrets behind creating a magnetic LinkedIn profile that drives your career forward. Have an amazing week and we'll see you back here next Friday.