You are in charge of your professional and career development. You have made the first step by entering a graduate program. Begin immediately by familiarizing yourself with your program's curriculum (know the courses you need to take and when.) Also make sure you know additional requirements and deadlines.
Meet with your faculty advisor early in every semester and as often thereafter as needed. Be sure to discuss with your advisor your career aspirations, your strengths, and your weaknesses (and how to address them). These discussions will be more productive if you have thought about these things in advance. The Career Development Center (CDC) and other university wide entities have resources and workshops that can help you think this through. It will be worth your time to spend an hour or two every semester working on these things. The Graduate School's Career and Professional Development office, in partnership with other university resources, has put together some out of class workshops that will enhance your professional development skills. Please visit the Events Calendar to register for these workshops.
As part of your career and academic planning, you should set goals for yourself about what you want to accomplish and when. You may benefit by attending the free workshop Strategic Planning: Creating and Using a Blueprint, which is offered by the Center for Quality. But don't just focus on your chosen discipline.
Other tips and resources:
Binghamton University's Career Development Center (CDC) helps people understand the relationship between the university experience and future professional roles. Tied to the educational mission of the University, the CDC assists undergraduate and graduate students in all majors, as well as alumni, because career development is a lifelong process. The CDC provides resources and services to help students become aware of the skills and competencies needed for career success, explore careers, pursue exploratory experiences, and gain professional employment or admission to graduate and professional school.
The average work-life in the future will consist of 4-5 different careers. That means that core competency skills that cut across careers, such as problem-solving, communication, teamwork and leadership, will be especially important.
Even within one career track, graduate students need to develop more than an expertise in a particular discipline. National studies recommend developing skills such as teacher (at every level), project manager, evaluator of other's learning, mentor, communicator, faculty member, teamwork facilitator, leader, interdisciplinary thinker, and big-picture thinker. Having this set of core competencies will prepare you for your immediate career goal but also for the inevitable changes in your career path over your lifetime.
To various degrees, your graduate program will provide opportunities for you to develop your knowledge and skills in the core competencies. However, individual graduate programs are designed to develop research, scholarship, and creative endeavors in particular disciplines. University-wide programs can fill in the gaps. However, you must take the initiative to identify what you need to acquire while you are here. Remember, you are in charge of your professional and career development. Have a plan and review it often.
While the list of resources below is not exhaustive, it will get you started with some of the university-wide programs or resources that can help you develop your core competencies:
Every post-secondary career involves some kind of teaching, e.g., being a supervisor, giving presentations at work, conducting workshops for employees, helping others learn. Whether or not you plan to teach in K-12 schools, college or university, you will be a teacher.
It doesn't matter what your career path is you will be a project manager at one time or another. Various workshops and programs can help you develop skills and confidence.
Any time you are supervising someone you will have to evaluate learning and ascertain how to provide feedback that has positive effects.
You are probably already a mentor for someone. Are you a good mentor now? You will certainly have opportunities to be a mentor in the future. As you move into new career phases, will you be ready to be a great mentor?
Technology doesn't create good communication. The most effective ways to communicate are writing well and speaking well. In addition, you need to build confidence in your ability to do these well even on short notice and to large audiences. You never know exactly where your career path may lead!
Whether you plan on a career in academia or not, the multitasking required in academia is good preparation for many other jobs. Exactly what is a "faculty member"? Faculty teach (from one-on-one to large classes, from undergraduate to graduate, from content to process); conduct a sustainable program of research, scholarship or creative endeavor; serve as advisor and mentor; provide community outreach (e.g., expertise for local organizations, industry); and work in groups to foster and manage college or university missions (teaching, research, and community outreach).
It doesn't matter whether you like to work in groups or not. No matter your career path, you will often have to work in groups. There is a skill to working in groups. Developing that skill increases the likelihood that you can help the group get its task done and well.
Leaders have the opportunity to move things forward and shape how that occurs and the outcome. But there is a skill to good leadership. Good leadership requires understanding situations and the people involved and being able to recognize the best options to move things forward and how to implement those. You need to develop the skill now so you are ready for leadership opportunities later.
Many of the biggest discoveries, best syntheses and greatest creative endeavors reflect interdisciplinary thinking. For example, every major advance in technology is a result of combining knowledge and approaches from two or more fields in new and innovative ways. There isn't a gene for interdisciplinary thinking; we have to learn how to do it.
You cannot convince people that your ideas or project are worthwhile unless you can give them the "big picture". It takes practice developing an idea to the big picture level. Your career success may depend on your skill at doing this.
By John Brooks Slaughter
* See http://www.nacme.org/about/officers.html#slaughter.
Suggestions for future workshops or other professional development activities welcome! Please email us with your ideas.
