How to PhD Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Who works at MIT Lincoln Lab?

MIT Lincoln Laboratory employs a diverse workforce of scientists, engineers, and support staff. The laboratory offers a wide range of job opportunities for individuals with backgrounds in engineering, mathematics, computer science, physics, and other related fields. Some of the typical job titles at MIT Lincoln Laboratory include research scientist, engineer, software developer, and program manager. The laboratory also offers internships and co-op positions for students who are interested in gaining hands-on experience in research and development.

In addition to its research and development activities, MIT Lincoln Laboratory is also involved in outreach and education initiatives. The laboratory offers a variety of programs designed to inspire and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers. These programs include summer camps, workshops, and internships for students of all ages.

Associated blog post: https://howtophd.org/2023/05/open-jobs-at-lincoln-lab-how-to-apply-directly.html

Wide range of job opportunities in science, engineering, and technology

In summary, MIT Lincoln Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center that is dedicated to developing advanced technologies for US national security. The laboratory offers a wide range of job opportunities for individuals with backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology. The laboratory is also involved in outreach and education initiatives aimed at inspiring and educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Where to apply for open jobs at Lincoln Lab

I have been working at MIT Lincoln Lab for over a year now and only recently discovered this link to apply to staff positions here. So I thought I would share it in this blog post.

Direct website for open jobs at Lincoln Lab: http://careers.ll.mit.edu/

I joined as a subcontractor myself through another company so I did not know about the regular careers website until now. This is where you can see all open positions and apply to multiple jobs if you like. I believe the application is fairly simple requiring a resume and basic information. The cover letter is optional. Of course, please verify all information yourself.

I will share part of an open job description below. This should give an idea of the types of roles available at the Lab. This is just one example though so please do your due diligence looking at all opportunities.

Open jobs at Lincoln Lab example

Required qualifications:

• Ability to learn new technical areas quickly and apply that knowledge effectively to solve challenging mission problems
• Ability to present technical concepts clearly to a wide spectrum of audiences
• Proficiency with programming languages for computer modeling (e.g. Matlab, Python, C)
• Doctorate in Physics, Engineering, Applied Math, Astronomy, or a related field. In lieu of a Doctorate, a Master’s degree with at least 5 years of technical experience will be considered.

Good luck with your job search!!! Let me know any comments and/or message me on LinkedIn with your questions.

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oindreebanerjee/

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What is candidacy?  

• The 6-week formal exam required by grad school 
• Advisor/committee chooses a topic 
• Typically not something you have worked on 
• But good for you to know 
• You do a literature review on the topic 
• Deliverables: 15 – 20 page paper (at the end of 4 weeks) + Talk (at the end of 6 weeks)

Timing

• Professors are busy
  • Ask to be on your committee >= 4 months in advance
• Schedule your exam on a day and time that works well for you – this is your candidacy
• Make sure oral exam is on committee members’ schedules
  • If very hard-to-get professor such as the Chair of the department, talk to the assistant for scheduling

Once you get the topic remember you are not alone

• Not a lone journey
  • you will need help and so get ready to ASK FOR HELP
• Ask clarification from the advisor/committee on the topic
  • What are their expectations?
  • Broadly, what outline should your paper follow?
• Communicate profusely with your advisor/committee
  • They picked the topic, they want to see that you are interested in it
  • Ask away, they will tell you when they cannot tell you something

On d-day

• Get to the exam early
  • get familiar with the room, and whiteboards, and set up your talk
• During the exam
  • Station yourself near a whiteboard
  • No hiding behind talk
• Be very respectful, alert, and attentive
• Show willingness to work it out on the board
• Committee wants you to succeed
  • If you get stuck/flustered under questioning
  • They might throw you lifeline – recognize and utilize

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When asked salary expectations, say you will consider all reasonable offers

• It is hard to give a salary number because things like benefits, PTO, sick leave, all make up the offer and these would need to be considered as well
• It is hard to give a number because things like location would affect it and adjust for the cost of living
• I will consider all reasonable offers (yes, you are applying to multiple places and may have multiple offers, let people chase you)

These will make you seem like a reasonable and balanced person who is not easily fooled. Also, if you currently have a job, then you are in no real rush and you can leverage that fact to make yourself more attractive. More leverage you have, the better offer you can get. Without leverage, and without looking like a catch, you will end up with a worse offer.

Don’t give a range for salary expectation!

If you must absolutely give a number for salary expectation, go for 10-20k higher than what you would settle for. Don’t give a range. If you say 100-120k, they will just give you 100k. Companies will pay you what they can get away with paying you, not what you actually deserve. So keep that in mind. Remember that although your salary is just one of many things in an offer, it does lock you to that number for not just this job and its incremental raises based on that salary figure, but for your next job as well. So even though you are playing it cool about salary not being everything (at first), it is actually very important! That is why you are playing this game to win! Not to get a low-ball salary that will affect what you make for years to come.

Full blog post:

https://howtophd.org/2021/10/how-to-negotiate-and-answer-salary-expectation-questions.html

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• Work on getting referred formally or informally for the job you are applying to!
• Apply through the referral link if you are getting referred, don't rush and apply through the general link
• Work on updating your LinkedIn profile BEFORE applying because that could be the first impression they get of you - your online presence is important 
• Updating your LinkedIn profile is working on your PERSONAL BRAND - this is critical to your SUCCESS
• CHECK FOR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ERRORS - I do this with Grammarly which is a free plugin with Google Chrome and this makes everything much more typo-free! Don't misspell your major, it does not look good!
• Make a professional headline that says who you are, not just your job title or something like "Student at ..." - Show off who you are using this space! Mine says: Physics PhD ⚛️ Research Physicist at Department of the Air Force 👩‍💻 Bestselling Author ✍️ Content creator 🎙️📺🙌 so I am separating my roles with emojis. You can also use this character: | to separate the roles and have things like "Avid Reader," "Travel Enthusiast," "Foodie," etc. Most importantly, you need to put "Open to Relocate" in your headline if you are looking to move!!!! This will help with getting found in searches by recruiters on LinkedIn. The information you put on LinkedIn has real consequences like being more searchable, so leverage it as the TOOL that it really is!!!
• Update your profile picture to a professional headshot taken outdoors with natural lighting. Wear work clothes, smile big, and remember the pic is important!! DO NOT use a pic from a wedding or a casual hangout with friends!! We can tell!
• Don't just put the job titles and company names, actually write out the description of the work you do and what your contributions are under each job position and roles where you have served - this will be much more impressive and help you STAND OUT
• Write down all your awards and recognitions under the Awards Recognition: if you got promoted, that goes in there. If you got scholarships, that goes in there. If you got tuition awarded and/or stipends paid in graduate school, that goes in there. 
• If you have publications, firstly, put them on LinkedIn under the Publications section, and second, LINK TO THEM, so we can find and read your publications! If they are papers published in a journal, try to link to the FREE preprints of the papers, if possible. If you don't have the paper somewhere online, write an article on LinkedIn with information from the paper and there you have a publication!
• The more content you post on LinkedIn, the better! It will all help with BRANDING. Post articles, normal posts, pictures, stories, etc. Be active on LinkedIn, the platform will reward you accordingly. 

One-page technical resume template

Link to post: https://howtophd.org/2020/05/one-page-technical-resume-template.html

If you lost your job or looking to make a career switch during the pandemic, I have a one-page technical resume template for you that might work well for roles like consulting, technical research, etc. This is my current resume and the one I use within my company to help bid on new work. I work for a government consulting company, Booz Allen Hamilton, so we sometimes submit resumes for new contracts, etc.

You can access this one-page technical resume template on Overleaf. I freaking love Overleaf. This is why.

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that’s easy to use. No installation, real-time collaboration, version control, hundreds of LaTeX templates, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oindreebee/support

It seems most employers want their employees back in the office I cannot speak for all of you, so chime in with your comments, but from what leadership I interact with, it is clear that employers want us to go back in. I also know that plenty of employees would like to go back in and regain the option of keeping work at work. 

In my experience, though, these are folks who are parents and have been struggling with doing work at home. Not us child-free folks. But, in general, a lot of us would be in that category: I would prefer not to. It’s simple. We were flexible and took work home when you needed us to, employers. Then we designed our entire lives around doing work from home and set everything up, made good progress. We delivered during a pandemic. And now you want us to change our lives again? I say, let’s take a breath. 

Employers are not generally involved in the nitty-gritty of what day-to-day work looks like for us employees. Now that we are expected to come back in again, I am finding that I have to justify and make a case for why and when I would need to work from home. It seems we can’t just say, because, that’s what we do now! So, even though it might not make sense to have to rejustify this setup, I would recommend preparing to do so if you would like to keep working from home partially or completely. 

After working from home, either partially or completely, for so long, for one, you might be more set up to do stuff from home than at the office. There might be projects that you are better off doing from home because they require more concentration and less interruption. I am doing projects at home using tools, for example, that are more (or even only) accessible at home, not at work. So… of course, I can’t do them as well at work, so in order to continue them I need to have some days at home. Be prepared to explain, in detail, what things need to be done at home, on which days, and what things need to be done at work, on which days. If you want to go hybrid, like me. It can be annoying but, trust me, if you present a case, that will be more acceptable than if you expect bosses to read your mind. What I am finding is that employers want to regularly or, at least, semi-regularly see your face. 

The reasons they give mainly for wanting to do this is making sure we are not disconnected from what is going on, and for collaboration purposes. I would say that if a person did not take initiative to know what is going on, then even coming in, they might be in the dark. So by working from home successfully we actually demonstrate that we have a lot of initiative and don’t need supervision. It is the people who need supervision that would need to come in more. 

Once they are set up and know what they are doing more, they can decide what makes the best sense. The employee themself would know best about what needs to be done, not a supervisor, especially when it is about the details of how the work gets done. Same for collaboration. If you don’t deliberately collaborate, you might miss a lot of collaboration opportunities even coming in. Now, if you are new in the job, it might take more interaction initially to solidify the connections that you might leverage later on to get things done. To me, it is all about doing what is best and also whatever works best. If there is no reason to go in, one should not be forced to go in. We can avoid traffic, rush hour, and stress. 

Full blog post: 

https://howtophd.org/2021/06/the-state-of-work-from-home-what-i-know-and-what-you-are-telling-me.html

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Quick Takeaways for Writing the Cover Letter for a Postdoctoral Application

• If you do not know the name of the professor who is hiring then stop right here and find that out! It’s about what you know and who you know. If you don’t know them already, chances are low for getting an interview.
• The cover letter should be no more than a few powerful paragraphs. Don’t make any paragraph too big a block of text.
• In the very first sentence, you should say what you are writing them for, that is, to apply for a position. Be specific. Say which position with what project.
• Then say who you are.
• Follow this up with when you will be graduating and when you can start the position.
• Finish the first paragraph with a strong statement about why you are more than perfect for the job.
• The next paragraph is all about elaborating on why you are perfect for the role. Elaborate away but as succinctly as you can. Any experience you speak about should be relevant to the particular role you are applying for. Keyword: relevant. No one cares about the other stuff you know.
• The professor(s) will KNOW if you are just sending them a generic cover letter that you send to every other school just with the school’s name changed. Trust me, they know. It takes work and time to make sure each cover letter is perfect for that particular role.

This is why I applied to only six total postdocs and fellowships!

People thought that was crazy. But I got interviews for ALL but one of them. That is a high success rate for applying to postdocs.

If you are not writing a cover letter specifically for a given role – you should really ask yourself if you even care enough to bother applying for that role. This is what I did and ended up applying to so few places.

The truth is I don’t care about everything and that’s a good thing.

By the time you are applying for postdocs, it is not cute to like everything anymore. You want to be highly skilled, choosy, passionate, opinionated, and annoyingly specific, in order to make a strong case.

For the cover letter sample provided here, I was selling my background in a particle astrophysics balloon-payload experiment in Antarctica to apply for a job doing a different particle astrophysics balloon-payload experiment in Antarctica. The detection methods (RF antennas vs Si(Li) detectors) and science questions (ultra-high-energy neutrinos vs dark matter detection) addressed by each experiment were actually quite distinct from each other, however, there was enough in common between them (broadly, both were in the field of particle astrophysics, both balloon payloads, both in Antarctica) to make a case for the postdoc.

• The third paragraph should be like a very short research statement – packed with strong statements about what it is you’d like to do and why the role is well-aligned with your goals. Mention achievements that are, again, relevant to the position.
• It is nice to put a big achievement near the end so you are leaving them with a reminder that you are an absolute goddess.
• I always end by asking them to kindly consider the application and that I look forward to hearing from them – which is pretty standard.

Full blog post:

https://howtophd.org/2020/07/how-to-write-a-cover-letter-for-a-postdoctoral-application.html

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Should you stay longer and make sure your paper gets published?  I address this question from a Ph.D. student. Here are the details of the question:

I want to transition to the industry as a research scientist.

I have one protocol paper accepted, one second-author paper, and one first-author paper that is not yet submitted.

I am worried as my advisor wants to add more data to the first-author paper before submitting it, and it keeps getting delayed.

Now he wants me to stay as a postdoc to finish it.

My advisor knows I want to transition to the industry.

Should I stay longer and make sure the first-author paper gets published?

My agony aunt response:

Your situation sounds to me like your advisor wants to keep you forever. Because you are good!

It is a tricky business to be good at your job.

You usually end up doing other people’s jobs as well… maybe he needs to employ more people who can help to finish the paper if he wants a LOT more changes.

Sadly (or not, if you don’t care,) you might have to step down from the first-author status in that case, but I come from a field that has embraced the alphabet for better or for worse, so that’s up to you. I bet you could still claim a lot of ownership for the parts that you have done already. It won’t matter in the industry, not like in academia.

Keep in mind that your advisor knows you are going to the industry – HE has nothing to lose if you give more of your time to this paper. If you lined up an academic job, I bet he would be much less inclined to keep you longer. Because then it would matter to him. If you are in a field where producing postdocs/academics is important to the CV of an academic (which is true for many fields) your professor would care about this. On the other hand, if you are going to industry, YOU are the only one in a position to lose from staying longer.

In this situation, do what you need to do to graduate with your degree. And, ONLY that. Your advisor could want many things – but YOU need to do what will get you out ASAP. That is likely NOT working more and more on the paper. Write your thesis, finish up whatever is going into your thesis.

The document that will get you out with your degree is your thesis, not the paper.

Sometimes getting a paper accepted by a journal is a requirement to graduate but that is clearly not the case here as he wants you to stay as a postdoc to finish the paper. So, don’t let anyone emotionally blackmail you into staying longer. That’s toxic, and all the more reason to leave.

Full blog post: 

https://howtophd.org/2018/08/should-you-stay-longer-and-make-sure-your-paper-gets-published.html

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What is my daily schedule for research and writing?

I am not super disciplined and don’t operate on a strict schedule day to day. I like flexibility and thrive on being able to improvise. Basically kind of like doing whatever I feel like.

I do have a full-time job and recently started to prioritize health and fitness in my daily routine. For the content and side hustle, I am driven by what I want to be doing. I set goals, write them down, and accomplish them. It makes me happy to accomplish the things I set out to do.

I don’t care about difficulty, but about getting things done. Not every day is the same and there are days when I don’t have the energy to make content. I allow myself to vegetate during such times and catch back up later on when I have more energy.

I always have ideas for more things to do and manage or stay organized about achieving them. This mainly entails writing and keeping track using basic tools like the Notes app on my computer. Writing, in general, is something I do every day for my own sanity and I don’t publish most of the things I write. When I organize my writing to form it into something for readers, it becomes a publication.

Otherwise writing never really stops.

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This is an episode with podcast guest Chris! Chris finished his Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. This is an interdisciplinary Ph.D. focusing on Water and Sanitation in Urban India. 

He researched low and middle-income regions in India and also minored in Engineering.   

Not everywhere in the world has 24/7 access to water.   

Chris talks about interesting results including that smaller cities with a lower standard of living were less likely to benefit from existing technologies, especially families with girl children.   

Chris also talks about his experience in surviving graduate school and making it out successfully with his degree and even lining up a job in the government sector. He is currently working as a Senior Environmental Scientist for the State of California.   

Although this is very much a pivot from Chris's academic pursuits, he is still able to make an impact where it really matters!  We also cover how to start a podcast! Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, or Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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Learning to not take criticism personally is one of the most liberating and productive things you can do for yourself and your career.

In graduate school, I learned how to take criticism for what it is and it really helped me to succeed.

I started to realize that the criticism had more to do with them than me.

Sure, I didn’t know something. That was about me. But, they really, really wanted to point it out, for whatever reasons.

Once I realized that people really do rather love giving feedback, it was very productive to take advantage of it.

It’s like putting more people than just yourself to work!

I realized that getting a bunch of feedback from people did not mean that they thought I was stupid.

People don’t even have time to think that many thoughts about you. They want to say what they have to say and get on with their day. You just made them feel better, probably.

Even if people did think I was stupid, my main goal was to learn the material which I was doing way faster with their help.

If you don’t give talks or show drafts of something, your collaborators can’t give you any feedback.

They don’t have a chance to go on a long rant about something that you are wrong about or missed.

A long rant from a knowledgeable person in the group could teach you lots of things! Especially, when you are new.

So, taking it as a personal attack, even if it IS a personal attack which it rarely is, does you no good. You don’t have time for that.

It’s really quite simple. When you get criticized, think about what you can do better, do better, and move on.

Forget about the rest and don’t spend precious time and mental energy over-analyzing things.

You are in charge and you can get anything done. You are the only one that needs to believe in you.

Once you understand that that’s all there is to it, life is really rather simple and productive.

Full blog post: 

https://howtophd.org/2018/09/learning-to-not-take-criticism.html

Please subscribe and rate this podcast!!

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