Interview update...

brainybrunette · September 2014

The interview went really well. It was 3 rounds of 30 minute interviews (although the whole thing was about 2 hours instead of 90 minutes). The first interview was with 2 staff members. I knew both of them, one more personally and the other through previous email communications. I'm pretty sure the purpose of that interview was to see if we'd get along. Most of their questions were personality and work style questions. The second interview was with a manager. I had met her before and she was very laid back and easy to talk to. She was trying to sell me on this fellowship (I was already sold, haha!) as much as she was interviewing me. The final interview was with a more senior staff member whom I already knew. His questions were about my feelings on science advocacy and ideas that I could bring to the fellowship.

I know that they interviewed someone on Tuesday and that they were interviewing someone after me. I'm hoping that I come out on top of the 3! I was very confident in my answers and showed a lot of enthusiasm. I think they all got the sense that I really, REALLY want this! I'm hoping that they make a decision soon. They are notorious for moving slowly, but I know that they want someone ASAP.

I'm sorry I couldn't update yesterday. After my interview, I got a haircut and then had a women in science meeting in the evening. I walked all over DC yesterday. It was just too nice to take the metro between appointments...plus, that was my workout wednesday ; ) I finally got home at 8:30pm, a 12 hour day in total, and I was totally exhausted LOL!

ramstein1027 · September 2014

Yay! That's a great update!

A friend from college posted an article yesterday about new PhD's having a hard time because of declining jobs in science (she works at MIT). I thought of you--like I've said before, the legal jobs market is the same way right now. It blows!

brainybrunette · September 2014

The academic job market is absolutely terrible! Many universities are under hiring freezes and the average age of getting your first big research grant to start your own lab is now 40 years old!

However, it's also really tough to break into the so-called nontraditional careers (like what I'm trying to do). I've found that people respect the Ph.D. and think we're really smart, but they also think that we don't have real work experience or that we don't know how to do anything but lab work. I've spent so much time explaining my transferable skills and that if I can manage a thesis project and constantly defend my rationale, that I can tackle just about any project you throw at me.

Luckily, the job I interviewed for yesterday is looking for a recent Ph.D. graduate, so it'll be a great stepping stone into the real world.