NTCO AGM Week 2018

The AGM also featured a Career Development Workshop led by Alaina G. Levine which lasted two days and focused on the topics “Create Your Career and Get the Job” and “Keep the Job and Continue to Triumph”. Active engagement activities and real-time case studies provided participants with opportunities to conduct the intrinsic data collection, learn career advancement skills, and practice such skills. 

“Learn how to create your career and get the job! Most jobs are not advertised, and even if they are, there is usually a short-list of candidates already in mind. So how do you find out about and access the 90% of jobs that are "hidden"? In this workshop, we [focused] on strategies and tactics to understand what we can, could, and should be doing for careers, identify new opportunities, locate decision-makers within organizations, solidify your reputation in the minds of those who hire, and gain access to hidden jobs and career-changing opportunities. We will focus our time on specific tactics to enable you to create your own dream career and get you the job, such as marketing your value, interviewing skills, and having a polished social media presence.

Specific topics and case studies included:

• Career exploration
• Exploring your potential and catalyzing your passion
• How to conduct intrinsic and Extrinsic data collection for career planning purposes
• Becoming a career entrepreneur (the CEO of Me, Inc.)
• Transitioning beyond academia
• Understanding and marketing your value
• Interviewing
• Understanding, using, and leveraging social media
• Networking
• Evaluating a job offer
• Negotiation

• Communications, including:
  • The role of scientists in communications and public dissemination of research, discovery, and innovation
  • Working with journalists, the media, and your public information officers
  • Designing, presenting, and networking a poster
  • Public speaking techniques to build confidence
• Conflict resolution
• Management of personnel, projects, and budgets
• Designing a healthy work-life balance
• Managing the two-body challenge (or three-body challenge – Scientists and Engineers with Kids or Pets!)
• I Heart Failure: Learning and triumphing from challenge and failure
• Innovation and entrepreneurship: how to incorporate an innovation-focused mindset into everything you do for optimization of teams, projects, and careers, and advancement of mission and goals

Alaina G. Levine is an award-winning entrepreneur, STEM career consultant, science journalist, international professional speaker and corporate comedian. Her first book, Networking for Nerds, was published by Wiley, and beat out Einstein (really!) for the honour of being named one of the Top 5 Books of 2015 by Physics Today Magazine.