The importance of self-knowledge for helping prepare for future employment (opinion)

In recent years, there has been a growing focus on making higher education more inclusive, public and societal – and celebrating the career diversity of college graduates. Degree in Ph.D. Career Paths, such as the Deserved Graduate Survey, Ph.D. Career Pathways Project and the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science show that Ph.D. Owners were non-linear and spanned across sectors – including academia, corporations, government, and nonprofits.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic led to frequent discussions about the future of work in general. Numerous podcasts and webinars have made assumptions about the rapidly changing work landscape, the rapidly changing knowledge economy and the need for further development of universities in order to meet the future.

Amid this system-level thinking and discussions about identifying opportunities in the context of inevitable change, where does the path meet for PhD students? Students, faculty and administrators? In this article, I suggest that self-awareness is the first step in taking control of preparing and positioning yourself for the future.

Self-knowledge for Ph.D. students

As a forward-thinking PhD student, you may be wondering how to prepare for the wide range of fulfilling jobs out there, as well as jobs that haven’t been created yet but could be in high demand tomorrow. (Think back to data science five to ten years ago.) You can start with one of the most important aspects of career development: self-awareness, which includes your relationship with work, your civic responsibility, and your vision of the future.

Developing self-awareness is important to your professional development for several reasons. First, self-awareness serves as a touchstone in a changing work and employment landscape. Data from the participating universities of the Ph.D. The Council of Graduate Schools Career Pathways project suggests that graduate students change jobs frequently at all career levels. This not only includes PhD students at the beginning of their careers; 40 to 60 percent of doctoral students in all disciplines who graduated eight years ago and 25 to 33 percent of those who graduated 15 years ago have changed jobs within the last three years.

Therefore, in your career you will very likely go through many jobs in different sectors and as you approach different jobs and organizations you need to be aware of yourself. For example, what are non-negotiable, essential aspects of work that you need to both survive and fulfill? What few undesirable aspects of work can you tolerate in reasonable doses? Thinking about these questions will guide you through an elimination process and help you focus on specific types of jobs that are a good fit.

Second, self-awareness is important in conveying your authentic and holistic self to potential employers. In applications and interviews, applicants are expected to show their interest in a particular position or organization. Job seekers who spend time evaluating how a job description and company culture aligns with their values ​​and interests can communicate their interests honestly and coherently.

Third, self-awareness can help you cope with “gravity problems”. In their book Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans define gravity problems as those that are beyond your control and therefore impractical. For example, if you have an international Ph.D. For students in the United States, immigration policies can be a serious problem that affects your career choices. In the face of such weightlessness issues, self-awareness becomes even more important as you weigh employment options that align with your core values ​​and interests, as well as communicating your strengths to employers.

After all, self-knowledge is an indicator of emotional intelligence; It includes the self-assessment of your skills and strengths as well as information about your professional development goals for professional advancement. Employers value people who have these qualities and skills. Self-awareness will help you work with your employers to fuel your professional development and advancement through various phases of your career.

Gaining self-knowledge

Just like you, you should approach research and embark on a process of self-reflection: in methodical and data-driven steps. I recommend that you follow these steps.

• Review. Looking back or thinking about your past can be a great first step to better understanding yourself. You can identify topics and driving motivations, be it in the reflection of the past year or your entire professional career, for example why you chose a certain degree program, why you applied for certain graduate programs and why you chose a certain research area to have. If you have already gained work and volunteer experience, what motivated you to take advantage of these opportunities? Retrospective helps connect the dots of a non-linear career path to create a coherent narrative of a complex career path.
• Introspection. Introspection means thinking about your current thoughts and feelings. After connecting with your past, you should examine your present self by considering the following questions: What parts of your day make you happy, inspired, and engaged? What motivates you through challenging days? How does your worldview affect your relationship with work? A simple exercise is to make a list of likes and dislikes in your current job to identify your interests. Comparing retrospective and introspective observations will give you a better understanding of your professional and personal development.
• Extrapolation. Extrapolation is the process of estimating the unknown using trends in the known. Given your past and present, what future would you like to contribute to? What problems do you want to solve? What systems and practices would you like to change? How can you be an inclusive leader? I suggest three exercises: 1) reading job descriptions, 2) conducting informational interviews and 3) trying out intersect job simulations. Either way, imagine whether your future self would be happy or sad by adding either figurative or verbal emojis to each of the responsibilities and skills listed in job advertisements, highlighted in briefings or used in job simulations. Extrapolation suggests multiple versions of your future self and can affect the types of work and professional cultures that will inspire you.

Additional resources

If you want to gain more fluency and confidence in self-assessment and self-discovery, I recommend the following resources related to career development for PhD students

• Imagine PhD, developed by the Graduate Career Consortium for Social Sciences and Humanities Ph.Ds,
• myIDP from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for MINT Ph.Ds and
• ChemIDP from the American Chemical Society for Chemistry and Allied Disciplines.

These books also provide guidance for professional development through self-discovery:

Finally, I encourage you to acknowledge that versions of the self evolve with life experiences. While positive experiences can boost self-confidence, negative and traumatic events can limit or damage it. You should seek professional help to deal with traumatic events on your path to self-empowerment. Ultimately, practicing self-care, celebrating different life experiences, and joining supportive communities will all add to self-efficacy in your professional and personal life.

Self-assessment of the Ph.D. Programs

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and discussions on structural racism inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement renewed the call for a PhD. Programs student-centered, inclusive and accessible. Amid those calls, Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work by Katina L. Rogers and The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education by Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch advocated structural changes in outdated, exclusive systems and working practices in science and offered ideas for reforms. The departments are home to Ph.D. Programs such as systemic reforms require faculties and administrators to make an honest assessment of the cultures in their departments.

To achieve this goal, the American Association of Universities started the first phase of its Ph.D. Education initiative with a pilot group of eight universities representing 31 academic faculties to make graduate education more student-centered and to cover the full range of Ph.D. Career paths more visible, valued and sustainable for all students.

Based on recommendations from Rogers, Cassuto and Weisbuch and collaborative learning from the AAU Ph.D. Education Initiative, I encourage faculty and administrators at institutions to work together to understand and reflect on the following questions:

• What backgrounds, previous experiences and wishes do your future and current graduates have?
• What career paths has your Ph.D. Taken alums?
• Does your department and your university support diverse life experiences and the aspirations and professional development of current students in all professional fields?

Also, consider implementing these actionable steps to create inclusive and future-oriented doctoral training:

• Keep current and prospective students informed of the dynamic, non-linear career paths of PhD students by generating data on PhD students’ career results. Former accessible.
• Instead of centering science through the use of terms such as “alternative careers” and “alt-ac”, accept and celebrate the career diversity of PhD students and use value-adding language. Instead, consider the inclusive terms suggested by the Council of Graduate Schools and the extensive metaphors developed by James Van Wyck.
• Integrate frameworks for inclusive mentoring and preparation of PhD students for different careers through program review processes, and incorporate career and professional development training and experiential learning into the academic curriculum.

Today more than ever, students, lecturers and administrative staff have the moral obligation and civic responsibility as university citizens to improve our educational facilities and to build social trust. The work of self-improvement and the path to wellness and holistic development begins with the self-awareness of both Ph.D. Students and the heads of their departments.

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