TIP-TOPics for Students
Dawn Riddle and Lori Foster
University of South Florida
With our ears to the floorboards of university halls around the world,
we’ve heard lots of folks have been busy this summer with dissertation proposals,
internships, graduation, and job searches. Since we recently wrote about dissertations and
internships (and since our coverage of graduation might consist of advice such as
"don’t trip"), we’re left with one HOT topic for this issue... finding
the right JOB! That’s right—a bona fide job, no more internships. We’ve
talked with lots of folks who are interested in this topic. For most, it’s kinda the
point of the whole grad school thing. Therefore, this issue of TIP-TOPics provides
food for thought for students who are looking for job search-related info and advice.
As always, this column consists of three segments. The In the
Spotlight segment describes how one university is training soon-to-be academicians to
construct teaching portfolios which will maximize the chances of landing that coveted
academic job. The You Know, I’ve Been Wondering… segment takes a look at
questions related to academic and applied job search processes, from what you can do today
to start preparing for your future job search, to how you might decide amongst the many,
many offers you receive. Finally, last issue’s TIPs for Balancing Life and
Graduate School, regarding work–family balance, suggested that help was on the
way. For those of you who have been on the edge of your seats, this issue’s TIP
offers guidance for identifying organizations that support the pursuit of work–family
balance. In keeping with the column’s theme, this information may prove useful during
your future job search.
In the Spotlight
Each issue of TIP-TOPics spotlights at least one unique strategy
for training I-O graduate students. This issue’s Spotlight describes a teaching
portfolio workshop—one method for training future I-O academicians on a critical job
search-related skill.
A teaching portfolio is a job search MUST for anyone braving the
academic market because many colleges and universities require teaching portfolios with
candidates’ application packets. A teaching portfolio provides an opportunity to
showcase teaching skills and experiences and can include documents such as a statement of
philosophy, class syllabi, examples of class projects or exercises, class notes/slides,
awards, and student ratings. Many graduate students who are interested in academic jobs
construct their teaching portfolios by borrowing and imitating their major
professor’s teaching portfolio. In contrast, graduate students from one university
are taking a more systematic approach. They’re receiving training via a teaching
portfolio workshop. This workshop is interactive, examining how portfolios are best
conceptualized, planned, written, and revised. Workshop leaders provide useful information
on teaching portfolio content (what information to include) and structure (how to arrange
and format information). An important outcome of the workshop and portfolio creation is to
get students thinking about their teaching. In addition, the workshop helps
students develop skill and experience in documenting teaching competencies and
accomplishments.
We were able to catch up with a new I-O Ph.D. who completed the
teaching portfolio workshop, and his reactions to the program were very positive. He felt
that the workshop greatly improved his portfolio, which greatly improved his job offers.
He also noted that several potential employers commented on the quality of his teaching
portfolio.
Beyond the job search, a teaching portfolio can be a particularly
effective tool for presenting qualifications to others when applying for graduate teaching
awards, tenure, and promotion. In short, for a minimal investment of time, a teaching
portfolio training workshop offers lasting benefits.
You Know, I’ve Been Wondering…
We sat there in Dr. Branom’s lab, waiting for Lisa to arrive.
There were several of us: first-year, second-year, third, fourth, fifth, and nth-year
graduate students sitting around the table, staring at each other, wondering what Lisa
would have to say. We’d been looking forward to this meeting ever since Lisa, a newly
graduated peer, had offered to meet with us and tell us what she’d learned during her
brief tenure as Job Candidate.
"This won’t be a formal presentation," her e-mail
message had warned. "I mean, don’t expect slides or anything."
We didn’t mind. We’d take what we could get.
Lisa arrived and began relaying her experiences in the job search
trenches. Someone whipped out a tape recorder, and others took fast and furious notes.
Questions flooded the room. "Where did you find your job opportunities?"
"How did you prepare for your interviews?" "What kinds of questions did you
ask them?" "What strategy did you use to make your final job decision?"
We all gained many new and useful insights from Lisa that day. At least
one of us also gained the realization that, in general, most I-O graduate students
don’t know squat about the post-Ph.D. job search process!
With that in mind, we bugged (um, we mean, "informally
surveyed") various sources including graduate students, new Ph.D.s, practitioners,
and professors for info to include in this segment of our column. We gathered bits of
advice on how students can best prepare for academic and applied job searches. The
information presented on the following pages represents the collective wisdom of our
informal survey respondents. In general, the job search pointers fall into three
categories: "What Can I Do Today (whether I’m actively looking or not)?,"
"How Do I Get Serious?," and "I Got The Offer, Now What?"
What Can I Do Today?
Whether you’re actively searching for a job or not, our sources
suggest several steps you can take today to help prepare for your eventual job search.
These steps include generating a wish list and tracking/recording your professional work
activities.
The Professional Wish List. As Ken Blanchard noted in the
April, 1998, edition of TIP-TOPics for Students, it is always important to know
where you are going and why. Once you’ve made the "academic versus applied"
decision, think about what your ideal job might look like. Then, create a wish list of the
job characteristics that are most important to you. This list might include requirements
such as pay, length of work week, availability of family-friendly programs and benefits,
scheduling flexibility, specialty area, amount of required travel, geographic area, and
job autonomy. If possible, rate or rank these characteristics in terms of their importance
to you.
A Professional Wish List is useful because it provides a criterion
against which a new graduate can evaluate job offers or opportunities. It is especially
important to develop this criterion before the job search begins because once the job
offers come rolling in, emotion might replace objectivity as the dominant force driving
job preferences. The list is also a practical tool for evaluating the relevance of various
opportunities as they arise during graduate school. For instance, suppose a student’s
wish list indicates that he might enjoy a high-paying consulting job with frequent travel.
Armed with this knowledge, the student can seize the opportunity to get the low-down from
people working in that type of job, when he meets them at SIOP or elsewhere.
The Professional Activity List. Students can also prepare for
the job search by tracking their professional work experiences as they proceed through
graduate school. One of our informal sources suggested that students maintain a
Professional Activity List—a list of potentially relevant I-O projects, activities,
and work experiences encountered during graduate school. A short description should
accompany each project or activity, as well as the KSAO’s that were developed and/or
strengthened by that event. There are three primary differences between the information
recorded in the Professional Activity List and the information described in a rsum or
vita. First, the Professional Activity List is somewhat more specific. It includes
specific activities (e.g., "collected data for the XYZ selection test
validation," and "used SPSS to analyze data for the XYZ selection test
validation") rather than broad project summaries (e.g., "performed a validation
study for XYZ"). Second, the Professional Activity List includes large-scale projects
accomplished in the classroom. For instance, a job analysis project completed during a job
analysis seminar would be included in the Professional Activity List. Third, KSAO’s
are directly linked to each activity included in the Professional Activity List.
Importantly, students should not limit their lists to technical KSA’s such as job
analysis or quantitative skills. Students should also record the development of
non-academic O’s, such as adaptability. The Professional Activity List can be a
useful way to maintain an up-to-date rsum, vita, or teaching portfolio. It can also
facilitate the job interview process—we’ll tell you how, in the
"Interview/Site Visit" section of this segment.
How Do I Get Serious?
Now it’s time to get to the nitty gritty, time to find a job. The
folks we spoke with offered some advice about finding job opportunities, doing your
homework (thought you were done with that stuff, huh?), researching prospective
organizations, working on interviewing skills, and preparing for the site visit.
Locating job opportunities. It appears that the best methods for
locating job opportunities include the "Positions Available" notice listed in TIP
and on the SIOP web page, the job listing bulletin boards that decorate the halls of many
I-O psychology departments, professional job fairs (especially the SIOP job placement
service), and informal contacts made during the annual SIOP conferences. We recently spoke
to one new graduate who emphasized the importance of keeping rsums and business cards
on hand at all times, especially during the conference. She noted that you never know when
you might run into a potential employer who is interested in your qualifications. Another
graduate student sought the assistance of several professors from her academic
institution. She distributed copies of her rsum to her professors and asked them to
keep it on file in case they learned of relevant job opportunities.
The internet offers some additional job search tools. Nowadays, many
companies provide online listings of positions available, as well as search engines to
assist job seekers in identifying relevant positions. A search engine usually asks a job
seeker to specify his or her preferences (e.g., field of interest and geographic region).
The search engine subsequently examines an electronic database of positions available and
highlights the positions that match the job seeker’s specifications. General job
listing sites and search engines are also available; these do not restrict the job seeker
to positions within a particular company. Http://www.pauldyer.com/links.html offers a
bunch of links to such sites.
Researching prospective organizations. Once an organization
expresses interest in you, you’ll want to put your research skills to work! Our TIP-TOPics
contacts offered some excellent advice for researching prospective organizations prior to
a site visit, and we even found a reference to support their insights—Darley and
Zanna (1987). The discussion by Darley and Zanna is written for the academic crowd, but
much of it applies (no pun intended) to nonacademics as well. According to these authors,
candidates should research the institution, the department, and the hiring process before
embarking on a site visit. More specifically, candidates should obtain information about
the institution’s history, its strengths, and its sources of pride. Job candidates
should also research the department that they will visit, gathering general information
about people outside their areas of expertise and detailed information about people within
their own areas. Finally, job candidates should research an institution’s hiring
process prior to the site visit. Research into the hiring process should address, but is
not limited to, the number of individuals competing for the job, the names, titles, and
positions of interviewers, and the usual components of the site visit (e.g., cognitive
ability testing, a job talk, and an assessment center exercise).
The interview/site visit. Regarding the interview process, several
interesting suggestions arose. First, candidates should practice their interviewing
techniques prior to the judgment day. Many universities offer mock interview services that
include videotaping and feedback mechanisms. Alternatively, job candidates can obtain
listings of "typical" interview questions and practice asking and answering the
questions (with the help of a friend or a mentor). This approach allows job seekers to
hear others’ responses to interview questions and simultaneously obtain practice and
feedback on their own interview response style.
An interviewer will often ask job candidates to recall and describe a
specific work situation where they were required to use a certain KSAO. Our sources
recommended three critical pieces of advice for responding to these behaviorally based
interview questions. First, prior to the interview, a job candidate should review the
previously recommended Professional Activity List. As you know, the Professional Activity
List includes a brief description of each project or activity that led to the development
of various KSAO’s. Therefore, reviewing this list will greatly facilitate a
candidate’s ability to recall relevant activities when an interviewer asks for a
situational description of prior KSAO usage.
The second piece of advice is especially important for interviewees
with little prior work experience. Suppose an interviewer asks a job candidate to
"describe a work situation where you encountered a poorly structured task
…" and before the interviewer finishes his sentence, the candidate realizes that
she can’t come up with a single job-related experience to describe! In this case, our
sources indicate that it is perfectly acceptable to pull out a relevant school-related
experience. In other words, it is possible to successfully answer a behaviorally based
interview question by describing situations encountered and KSAO's demonstrated in the
classroom.
The STAR technique was offered as a third and final piece of advice for
answering behaviorally based interview questions. This technique suggests that, following
an interview question, interviewees should state the SiTuation leading up to the
problem/issue, the Action that they took to resolve the problem/issue, and the Result of
their action.
If an individual is applying for an academic job, then the site visit
might not involve a formal interview, but it will almost certainly involve a job talk. If
this is the case, the candidate should consider delivering a practice talk to professors
and peers at his or her own institution. Peers and professors provide the perfect forum
for practice talks because most have experience listening to academic candidates’ job
talks. Therefore, this audience can offer expert advice and feedback. Further, the
classroom facilities and surroundings will probably be similar to those encountered during
the real talk, creating a realistic practice environment.
Both our academic and our applied TIP-TOPics contacts suggested
that candidates should prepare a brief yet accurate summary of their research and/or their
interests. Darley and Zanna (1987) call this "the 5-minute drill." If potential
colleagues pose casual inquiries during the site visit, the 5-minute drill enables
candidates to paint a clear and concise picture of their professional interests. Also,
candidates should prepare a list of questions to ask potential employers and potential
peers. Incumbents can be a valuable source of realistic information about a job and/or an
organization. As one of our respondents noted, "employees who don’t look
comfortable or happy might indicate problems with the department or the
organization."
I Got the Offer, Now What?
You got the offer! Don’t be surprised, you’re a well
educated, highly trained professional, it’s bound to happen sooner or later! This
section offers some insight from folks who recently "got the offer" and had to
make "the decision" to accept, counter, or reject.
The job offer. It is often useful for candidates to think about how
they will react to the job offer when it arrives. Planning ahead is particularly important
because, by this point, weary candidates may have depleted their entire supply of
self-composed rationality! Our sources suggest that candidates should not accept a job on
the spot, even if it appears to be the perfect job offer. A "cooling off
period," if only for a few hours, is always wise before such an important commitment
is made. Before accepting a job, candidates should also determine whether the offered
salary is truly competitive, especially considering the geographic location of the job.
Many new graduates make the mistake of interpreting salary data in the context of their
current locale. Further, candidates should not be afraid to negotiate pay. As one of our
experienced contacts noted, "it is entirely appropriate to negotiate pay after both
parties have expressed an interest in each other. The applicant should come in aware of
his or her value and treat the negotiation as a business-professional exercise. Don’t
take it personally. In addition, the applicant should be prepared to say no."
Finally, a little additional research might uncover other negotiable items (e.g.,
equipment, office/lab space, etc.). Job candidates should consider whether they wish to
negotiate these items in addition to (or instead of) salary.
The decision. Now, all that’s left is the decision. Do you
accept the job, or not? Or, better yet, WHICH job should you accept? This is the time to
pull out that blood-, sweat-, and tear-stained Professional Wish List. Try to evaluate
your options as rationally as possible. If the organization and offer matches the job
qualities and personal priorities you’ve specified on your wish list, jump at the
opportunity. But, as one of our more experienced sources pointed out, if the company
and/or job doesn’t look like a good match for you, don’t be afraid to turn it
down and hold out for the right job—it’ll come. In the long run,
you’ll be better off.
TIPs for Balancing Life and Graduate School
OK, if you’re still reading this column then you’re a student
who is, or eventually will be, looking for a job. As each of us reaches the job search
stage of our graduate careers, our interest in life–grad school balance naturally
shifts to work–life–family balance. This segment’s TIP offers three sources
for identifying organizations that are recognized for their efforts in maintaining
work–life–family balance: Working Mother, Business Week, and Fortune
magazines. These magazines administer extensive surveys to organizational employers
and/or employees, and the survey data are used to identify and rank the "best"
companies to work for. The following descriptions offer specifics on the ranking criteria
used by each magazine.
For the past 13 years, Working Mother magazine has published a
list of the 100 "Best Companies for Working Mothers." Companies are rated on:
compensation, opportunities for women to advance, child care benefits (on-site child care,
back-up care, subsidies), flexible work schedules, and paid maternity/paternity leave.
Latest ranking: October, 1997. The Top 10 (presented in alphabetical order) include:
Allstate, Barnett Bank, Fel-Pro, Glaxo-Wellcome, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck,
NationsBank, SAS Institute, and Xerox.
Business Week takes a somewhat broader approach than Working
Mother, ranking the "Best Companies for Work and Family." Business Week’s
survey examines organizational strategies and programs as well as employee attitudes
regarding the benefits offered and the ability to use those benefits without risking their
careers. Latest ranking: September, 1996. The Top10 include: Dupont, Eddie Bauer, Eli
Lilly, First Tennessee Bank, Hewlett-Packard, Marriott International, MNBA, Merrill Lynch,
Motorola, and Unum Life Insurance.
Fortune Magazine’s list ranks "The 100 Best Companies to
Work for in America." The criteria for making the grade with Fortune goes
beyond work–family issues. Fortune’s criteria include good
benefits and a corporate culture of trust and respect between management and employees.
Latest ranking: January, 1998. The Top 10 include: Southwest Airlines, Kingston
Technology, SAS Institute, Fel-Pro, TDIndustries, MNBA, W.L. Gore,
Microsoft, Merck, and Hewlett-Packard.
In sum, these three magazines provide a useful starting point for job
seekers who are searching for family-friendly benefits, a career-friendly culture, or just
an overall great place to work!
If you have any questions regarding this issue or would like to
contribute information for a future edition, you can contact the editors via the options
presented below.
To contact the TIP-TOPics editors:
E-mail: Dawn Riddle (riddle@luna.cas.usf.edu)
Lori Foster (foster@luna.cas.usf.edu)
Fax: 813-974-4617/Attn: Lori Foster or Dawn Riddle
Mail: Department of Psychology, BEH 339
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620-8200
TIP
Vol. 36/No. 2 October, 1998
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