You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But It’s Worth a Try!

The Edge for Scholars

Ready to get your first job? Not sure how to best advocate for yourself while still being reasonable? Here are a few tips.

Summer Reading: What's Popular in the Edge Library

The Edge for Scholars

Here's what's been flying off the shelves of our "analog library" of career development books.

Not that Kind of Summer: Tales of Preparing for Academic Job Season

Pipette Protagonist, PhD

Spoiler: Do the prep work before job season starts.

Dr. Stephen Korn on NINDS Workforce Development

Fighty Squirrel, PhD, Awe.Some.

A storified version of Dr Stephen Korn's talk at Vanderbilt on Workforce Development. Excellent pointers on grantsmanship, new funding mechanisms for trainees and more!

Career Success Strategies for Researchers in Academic Medicine

Ryan Outman

How does one prepare for a career in academic medicine? And once hired, how does one move up?

Our Obsession with Tenure

Inga Chira, PhD, CFP®

Chasing tenure translates into a life people outside the academic do not understand. I am often amazed by the importance professors place on their tenure above their families, their sanity, and their lives. Everything will be OK, tenure or not.

Is Your CV Making You Look Like a Chump?

Fighty Squirrel, PhD, Awe.Some.

CVs are a fabulous way to frame your skills and interests with institutions you are interacting with professionally. The Fighty Squirrel highly recommends you personalize each CV you send out for the audience. This is painfully true for applications for jobs and grants where your piles of accumulated titles and few papers can show that […]

If I'm a Minority Recruit, Is It Tacky to Point Out There are No Other Minority Faculty?

Fighty Squirrel, PhD, Awe.Some.

Around the Twitter world today, a kindly trainee had been offered an awesome job (woot!). BUT, and there’s always a but,  there were no other minority hires in their department/institution. They meekly inquired, “If I’m a minority who has been offered a job, is it tacky to point out that they have no other minorities […]

Exercising Your Professional Brand at Conference Interviews

Rebecca Helton, MA

At Vanderbilt, we’ve been doing a lot with professional branding lately.  What you wear, what you do, and how you speak, sit, and walk all say things about you and can all become part of the 3-5 keywords you want to have as your professional brand. Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In is on our wavelength.  A […]

The Dirty Truth: Passion Isn't the Only Ingredient for Success

The Edge for Scholars

Although passion is often thought to be a necessary ingredient for success, we all know it’s not the only one.  If you’re passionate about handwritten letters, but everyone you know uses email, you may need to adapt to communicate.  Likewise, if your passion is autism, but another developmental disorder is what’s getting funded, you’re faced […]