Three essential competencies for early-career PhD students (or don't focus on the job market just yet!)
With the growth of online message boards, quantification of productivity, & the ease of accessing information about currently on-the-job market #PhDcandidates, I've noticed early-career #PhDstudents focus early (& often) on their future #jobprospects.
At #conferences, I hear first-year students talking about topics & their marketability. I hear second-year students sharing the progress of their #papers. I hear third-year students discussing #jobmarketstrategies & more.
I'm somewhat puzzled by the job market focus. While the job market is certainly coming, it is more important for #earlycareer PhD students to focus on building three #competencies.
(1) Learn to #thinkcritically about topics studied in your discipline.
The most challenging task, for those seeking research careers, is identifying & pursuing interesting questions.
Rather than focus on publishable topics, focus on learning to articulate good research questions.
Doing so requires early career students to understand the boundaries of their discipline, understand its assumptions, & learning to ask questions that push boundaries forward & test assumptions.
This is not a trivial task.
(2) Learn to #processinformation.
The volume & variety of academic & practice-based #information is truly overwhelming.
When I was a #student, we read papers that appeared in #topjournals & identified relevant papers in the #citations. Yes, we missed a lot - but - we also dealt with a navigable quantity of papers.
Today, I did a quick #googlescholar search on digitization & came up with 208,000 hits. Wow!
To parse apart the sheer volume of available papers, into digestible chunks, you need to understand how to assess information, its sources & its bias.
To push papers forward (& get ready for the job market), early career students must first learn to navigate this information-rich environment.
Doing so requires trial & error.
This requires a real commitment to learning.
(3) Learn to #communicateideas effectively.
The growth of hybrid conferences, the pervasive use of social media by academics (look at Twitter lately), & the ease of emailing academics have made communication skills more important.
You may be smart, but, if you can't communicate your thoughts, you will struggle on the job market.
To implement #jobmarketstrategies, early career students must acquire three communication skills.
(1) you need to be aware of your audience.
(2) you need to be aware of how to communicate with your audience.
(3) you need to be mellifluous in your delivery.
These skills require repetition. Watch. Learn. Practice.
Once you master how to ask questions, find relevant information, and to communicate your ideas, your sojourn as a PhD student will become easier & your job market experience - be it academic or practice - will feel much more navigable!
Best of luck!
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