Career tips
Since I sometimes get up to 10 recommendation letter requests for
a given week (seriously, this is the maximum; the average is more like
2 but if I get 5 or more it just kills me), and since the general
practice in the group is to draft your own that I then edit, I thought
I'd write up some tips on how you should write your own (or others')
recommendation letters. This is how I do it and it's not always the
same but it's a general structure.
- Provide a comprehensive draft to your recommender. The reason
to write your own letter is that eventually in your career you will
(hopefully) reach a place where the person who writes a letter on
your behalf (chair, dean, president, boss, whatever) doesn't really
know you or has not kept up with your research. At this stage, you
have to write this letter pretty much pretending you're them
otherwise you most likely risk a poor recommendation. And please
do not be shy! The worst thing that can happen is that I'll say
"no". But in general, I want to support you as much as I can. I
understand that in most cases, when these requests are made, you're
deep in the process of doing whatever it is that required you to
have recommendation letters. I'm sorry about the additional stress,
but these are the only opportunities you get to write you own
letters which will be absolutely necessary in the future and an
extremely important skill to develop. (And believe me, it's a lot
more work to edit your letters than for me to write them.)
- The better the initial draft, the better the recommendation
will be in the end. In general, assume the recommender has little
time and will do their best to edit and modify (in my case at least)
but the better the starting point, the better the output.
- When you ask for a letter, provide as much advance
notice as possible, and make sure you inform and request a
due by date (usually a day or two before it's actually
due). Feel free to bug the recommender if they're not delivering
since they might be busy (and you know what happens with busy
people). At the same time, in my experience, we all provide some
leeway for recommendations being late.
- A comprehensive draft in general would start out with exactly
who the letter should be addressed to and the salutation. Asking for
a letter and being vague or just pointing to a URL is inadequate.
- The first paragraphs are usually introducing the recommender to
the committee that is reviewing for admission/award/whatever. It
usually sets the context for the evaluation. For example, "I've
mentored 150 students and this person ranks 1/50." This is usually
something you don't need to provide this in a draft for me,
but you generally would need to do this if you're writing one.
- The next paragraphs are setting up how you know each other, and
in what context, and for how long. This is where the recommendee can
do a good job in assisting the recommender.
- The paragraphs after that are setting up the specifics of the
association. Here I personally feel details are important. For
example, describing the research you performed with references in
some detail (even if it means obfuscating the readers) is probably
not a bad idea. This is where the recommendee can do a good job in
assisting the recommender.
- Then it's usually important but not science related stuff as to
how well you work with others, content about extra curricular
activities, honours and awards, and so on. This is where the
recommendee can do a good job in assisting the recommender
especially with regards to accomplishments the recommender is not
familiar about.
- And then a final concluding paragraph that again justifies your
value for whatever it is that you're asking and how it'll help you
advance your career.
- In general, if I send you LaTeX source in ASCII, I want it
edited back in ASCII without removing the LaTeX formatting commands
and in a Unix text file format. If this means learning how to use a
text editor on our Unix systems, then all the better. This is going
to ensure the fastest turnaround.
- I will put up some good examples if people agree to have theirs
publicised.
This is my personal biased view, but it reflects a large amount of
reality based on observations of many many people
who've gone through our group. A fundamental assumption is that
you wish to contribute to the body of humanity's knowledge and wisdom
(or lack thereof), rather than just finding a "job" in which case,
specifically to our group's skill sets, there are much better
ways.
- The best science graduate school educations consist of teaching
you be an independent thinker, which generally contradicts what
industry at this level expects from you: to be a cog in a
machine. The bigger the machine (Pfizer, Merck, etc.),
the more of a cog you'll be. Even the best and brightest academics
at all levels (including full professors) with the best reputations
are in the end cogs since industry is about a business and not
science. But the cog factor declines as you advance more in your
career, mainly through gaining experience. In contrast, however,
even though the tradition of being a postdoc is relatively new and
sometimes not necessary in non life science fields, being a faculty
member or a funded postdoc gives you a lot of autonomy.
- A corollary to this is that in general it is good to be
self funded no matter what stage of your career you're in, or how
independently wealthy you are, since a point is to achieve progress
in science.
- Graduate education in general has ill prepared you for industry
positions and interviewing. We have had enough people here in our group
associated with us with industry positions to talk about their
experiences and I'd encourage you to talk with them about it.
- A corollary to this is to use all the resources you have and
network as much as you can throughout your graduate education. Your
best resource is your mentor, who depending on their own career
stage, may have different motivations and will in general become
busier over time. Personally speaking, there was a time when my
peers in industry were recruiting when I started off as a faculty
member and it was easy to recommend people. Now the inertial
barrier is higher and generally speaking, there's no reason to be shy
to ask your mentor to do something. The worst case scenario is that
they do nothing (which is possible) so having a backup plan is
always a good option. In general, the likelihood of someone doing
something for you (in life in general) increases the more you make the
task easier for them (see section on writing recommendation letters
above :).
- There is a growing relationship between academia and industry
among the more progressive companies, and the best industry
positions are those that encourage the creative and independent
thinking you've developed in graduate school. An example of this
would be Rosetta (which is a fully owned subsidiary of Merck). Merck
has decided in this case that Rosetta can act as an autonomous unit,
and people at Rosetta generally have a lot of freedoms. In general,
the UW life sciences departments have had good relationships with
Rosetta and there's a lot of cross talk which helps with positions.
- Faculty positions by definition are hard to obtain and maintain
since there are far more qualified candidates than positions and
this will almost always be the case. In industry, there are "hot"
and "cold" areas at any given moment, and even in bad economic
climates, I've seen people go from startup to startup their entire
life (sometimes changing jobs within months) since people (read
venture capitalists) are always looking to make money.
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