If you have been following the blog awhile, you know that we have been focusing on how to plan for a productive week, every week. Up until now, we've been planning one week at a time and one day at a time.

Now, I want you to start thinking big! What are your big goals for grad school? What kind of career do you want when you finish? What do you want to be known for in your field?

In this post, we will be taking these big goals, and breaking them down into smaller, more manageable baby goals that you can achieve each semester.

how to prepare for the job market while you are still in grad school | The Academic Society

Figure Out What you are working for

Understanding what you may want to do pretty early in your grad school career can be super helpful.

If you are interested in a teaching career, make sure that you spend your time in grad school preparing to teach. I know it may be easy to teach the same course every semester. But, it would look really good on your job applications if you taught a variety of class. You can start requesting to teach different classes. Also, you can go to seminars and conferences about teaching in your field.

If you are interested in a research career, you should definitely focus on your own research. But you should try to expand your interests. Try applying for a summer research program this summer. Go to conferences and seminars in your field. Also, take a course or seminar on advising undergraduates in research.

If you are interested in an industry or government job, try applying for summer internships to gain experience. Look for opportunities to work on a team.

When I was a graduate student, I built my grad school career all around teaching. I took courses on teaching, went to seminars and conferences, and taught many different classes. This really set me apart from the other applicants applying for the same types of jobs as me.

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How to Prepare for a Teaching Job

When you are early in your graduate school career, even if you aren’t teaching classes yet, it’s important to take advantage of every opportunity that is related to teaching. For example, if a graduate teaching training or course is offered, take it seriously.

If your department offers a course on teaching in your field, take it! When I was in grad school, I took a course called Teaching College Math. It was required that I take the course for my fellowship, but it was soooo helpful! I studied learning outcomes, how to write a syllabus, about assessments and more. Plus, it was something I could add to my CV that showed that I had teacher training beyond what most grad students had.

I also went to seminars on teaching and learned about active learning. I was then able to implement what I had learned in my classes and write about what I tried in my teaching statement when I was applying for jobs.

During the JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings), the big conference in my field, I took mini-courses on how to teach statistics as well has how to advise undergraduates in research.

So as you continue throughout your grad school experience, look for any opportunity that relates to teaching and take advantage of it.

How to Prepare for a Research Job

Disclaimer: I’ve never wanted a job where research was a focus, so definitely consult your advisor after reading this blog post.

The first piece of advice is a no brainer. Work very hard on your research. Make sure you attend seminars and colloquia in your research area. It would also be helpful if you were able to collaborate with others on a project.

When you are applying for jobs, it will be very likely that you will be the only person in your department working in your specific field. So it’s nice to be able to show that you can collaborate and work with others. See if you can find a way to apply your research in other fields. Interdisciplinary research was a pretty hot topic when I was on the job market.

Whenever you hear about summer research opportunities, you should definitely apply. I participated in a program called the Industrial Math/Stats Modeling Workshop where I worked on a research team with 5 other members. We ended the program by writing a research paper and presenting our work.

Reaching out to other schools’ summer research programs also gives you networking opportunities. Perhaps you’ll meet the very people who will want to hire you someday.

Finally, try to make significant progress on your dissertation research so that you can get a couple papers published before you graduate.

How to Prepare for an Industry/Government Job

Since my research area is statistics, I definitely considered working in industry. My advisor urged me to take classes outside of my department that would build my list of skills.

I took classes where I learned how to program in SAS and SQL. I also learned a few more skills in my summer research program IMSM which I mentioned in the section above.

I also think that you should look for summer internship opportunities and find people to collaborate with. Any evidence of working with a team will look great on your resume when applying for a job in industry or government.

I hope this post gave you something to think about. So, starting now, be on the lookout for opportunities NOW that will help you in the FUTURE on the job market.