Alternative Career Paths Research Articles

Creating effective career development programs.

This paper is the fourth in a 5-part series that focuses on educating and training the clinical and translational science workforce. The goal of this paper is to delineate components of effective career development programs that go beyond didactic training. All academic health centers with a Clinical and Translational Science Award have a KL2 career development award for junior faculty, and many also have a TL1 training program for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows. The training across these programs varies, however junior investigators across the United States experience similar challenges. Junior investigators can get overwhelmed with the demands of building their own research program, particularly in academia. 1Often, they are sidetracked by competing demands that can derail their progress. In these situations, junior investigators experience frustration and may search for alternative career paths. By providing them with additional professional skills in the 5 domains of: (1) self-awareness; (2) selecting the right topic and securing funding; (3) getting adequate support; (4) working with others; and (5) managing yourself, your career, and your demands. We will give junior investigators additional tools to manage these demands and facilitate their own career success.

Navigating the next step: An interactive panel for doctoral students

ABSTRACTThe proposed session builds on the successes of interactive doctoral student panels sponsored by SIG/ED at earlier ASIS&T Annual Meetings. This year's panel features faculty in various stages of their academic careers. The panelists are prepared to address audience questions on topics of concern to doctoral students, such as the traditional academic job market, alternative career paths including post‐doctoral opportunities, the development of personal research agendas and the challenges of online instruction.The panel discussion will focus on the academic job market and how applicants can present themselves in the best light depending upon the type of position sought. By interacting with the panelists, doctoral students will gain valuable insights on finishing their dissertations, weighing postdoctoral opportunities and preparing for their first academic positions. This session will also provide an anonymous mechanism for doctoral students and new faculty to ask questions without feeling inhibited or intimidated. The panel may be of greatest benefit to those doctoral students nearing the end of their doctoral programs, but will also be useful to new doctoral students and new assistant professors.

How do Entrepreneurial Bosses Influence their Employees’ Future Entrepreneurship Choices?

We adopt a process-based approach to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial bosses on the two main decisions of employees towards becoming entrepreneurs: exit from the current firm and entry into entrepreneurship. In other words, we study the push and pull mechanisms possibly underlying the influence of entrepreneurial bosses. We do so by employing an identification strategy based on comparisons of same-gender matches of bosses and employees, using rich register data for Denmark. We show that same-gender entrepreneurial bosses have a great impact on employees’ future entrepreneurship choices, especially among women. We do not find any evidence that female bosses push female employees out of the workplace, by creating a discriminatory environment that forces them to search for alternative career paths. Instead, our analysis finds consistent support for pull mechanisms, with role modeling being the main explanation for the positive influence of female entrepreneurial bosses on female employees’ transition into entrepreneurship. We show that the female boss effect is greater than other social interactions identified in prior research. We conclude that entrepreneurial bosses can be role models and female entrepreneurial bosses may thus act as a lever to reducing gender gaps in entrepreneurship rates.

How Do Entrepreneurial Bosses Influence Their Employeess Future Entrepreneurship Choices?

We adopt a process-based approach to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial bosses on the two main decisions of employees towards becoming entrepreneurs: exit from the current firm and entry into entrepreneurship. In other words, we study the push and pull mechanisms possibly underlying the influence of entrepreneurial bosses. We do so by employing an identification strategy based on comparisons of same-gender matches of bosses and employees, using rich register data for Denmark. We show that same-gender entrepreneurial bosses have a great impact on employees' future entrepreneurship choices, especially among women. We do not find any evidence that female bosses push female employees out of the workplace, by creating a discriminatory environment that forces them to search for alternative career paths. Instead, our analysis finds consistent support for pull mechanisms, with role modeling being the main explanation for the positive influence of female entrepreneurial bosses on female employees' transition into entrepreneurship. We show that the female boss effect is greater than other social interactions identified in prior research. We conclude that entrepreneurial bosses can be role models and female entrepreneurial bosses may thus act as a lever to reducing gender gaps in entrepreneurship rates.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? A Survey of Career Path Movement Within Academic, Public and Special Librarianship

ABSTRACTJust as there are many types of library environments, the librarians working within those spaces represent a variety of experiences, job skills, and perspectives. Librarians develop these qualities through library curricula and on-the-job experience. While some librarians spend their careers in one type of library, others may travel between library environments and gain a wider range of experiences and skills. Decisions to transition between library types may be triggered by personal and professional motivators. Results of this survey confirm some librarians are actively and successfully transitioning between library environments as an alternative career path.

International opportunities on the way up: alternative career paths of descendants of migrants from Turkey in the field of professional business services

ABSTRACTThis qualitative study examines the career paths of descendants of labour migrants from Turkey in the field of professional business services. Through in-depth interviews with upwardly mobile professionals in leading positions, the article presents evidence from four countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden). Respondents reflect on their professional career as a process constituted through personal interactions while displaying their perceptions of restrictive national conditions that affect their professional success in this field. There seem to be three discernible “ideal type” alternative career paths for newcomers. First, the corporate career path consists of building a widely recognized “international” profile. The second alternative is a “niche” path that emerges by making use of one’s individual background in order to climb up the corporate ladder. Finally, there is a path of self-employment for individuals who have experienced blocked opportunities and therefore want to become “independent” of corporate hierarchies.

Precarious work and precarious workers: Towards an improved conceptualisation

AbstractDiscussion of the implications of precarious work for individual workers remains hesitant and often confused. A clear conceptualisation would separate out five analytical levels: precariousness in employment, precarious work, precarious workers individually and as an emerging class, and precarity as a general condition of social life. To illustrate the need to avoid slippage between the concepts of precarious work and precarious workers, we present one ‘theory-relevant’ example – full-time secondary school students in Australia who hold part-time jobs in the retail sector. Their part-time jobs are indeed precarious but the negative effects on the student-workers are modest, both because participation in precarious work is limited (moderate weekly hours and intermittent work within the framework of a brief stage of the life course) and because many (though not all) of the associated risks are cushioned by structural forces such as access to alternative income sources and career paths. At the same time, however, a longitudinal perspective reveals that the same group of student-workers faces major risks in the future, as a result of increasingly insecure labour markets. Reflections on this example help to identify conceptual tools that can be applied to a wide range of other examples of precarious work.

Clinical research nursing: a possible career pathway for renal nurses

Clinical research nursing is a fulfilling career opportunity for those seeking new challenges in the health-care sector. In this article, Christine Catley describes how this alternative career path can not only develops a nurse's own scientific knowledge, but can also drive engagement, as the role of research nurse is both highly rewarding and patient-centred.

Gaps Between Actual and Preferred Career Paths Among Professional Employees

Organizations are increasingly opting to offer alternative career paths to the traditional managerial ladder (particularly, a technical ladder). Although research has mainly focused on differences between the managerial and technical paths with regard to rewards and prestige, our study focuses on gaps between employees’ actual (current) and preferred career paths, that is, being on the technical path while preferring the managerial path and vice versa. We examine how employees experiencing career path gaps compare with employees experiencing career path fit, in terms of self-rated performance and burnout. The results, based on data from 210 professional employees working in four global high-technology companies, suggest that performance levels are lowest among employees who are currently on the technical career path but would prefer the managerial path, whereas burnout levels are lowest among employees experiencing career path fit. Furthermore, among employees experiencing the former, career path gap, performance is lower when supervisor support is high.

Making the Best of a Bad Beginning: Young New York Lawyers Confronting the Great Recession

In this article, we utilize both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine the impact of the 2007-2009 recession on lawyers that were admitted to the New York State bar in 2008. This research examines the experiences of lawyers from a wide range of practice settings: large law firms; midsize firms; in-house corporate counsel; federal, state and local government and public interest organizations. This variation allowed us to capture differences in experiences. We found that overwhelmingly, the recession created financial and career insecurity for most lawyers in all of the practice settings, albeit in different ways. Particularly, while some large law firm lawyers experienced layoffs and deferrals, government lawyers experienced budget cuts that impacted their practice, and some public interest lawyers could not launch their careers altogether. In addition, the new lawyers in this study challenged the belief that a law degree is flexible and broadly applicable beyond conventional law settings. Further, in addition to feelings of job and income insecurity, lawyers who were admitted to the New York State bar during the financial crisis reported experiencing variable health consequences, including concerns about weight gain, depression and alcohol dependence. In addition, young lawyers working in law firms reported that their health was poorer than lawyers working in other settings, while young lawyers who indicated that they had chosen alternative professional career paths reported comparatively better health.

Positive trends in neurosurgery enrollment and attrition: analysis of the 2000-2009 female neurosurgery resident cohort.

Women compose a minority of neurosurgery residents, averaging just over 10% of matched applicants per year during this decade. A recent review by Lynch et al. raises the concern that women may be at a higher risk than men for attrition, based on analysis of a cohort matched between 1990 and 1999. This manuscript aims to characterize the trends in enrollment, attrition, and postattrition careers for women who matched in neurosurgery between 2000 and 2009. Databases from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the American Board of Neurological Surgery (ABNS) were analyzed for all residents who matched into neurosurgery during the years 2000-2009. Residents were sorted by female gender, matched against graduation records, and if graduation was not reported from neurosurgery residency programs, an Internet search was used to determine the residents' alternative path. The primary outcome was to determine the number of women residents who did not complete neurosurgery training programs during 2000-2009. Secondary outcomes included the total number of women who matched into neurosurgery per year, year in training in which attrition occurred, and alternative career paths that these women chose to pursue. Women comprised 240 of 1992 (12%) matched neurosurgery residents during 2000-2009. Among female residents there was a 17% attrition rate, compared with a 5.3% male attrition rate, with an overall attrition rate of 6.7%. The majority who left the field did so within the first 3 years of neurosurgical training and stayed in medicine--pursuing anesthesia, neurology, and radiology. Although the percentage of women entering neurosurgical residency has continued to increase, this number is still disproportionate to the overall number of women in medicine. The female attrition rate in neurosurgery in the 2000-2009 cohort is comparable to that of the other surgical specialties, but for neurosurgery, there is disparity between the male and female attrition rates. Women who left the field tended to stay within medicine and usually pursued a neuroscience-related career. Given the need for talented women to pursue neurosurgery and the increasing numbers of women matching annually, the recruitment and retention of women in neurosurgery should be benchmarked and assessed.

Career satisfaction of postdoctoral researchers in relation to their expectations for the future

While postdoctoral researchers (postdocs) are an increasingly important and productive group of employees in academia, they lack further career prospects and embeddedness within their organizations. This paper provides a rare glimpse into this relatively unexplored but important group. A comparative study of two Dutch universities included a survey with both closed and open questions among 225 respondents. Our study reveals that nearly all postdocs (85 %) want to stay in the academic field, but only <3 % was offered a tenure-track position. The uncertainty of their future prospects in academia lowered their job satisfaction; this is particularly true for the social sciences and humanities. Concerning alternative career paths, only few of the postdocs spent time in preparing for a career outside academia, and less than a third attempted to develop any transferable skills, although the importance of networking was recognized. Given that postdocs seem to be trapped between their own ambitions and a lack of academic career opportunities, it is very important that, on the one hand, postdocs aim for better visibility within their organizations, while on the other hand, universities provide more clarity and openness about their further career prospects inside and outside academia.

SU-A-213-00: Professional Council Symposium: Alternative Career Opportunities for Medical Physicists

Medical Physics is an attractive career choice for many young scientists, offering opportunities in both research and clinical activities. Very often, clinical medical physics is broadly divided into two categories: we are either therapy physicists or diagnostic physicists. Such a bifurcation, while capturing much of what we have historically done, does not reflect the breadth of the applications of physics in medicine. Further, the second bifurcation - that between research and clinical medical physics - also does not reflect the breadth of professional opportunities. As health care changes and more bright candidates enter the field, recognizing the broader opportunities for medical physicists is becoming increasingly important. This symposium will explore just two aspects of non-traditional medical physics careers. The first speaker will first focus on the enormous opportunities in quantitative imaging in cancer care, which is linked with treatment response assessment, Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST), and advanced image analysis. Second, biological data analysis, including analysis of big data in images and other biomarkers will be discussed. Finally, opportunities for physicists in the pharmaceutical industry, such as in pharmacokinetics and modeling) will be presented. The second speaker will discuss some of the many opportunities for medical physicists in imaging and therapeutic equipment industry. Both large corporations and small companies offer alternative career paths for physicists outside of the typical research and clinical realms. Research and clinical medical physics are still vital in these companies, but are implemented differently. Learning Objectives: 1. Become familiar with career opportunities in quantitative imaging, biological data analysis, pharmaceutical industry, and equipment industry. 2. Learn the activities associated with these opportunities 3. Learn the education and experience expected to be successful in these realms.

SU-A-213-01: Alternative Career Opportunities for Medical Physicists

Medical Physics is an attractive career choice for many young scientists, offering opportunities in both research and clinical activities. Very often, clinical medical physics is broadly divided into two categories: we are either therapy physicists or diagnostic physicists. Such a bifurcation, while capturing much of what we have historically done, does not reflect the breadth of the applications of physics in medicine. Further, the second bifurcation - that between research and clinical medical physics - also does not reflect the breadth of professional opportunities. As health care changes and more bright candidates enter the field, recognizing the broader opportunities for medical physicists is becoming increasingly important. This symposium will explore just two aspects of non-traditional medical physics careers. The first speaker will first focus on the enormous opportunities in quantitative imaging in cancer care, which is linked with treatment response assessment, Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST), and advanced image analysis. Second, biological data analysis, including analysis of big data in images and other biomarkers will be discussed. Finally, opportunities for physicists in the pharmaceutical industry, such as in pharmacokinetics and modeling) will be presented. The second speaker will discuss some of the many opportunities for medical physicists in imaging and therapeutic equipment industry. Both large corporations and small companies offer alternative career paths for physicists outside of the typical research and clinical realms. Research and clinical medical physics are still vital in these companies, but are implemented differently. Learning Objectives: 1. Become familiar with career opportunities in quantitative imaging, biological data analysis, pharmaceutical industry, and equipment industry. 2. Learn the activities associated with these opportunities 3. Learn the education and experience expected to be successful in these realms.

SU-A-213-02: Alternative Career Opportunities for Medical Physicists

Medical Physics is an attractive career choice for many young scientists, offering opportunities in both research and clinical activities. Very often, clinical medical physics is broadly divided into two categories: we are either therapy physicists or diagnostic physicists. Such a bifurcation, while capturing much of what we have historically done, does not reflect the breadth of the applications of physics in medicine. Further, the second bifurcation - that between research and clinical medical physics - also does not reflect the breadth of professional opportunities. As health care changes and more bright candidates enter the field, recognizing the broader opportunities for medical physicists is becoming increasingly important. This symposium will explore just two aspects of non-traditional medical physics careers. The first speaker will first focus on the enormous opportunities in quantitative imaging in cancer care, which is linked with treatment response assessment, Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST), and advanced image analysis. Second, biological data analysis, including analysis of big data in images and other biomarkers will be discussed. Finally, opportunities for physicists in the pharmaceutical industry, such as in pharmacokinetics and modeling) will be presented. The second speaker will discuss some of the many opportunities for medical physicists in imaging and therapeutic equipment industry. Both large corporations and small companies offer alternative career paths for physicists outside of the typical research and clinical realms. Research and clinical medical physics are still vital in these companies, but are implemented differently. Learning Objectives: 1. Become familiar with career opportunities in quantitative imaging, biological data analysis, pharmaceutical industry, and equipment industry. 2. Learn the activities associated with these opportunities 3. Learn the education and experience expected to be successful in these realms.

Predictors of Later–Generation Family Members’ Commitment to Family Enterprises

This study examines the antecedents of different bases of organizational commitment and intention to stay of later–generation family members who are currently working in their family firm. Evidence from 199 Canadian and Swiss firms indicates that when these individuals’ identity and career interests are aligned with their family enterprise, they experience affective commitment. Family expectations are associated with normative commitment. Individuals who are concerned about losing inherited financial wealth or who perceive a lack of alternative career paths stay with the family enterprise because of continuance commitment. Finally, individuals driven by desire or obligation exhibit low turnover intentions.

Standing out in the academic LIS job market: An interactive panel for doctoral students

ABSTRACTThis proposal builds on the previous successes of the interactive doctoral student panels sponsored by SIG ED at the 2013, 2012, and earlier ASIS&amp;T annual meetings. The all‐new 2015 panel features faculty in various stages of their academic careers, including a relatively new assistant professor to a seasoned chair or dean. The panelists are prepared to address audience questions on such topics as the traditional academic job market, alternative career paths including post‐doctoral opportunities, the development of personal research agendas, and the challenges of online instruction.The panel discussion will focus around the academic job market and how applicants can present themselves in the best light depending upon the type of position sought. Doctoral students will gain valuable insights on finishing their dissertation, weighing postdoctoral opportunities, and preparing for their first academic position by interacting with the panelists. This panel will provide for an anonymous mechanism for doctoral students and new faculty to ask questions without feeling inhibited or intimidated. The panel may be of greatest benefit to those doctoral students nearing the end of their doctoral program, but will also be useful to new doctoral students and new assistant professors.

DIYbio—Alternative Career Path for Biologists?

DIYbio—Alternative Career Path for Biologists?

Secretary’s Report, 2014

Secretary’s Report, 2014

Loss of liver transplant surgeons into alternate career paths: how to overcome?

Loss of liver transplant surgeons into alternate career paths: how to overcome?