A strategy for engaging your PI in career development discussions

Getting non-academic career advice help from your PI can be difficult for a few reasons:

• First, they are not typically trained to be career development advisors and most often don’t know much about the world of work outside of academia. 

• Second, they are hardly impartial. They have been heavily invested in their research for at least a decade and they have a vested interest in keeping others like you involved and productive in their research interests. 

• And finally, they are not just your mentor, they are your boss!  

They hired you to help generate data, secure grants, and publish papers. Don’t get me wrong, many PIs are aware that mentoring is part of the job, but others are uncomfortable with the role and are more focused on their own professional goals. 

So, what role does your PI play in providing essential career feedback? How can you engage your PI in crucial career development discussions?

As your boss, your PI does have a self-serving interest in helping you be effective and providing feedback on your productivity. Asking your PI how and where you can be more productive is something they will value. Once you get in the habit of asking for this feedback on a regular (hopefully weekly) basis, you can use this foundation of trust to take it one step further and ask a more crucial question that many PIs are uncomfortable talking about: You can get their honest appraisal of your employability in academia. 

A deep understanding of your employability in research or teaching roles at the various types of academic institutions informs your “Stick or Quit” decision and opens the door to creatively envision other career opportunities that may suit you. I’ve met too many academic trainees at the end of their postdoc experience who have been spinning their career wheels for too long with only slim chances of landing a professorship at a research institution. These folks are then left scrambling to find an “alternative” career. Graduate and postdoctoral training is incredibly valuable outside of academia, so why wait to check it out? This is especially important if you rank your employability in academia as less than likely. 

My colleague Laurence Clement, PhD came up with a method while working in graduate and postdoctoral career development at UCSF. It’s called the Academic Career Readiness Assessment (ACRA). It’s a comprehensive and well-tested assessment rubric that you can use to assess your employability in academia. If you are early enough in your career, you can also use this tool to get on track to achieve the benchmarks it takes to become competitive. You can show the tool to your PI and use it to guide potentially uncomfortable discussions or to advocate for new opportunities. It can help them give you the feedback that they are uniquely qualified to give: the probability of you securing a role as a professor. The tool can also be used as a dialogue starter with other professors in your field. 

If a career in academia is looking like a long shot, most PIs will be relieved that you are taking charge of exploring non-academic careers. Once you have the employability question settled in your mind, you can begin the process of expanding your career possibilities! At first, this may entail a grieving process for the academic career you had been pursuing, and that is ok. Reach out for support, listen to the stories of others who have been there, and begin to dream about a new future. Even better, do all this with the support of an agenda-free career development expert! 

The world is big and you have immense potential to do exciting things, inside or outside of academia. You can get your PI to help you assess where this might be. Take a deep breath and start the conversation. We’re here to help!