Alternative careers

Fed up with the endless round of grant and/or job applications? Or perhaps you simply can’t face running another gel or gazing at another tissue section? If life in the lab has lost its appeal, it could be worth checking out what other doors are open to you. For the most comprehensive guide to alternative career options, start with the New Niches section at Science’s Next Wave. Featured careers include technical services, patent law, science journalism and science policy, and in each case there’s an overview of the field, comments from role models, a discussion forum and additional web resources. The Tooling Up section of Next Wave features articles by professional career consultants giving advice on career development and career transitions, and there’s also a collection of online resources for career mobility. Access to the site is free of charge and it is fully archived. Yale University runs a seminar series for students and postdocs on non-traditional careers, lecture notes from which can be found at the Alternative Careers in Biosciences site. There are two good collections of links that include alternative career resources. Try the Re-education, Career Alternatives and Transitions section of Employment Links for the Biomedical Scientist, which is actively maintained by Graeme Eisenhofer. Jobs for Biomedical Scientists, constructed by Jonathan Gottlieb and Carl Garland, provides great coverage of alternative careers. Although this site does not seem to have been updated since 1996, most of the links are still relevant. Once you’ve got a few ideas, there are several places to find out what a career outside the lab really involves. The move to a career in public policy can be a natural progression for many scientists. The AAAS Guide to Graduate Education in Science, Engineering and Public Policy includes extensive information about public policy, a database of graduate programs in policy (soon to include international programs) and links to web resources. If you think you’d rather be writing about science than doing it, the National Association of Science Writers provides Advice for Beginning Science Writers. It’s a discussion and there are no internal links, so you need to read through the whole lot. To find out how patent attorneys and patent agents spend their days, visit the Intellectual Property Law Web Server provided by Oppedahl & Larson. It’s aimed at a general audience but the section on opportunities in intellectual property law has an extensive list of FAQs. Alternatively, try the home page of Foley & Lardner’s Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Practice Group. Management Consulting Online gives a good overview of the consulting field, plus insightful essays and practical information. If you want to know whether your problem-solving skills will get you in the door, look at the section on Skills and Requirements. For information on careers in venture capital or finance, try Capital Venture, which has a section on Finding a Position in Venture Capital and a list of venture capital firms on the web. Investment Banking, provided by Ohio State University, includes information about skill requirements, job descriptions, statistics on the top banks and links to their web sites. If you want general advice on managing your career and developing career skills, try the Career Guides at Bio Online by Dave Jensen, a professional biotechnology recruiter. The material is aimed at all bioscientists, from undergraduates to mid-career professionals, and addresses issues such as networking, career hazards and the ‘career clock’. The National Academy of Sciences publication Careers In Science And Engineering: A Student Planning Guide to Grad School and Beyond is available online and includes sections on how careers in science are changing and on evaluating possible careers. The guide has profiles of several scientists who made career changes. It’s also worth keeping an eye on The Scientist, which often has articles on both traditional and alternative science careers, and on the online magazine HMS Beagle. Whether you’re serious about a career change or just fantasizing, it’s worth spending a while checking out the online resources while you wait for your next gel to run.