10 Things You Can Do to Support Friends on the Job Hunt

If it feels like every other person on your LinkedIn page is searching for employment, you're not alone. We want to acknowledge what a challenging time this is for so many in our community and extended networks.

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

Today, we offer some tips on how to encourage people you know, whether personally or through your network, who are currently out of work and seeking their next job.

1) Acknowledge their situation with a supportive comment. Don't scroll by when you see someone post they're out of work. They're in a vulnerable place, and they've taken the risk of posting that online.

2) Reach out personally. If you know them well and have their email or phone number, contact them 

directly. If they're more of a LinkedIn contact, send a direct message. Tell them you're aware of their situation and want to support them. Ask if there's anything you can do immediately, and reassure them you're actively thinking about their situation. 

3) Write a recommendation for their LinkedIn profile without being asked. Give specific reasons why your friend is great in their field.

4) Write a post on your LinkedIn account or other appropriate network about how this friend is an expert in their field. Include specific examples of what they've done and what they could bring to their next position. Make sure you tag them in your post.

5) Connect them to those in your network with similar skills, or people you know who could be hiring soon. Write an email or message linking the two and detailing why you think they should connect.

6) When you see job postings that fit your friend, tag them, send it to them, or even better, personally reach out to draw their attention. With every #hiring announcement you see, ask yourself if your friend could be a good fit.

7) If you know someone in that organization, reach out about the position to recommend your friend. Having an internal recommendation is a big win for job seekers.

8) Offer specific ways to support your friend instead of the blanket "reach out if there's anything I can do." Let your friend know exactly what you're going to do for them. (Connect them to a new company, look over their resume, schedule a quick call or meet up).

9) If you're in the same location, meet face-to-face. Find out what role they're looking for next. Buy them a coffee. Offer a little friendship and stress relief.

10) Check back in with them after a few weeks, and keep checking on them. Put it on your calendar if you need a reminder. Don't drop in once and disappear. 

Photo by Resume Genius on Unsplash

Job hunting can be a long and difficult season. Your support matters, most likely more than you'll ever know. You won't regret being on your friend's team as they job hunt, and you'll get to celebrate when they're hired for their next role. 

Then you can both support someone else in your community who needs a little extra lift as they search for a new role. We hope these small steps give you actionable items to follow as you support a friend on the job hunt. 

**AAS members looking for work, or supporting a friend who is, don't forget to visit the AAS Careers page, where you can find resources on job searches, tips, and more. 

Resources for Astronomers Seeking Academic Jobs

Eds note: November is National Career Development Month, an annual observance dedicated to highlighting the importance of career development and planning. This month, we will post relevant articles related to career development in Astronomy, Planetary Science, Physics, and science in general.

By Floor Broekgaarden

Today’s post is by Dr. Floor Broekgaarden. Dr. Broekgaarden is an Assistant Professor in the Astronomy department at UC San Diego in La Jolla, California. She joined this department in fall 2024 and will be building a research group in Gravitational Wave Paleontology. She enjoys spending time and energy doing several other things for the Astronomy Community including initiating a group to support early-career astronomers. Below she shares her compiled resources with our readers.

Early-career astronomers have to learn to navigate an academic system in permanent evolution. Demystifying the academic job market and securing the next internship or job can be particularly challenging. Many resources for astronomers exist online that have been created by fantastic organizations and people to help understand and demystify many aspects of the process (e.g., where to find jobs, how to write application material, what to expect for interviews, negotiations,.. etc. etc.). 

I created an overview of many of these resources, which you can find in the following links: 

- Astronomy Job application resources

- Astronomy Workshop recordings (recorded workshops on academic skills such as networking, writing, applying for jobs, mental health etc.)

Eds Note: The AAS Committee on Employment has also shared resources (as of October 2023) to help you search for jobs and hire! Also check out the CSWA’s resource page.

AASWOMEN Newsletter for July 10, 2015

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of July 10, 2015

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. Update on Events at the IAU XXIX General Assembly: Women Lunches and Early Career Events   

2. Unreported Sexual Harassment at AAS Meetings: An Example  

3. Women to Lead National Organizations

4. UK Women of the Future 2015 Nominations now open

5. New Marie Curie film to shed light on women's struggle in science    

6. “Now seriously…”: Follow-ups to Tim Hunt’s comments

7. Job Opportunities  

8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

The Gender Breakdown of the Applicant Pool for Tenure-Track Faculty Positions at a Sample of North American Research Astronomy Programs

Figure 1: Left: Histogram of the number of searches versus F/(F +M) in the total sample (black) and for the searches at NRC ranked Astronomy programs (red). For the former, the mean and median of the distribution are ≃ 0.18±0.04 and 0.19, whereas for the latter they are ≃ 0.19±0.03 and 0.20. Right: F/(F + M) versus the total number of applicants.

Today's guest blogger is Todd Thompson. Todd is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the Ohio State University. His research involves core-collapse supernovae, the birth of neutron stars, the origin of the heavy elements, gamma ray bursts, stellar and relativistic winds, and magnetars; the physics, structure, and feedback processes of starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei; and few-body dynamics of stars and their compact objects.

 

Introduction

 

The demographics of the field of Astronomy is an active area of investigation.  Among many characteristics of the population, gender --- including gender balance, gender bias, and the gender-related component of the leaky pipeline --- have been the focus of recent work. 

 

The American Astronomical Society's Committee on the Status of Women (CSWA) published the results of a survey in 2013 that provides information on the fraction of women at each level in the astronomical workforce. For graduate students (at all levels) they report F/(F+M)=404/1155 = 0.350, while for postdoctoral researchers F/(F+M)=186/645 = 0.288, and for assistant professors F/(F+M)=57/193= 0.295. 

 

Confessions of a Female Faculty Candidate

The below is an anonymous guest post submitted by an astronomer on the faculty job market for the first time.  

I am a woman in her early 30’s in astronomy, and this is my first time applying for faculty jobs. Here’s what I knew beforehand. I knew statistically that I’d be likeliest to “leak” from the research pipeline at this exact juncture: reaching up to barely touch the lowest rung of junior professor. I knew that women falsely identify limitations as lying within when they truly lie without: that Impostor Syndrome is especially rampant among us. And I knew the process would be fraught with rejection. Despite educating myself, I have been grappling with profound feelings of inadequacy that are very gendered. There are statistics of women leaving science at this stage, but a lived experience isn’t fully expressed with statistics: what does it feel like to be a woman grappling with this professional transition with all her might? My mental health provider had to remind me that there is a context for this struggle beyond my own scientific record and the scary academic job market. If I’m feeling this stuff, so are other women. It’s so hard to hang in there. She said, “if you could talk about this to other women at your same stage, what would you say? What would you like to hear?” I’d want to hear how it feels to other women, to normalize my own experience. My experience as a white, middle-class, cisgendered woman is a privileged one, and is not universal: distinct emotional costs exist for people residing at other intersections. My experiences are reflective of my social status, and ought to be read that way. 

AASWOMEN Newsletter for November 14, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of November 14, 2014

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. Queer Eye for the Straight Marriage  

2. Sappho and the Origins of Ancient Greek Astronomy 

3. The Best Part of My Week   

4. Lead ESA Scientist Wears Shirt Covered in Gratuitous Sexy Chicks For Comet Landing Livestream  

5. Why 'Interstellar' Is Great for Women in STEM

6. Rocket Science: Four NASA moms offer their 7 best insights on getting more girls into STEM  

7. For America's Future, Engineering Needs to Diversify

8. CERN Council selects next Director-General

9. Boys Who Bully More Likely to Sexually Harass 2 Years Later

10. Job Opportunities

11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWOMEN Newsletter for October 3, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of October 3, 2014

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. Worrying News from the Royal Society

2. Becoming a Leader

3. Leaning In Without Falling Over

4. Career Profiles: Astronomer to Data Visualization Specialist and Adjunct Associate Professor

5. How to host speakers who also happen to be parents of young children

6. Women are the face of India's Mars mission, but they're still the exception

7. Job Opportunities

8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWomen January 31, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of January 31, 2014
eds. Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Use of the GRE in Graduate Admissions

2. How to Increase the Numbers of Female Speakers

3. Faculty Search Committee II

4. It's that time of year!

5. Gabriela Gonzalez is the January CSWP Woman Physicist of the Month

6. Women Crystallographers in History

7. Host a Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics

8. APS/IBM Research Internships for Undergraduate Women and Underrepresented Minorities

9. NASA History Program Office Student Internships

10. 2014 BU Summer School in Plasma Processes

11. APS April Meeting Child Care Grants

12. Women's Institute For A Secure Retirement

13. Job Opportunities

14. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

15. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

16. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Career Profiles: Astronomer to Web Editor for Sky & Telescope

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.

Below is our interview with Monica Young, an astronomer turned Web Editor for Sky & Telescope. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month.

Astronomy vs. Data Science

In response to my last post about the transition from Astronomer to Data Scientist many readers wanted to know the pros and cons of academia versus tech. Below I outline a few of the major differences between these career paths. Obviously, there is a lot of variety in individual companies, institutions, and experiences -- so please understand that the below is simply my (somewhat biased) perspective.

Astronomer to Data Scientist

I recently made the transition from astrophysics researcher to data scientist for a tech company (Yammer / Microsoft). Below are suggestions for people in academia / research who are interested in pursuing a tech job.

Most tech companies are interested in smart, talented people who can learn quickly and have good problem solving skills. Scientists have these attributes. Therefore if you apply for jobs at tech companies, you'll likely get at least a response from a recruiter. However, once you get an interview, there are many other skills that the company will try to assess, skills that you may or may not have already.

Below are some tips which will help you both in the application / interview process, as well as on the job at a tech company.