Addressing Career Breaks Head-on in CVs and Cover Letters

Emily Nicholson, an Australian ecologist, has written a fascinating 1-pager at Science Magazine about addressing career breaks head-on in your CV and cover letter when applying for jobs and grants. She writes:

My early job applications—using a standard CV that mentioned my maternity leaves only in passing... didn’t get so much as an interview... Then, with mentoring and advice from colleagues and friends, I reshaped my CV to account for the time I’d spent raising my family. I put my career breaks front and center, and I reported my productivity metrics to account for my time away from work. 

The result: My first application after I made the adjustments yielded a tenured position...Reframing my track record undoubtedly helped. Here’s how I did it. 

Her approach was to:

• Get the data
• Do the math
• Write about career interruptions up front and in a positive way

Postdoc Parenting Work-Life Balance

There's a koan in academia for when is the best time to have a kid:

No time is the right time, all times are equally good (bad?)

My husband is also a postdoc. We have a 9 month old. This is a glass half full kind of post, about how we've taken advantage of the flexible hours, the autonomy, and a few supportive policies to pursue parenting and work on our own(-ish) terms. 

The short of it is that at least one of us was home with our daughter full time until she turned 4 months old and at least one of us continues to be home with her four days a week. Here's how we do it:

Maternity Leave: International Comparison

Source: "Children's Chances: How Countries Can Move From Surviving to Thriving" by Jody Heymann With Kristen McNeill

For info on the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy Special Session on Family Leave Policies for graduate students and postdocs, click here and check out the associated wiki.