Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody. So today we're going to do part one of a two-part video on networking. So if you like this content make sure to like, subscribe. It's really going to help me show that the channel is doing well and that you guys are enjoying the content I'm putting out. If you have any viewer questions make sure to leave them in the comment section down below. I always try to read them and respond to every comment and most of the comments I end up actually making a video about so make sure to leave a comment down below. So today we're going to get into networking. Now today we're going to be talking about an overview of networking and why it's important and we're going to talk about networking within your you know academic institute. I'm going to do a second video specifically designed towards networking at a conference. Now both of these have very similar skill sets and reasons why you're going to want to do it but they are a little bit different so I decided to split it up into two videos so we don't have just one super mega long video. Now networking unlike in the business world in science networking is sort of it's it's like a dirty word right you don't want to think about networking. What a lot of people say is that they want their science to stand on its own that let the data speak for itself and there's a good and bad to that. So obviously the good in that is you know when when I produce data what I want is for people to look at my data and to be able to understand what I presented and or wrote about and published you know whatever it might be. I want them to understand that data and I want them to feel like okay this is a meaningful thing. I believe this data it makes sense to me and I think that it moved a particular field forward. That is what you would like you want your data to stand for itself. The problem is you need a spokesperson for your data and you're the only person that's going to be that spokesperson so you need to be able to get up and be a little bit of a salesman or a woman and let them know why your data is important. The other thing is that you need to make connections because although you could have great data if you don't know the right people you're never going to get your data out there and when you want to find new positions you're going to have a hard time if you don't have a network built up and it even starts with small things like needing a letter of recommendation. So let's dive into this let's talk about what networking really is, what networking isn't, and how you can use people within your institute to help advance your career. Again we'll get into you know people outside of your institute in the next video but let's start small. So what is and isn't networking? Networking is basically the ability to gain professional relationships so just like when you go out and you make friends in school, college, you know on a sports team, in a music band, wherever you are it's the same idea is you want to start adding professional relationships and there are many different kinds of professional relationships that you could add. There are peers so if you're a graduate student or a postdoc adding people that are grad students and postdoc to that little bucket of peers they could be your PI, they could be other you know professionals within the department so maybe somebody on your thesis committee or a PI that you get to know well within the department that's you know two labs over and you see them every day and you talk. What networking is not is like a fake connection of like well I see this person every day and I say hi to them and so when the time comes I'm going to ask them for a letter of recommendation because they are going to know nothing about you and they're not going to be able to give you a recommendation letter. You need to find people that you truly truly identify with and you get to know well and I'm going to give you examples of people that I used as you know or what I consider good core parts of my professional network. Now the people that are at your university are going to be fundamental in a couple of things. The first is that likely they're in a somewhat similar field to you or one that you may want to be in so they may know people that are going to be hiring for postdocs, they may know people that work in industry that can help you get into industry you know they're going to be the foundation of giving you ideas of who you could talk to. The next thing is that they're going to be able to help greatly with letters of recommendation and let me tell you the letters of recommendation are really really important and even if you know somebody just generally the people are going to know who who knows you superficially versus who really knows you so if they write a general letter you know John Smith is a student in our department and he seems to be intelligent and hard-working and you know they don't really go in depth they're going to know the individual reading is going to know that they just know you on a superficial level that you don't really know that person and they don't know you. It's different if they say Jane Doe has been coming and presenting at this group data meeting every week, they always ask intelligent questions, they've had this and this breakthrough in their research that seems advanced for someone at their peer level, you know these types of things that when they really get to know you that's going to stand out as like wow this person knows the individual they're writing about and that this individual really is somebody worth knowing. So the people that I had as my core network in a graduate school and then I'll talk about what I had in my postdoc but in my graduate school obviously my PI he was obviously someone that I always had as a letter of recommendation. There was a professor in the adjacent department so there were two departments that worked very close with each other. I was in like the cell biology department and then there was a farm department that was right next to ours. There was a the person that was in charge of the farm department served on most of my stuff and I really got to know her well. She had a lot of interaction with our department and I got to know her really well through classes and then subsequently our lab collaborated with theirs a lot and I was able to provide feedback to their lab on direction of certain aspects of techniques that they weren't as familiar with so I really got to know her well then and she ended up being on my committee. Then my department chair I got to know him really well I made sure that I always always always tried to network with him every single week if we had some kind of a you know department meeting I always went out of my way to say hi to him talk to him we talked about his lab we talked about my lab I mean I even knew his who his kids were you know over time got to learn about his family history and his kids and his wife and you know got to know you know those personal details but that's good. In terms of my peer group probably the one that I am the closest with was obviously the grad student that was the senior grad student within my department. She was somebody that even to this day like I still network with her and keep in touch but there are others that were within my department that I got to know well and was able to use them in some ways not in a bad way but you know they helped to introduce me to different people down the road and then obviously my wife who's been in a video that we've made before and I'm going to have her come back again and she's a great person to network with because she was always a little bit ahead of me within my career so she defended her dissertation before me she started a postdoc before me she moved to industry before me so I was able to emulate exactly what she did each step of the way and that was honestly very very helpful. When I went to my postdoc the core that I had built up was a little bit more narrowed down obviously my PI at the time but there was a big group data meeting that we would always go to every week every Friday morning and the postdocs from about three or four labs would rotate presenting and within there there were a few people that I got to know really well that were faculty members and they all were able to help introduce me to different people even one introduced me to one of the CSOs at Pfizer so you really don't know who some of these PIs know until you know you ask and I built great relationships with them over the course of three years and they were willing to help out when the time came. The other people that I knew really well that helped to give me a little bit of a boost and get to know people within industry when I wanted to go to industry was we had a fellows council which was just a group of 10 fellows or so that would organize happy hours and this kind of stuff for the the postdocs within the institute that I was at and there was two PIs that served on this committee and I got to know them really really well and both of them were able to connect me with former postdocs that had since moved into industry and that was really helpful when I was beginning my job search trying to move into industry. So I hope this kind of gives you a little bit of an idea and you'd be surprised how fast you go from grad student to postdoc into you know higher levels. I already have several postdocs that I knew from you know just a couple years ago that have already asked me I'm interested at this position in your company do you think you could hook me up with whoever is hiring or you know I'm applying for a position as a faculty member could you serve as one of my you know peer references because they need references from PIs but they also need peer references so could you be a peer reference for me. You know it's very quick that these things happen and you know you need to be ready for it that the people that you thought were just peers and just grad students you know not that long into the future they're going to be the PIs and they're going to be the ones that you need to network with so it's not just about getting to know the PIs although at this stage it is important but you also need to start really building out that peer network especially if you're going to be staying within one field knowing your peers within that field. So I hope this video was helpful again we're going to have part two coming out later and that's going to be about networking at conferences but with that I just want to say bye and I'll catch you in the next one.