Speaker 1: Our focus today is on networking at academic conferences, something that some of you are very excited by, something that some of you may not be as excited by, but can be equally helpful to everyone regardless of how excited you are by the prospect of networking at academic conferences. And so that's what we're going to be focusing on today for this session. Just so that you know who I am, I'm Dr. Joseph Barber. I'm the Director of Graduate Career Initiatives here at Penn's Career Services. So why go to academic conferences? I think sometimes it's the last one. It's because someone is encouraging you to do so, making you do so, and for good reasons oftentimes. But all of these things can be helpful and can be a key part of your academic and professional journey as a scholar, as someone who's interested in the academic world. And so some of these things are giving information, you have information about your research you want to share. Some of this is about gaining information, gaining information about different opportunities, different professional development opportunities that might be through your professional association, different opportunities or different resources shared by your scholarly association, opportunities to learn about funding or to engage with publishers, or to meet people or go to new places, right? There's lots of ways that you can sort of find value in an academic conference. And hopefully there is support. And hopefully there is support for you through your program to do that. I think the key thing from a networking perspective is to figure out what your priority is. Because it's not all of these things. It may be a couple of these things, but it's definitely not something, you know, you're not there to achieve everything in one swoop. So it's really helpful to figure out what your goals are, especially as it relates to networking, because the more targeted your networking goal, the easier it is for you to achieve that goal and to be strategic about achieving that goal. So all of these things are important. So I think that these are good sort of reasons to go to a conference, but your reasons, I think are going to be sort of key to this whole process. So as part of this presentation, I've got sort of seven best practices. And our first one here is sort of figuring out what your goals and what your questions are relating to a conference. So if we were doing an interactive, I might sit you down and have you do this exercise. What would make your next academic conference a success for you? Again, thinking about that, we all experience these types of conferences and networking events differently. You've got someone who falls on the extra extroverted side of the spectrum. You may be excited about meeting lots of new people. If you are like me, someone who falls on the more introverted side of the spectrum, you may be excited about having a few decent conversations with people and feeling comfortable doing that. And that's success for you. There is no right or wrong. But I think achieving your own goals is a key part of what's going to make your academic conference experience a successful one. So these are just general ideas. These aren't specific goals that I'm setting you. I don't. I have the ability to do that. But I think sometimes if you are able to achieve goals like this, then you will be making progress that will support your professional growth, will support your academic growth and support your career growth in terms of positioning yourself for postdocs or faculty positions in the future. Right. So a key part of going to conferences is to learn new things about new research, about new people doing research, about new techniques. A key part of conferences is to expand your professional network. Networking at an academic conference is the same. It's the same as networking at anywhere, any other event or any other situation. You are meeting people because that process will help you understand more opportunities that exist, will help you understand and get to know people who at one point in the future may be able to advocate for you as you are applying for a position or as you're looking for an opportunity. So all of these things can be sort of great elements to set yourselves as goals moving forward from a personal wellness perspective, setting time aside for yourself. Even at a conference is just as important. They can be overwhelming events, especially these really large ones that have hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Right. That's overwhelming. Making sure that you have enough time to engage with people strategically and enough time not to do that, I think, is key and very important. Now, from a much more focused career perspective, perhaps meeting with a faculty member who may be on a future search committee at an institution that you would like to work with. That can be a goal. Obviously, you don't have much control over what jobs are available. But should you know that? There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity. There's an opportunity to look at the desktop. And certainly, if there are previousEZ You need to, maybe we're creating something like a circle that does things where you need to register for offer. And if there's an opportunity at your campus, you can talk about where exactly you need to, you know, get available. Otherwise you might want to go and do some project development. And then in addition, I want to almost beклад all the different things that we can do in providing a dodgy consent information that will then break apart those Facebook anyways, and perhaps promote very creative learning and in particular within technology. OK. So if you're looking for a postdoc, obviously they're finding people who may have funding for postdocs can be a great way of utilizing a conference like this. really does speak to this, you know, do you have introverted tendencies or do you have extroverted tendencies sort of question? What I have learned from my own experience and what people see all the time is if you try as someone with introverted tendencies to network without a plan, you walk into a large room of people and they're all talking and you try to sort of integrate yourself into that, it can be really hard and really energy draining. You drain your energy very quickly. So knowing who it is that you might like to talk to and what it is that you might want to get from them is really important. If you have that goal, you can be much more targeted, which is a very good strength for introverts. It also means you know when to end your networking because once you've had a good conversation with someone, you might say, that's it, I'm done for the day. For people with extroverted tendencies, although sometimes networking can feel or look easy for people who sort of fall on the extroverted side of things, sometimes just having lots of conversations isn't also a strategic achievement or outcome. So having lots of conversations is part of networking. But having strategic conversations with the right people is also a key factor that I think you need to sort of pay attention to. So it may look easier for people with extroverted tendencies, but it doesn't mean it's any more successful from a networking standpoint. When you're thinking about the questions that you're asking, those are going to be specific to where you are, to your research area, to a discipline, to your field, to the types of people that you're meeting. But again, thinking about career-focused questions, if you're trying to get a book published, speaking to the publishers there and asking questions, about other people who publish books and whether they have connections with publishers, right, that's a whole series of questions that you can ask people. You can ask people about where they got their funding from or how they applied for that funding. That's really strategic in terms of positioning yourself for future success. You can ask people about their future collaborations, the type of research that they're doing. You can even ask people about what it's like to work at a certain institution. Again, knowing that when you are applying for faculty roles, you don't necessarily have a lot of choice to say, I'm definitely going to only focus on these institutions. You may have to focus on the research that you're doing. You may have to focus on the different types of institutions, teaching focus, research focus, a bit of a blend, state, private, right? You're going to find people who represent all of those different types of schools and ask them about their experience there. So those are really great questions to ask. The next thing to figure out is, well, who's going to be able to answer those questions for you? And some of this work comes before you even set foot at the conference venues, but there's a lot of work that can be done ahead of time. Now, most current conferences use an online app to sort of facilitate the conversation. But there's a lot of work that can be done ahead of time. So there's a lot of work that can be done ahead of time. So there's a lot of work that can be done ahead of time. It will be different for different conferences and different societies and associations. So there's not one approach, but basically very much like your LinkedIn profile, you'll fill out a profile. You'll make sure that your photo's there. You'll make sure that people can connect with you. You'll make sure that you've highlighted your research area, the keywords associated with your research, right? So anything that that app allows you to do to sort of help people understand who you are is going to be a good use of your time. Then you're going to look at the schedule and make sure that you have a sense of how you're going to navigate through the space. As I said, it's going to be a lot of work. It's going to be a lot of work. It's going to be a lot of sometimes conferences are really overwhelming with multiple concurrent sessions going on at the same time, creating a plan for yourself and trying to make that a strategic plan by prioritizing those sessions that are likely to put you in contact with people that you would like to connect with is going to be a key part of that. So obviously you're there to, you know, find out more about your field and learn more about that and hear about that. But it's the people that, you know, networking really prioritizes as part of your conference engagement. And so thinking about where those people are and who those people are is going to be helpful. You can even reach out to people ahead of time to see if they are going to a conference, to see if they'll be at a session, to see if they are presenting, if that's not clear from the conference program and try to sort of establish, hey, if you're going to that conference, I'd love to speak with you at some point. So you're sort of signposting your intention to engage with them so that when you're at the conference, they have sort of that they're pre-warned or pre-warmed to you approaching them and having a conversation with them. So lots of ways that you can sort of begin to sow the seeds of, hey, I'd love to chat with you at a conference. I'd love to chat with you at a conference. I'd love to chat with you at a conference. So that it's not sort of an all or nothing affair at the conference. So I found the American Society of Cell Biology. They have a conference in December, Cell Bio 2023 in Boston. It's going to be chilly there maybe. And as I was scrolling on their website, I came across a few member profiles of people. And the question I asked myself is, how am I connected to these people? Do I know these people? So Alyssa here, I looked her up on LinkedIn. First of all, I see that she's an assistant professor, University of South Carolina. I also see that she's a second degree connection here, which means that I have a connection in common with Alyssa. I don't know Alyssa through LinkedIn, but I know Kate and Paula, and both Paula and Kate are first degree connections with Alyssa. So if I wanted to reach out to Alyssa ahead of time, I could leverage my connections that I have already. I could ask Kate if she could introduce me. I could ask Kate if I could use her name when reaching out to Alyssa. Hey, Alyssa, Kate said you'd be a great person to reach out to, right? Or with the intention of saying, are you going to this conference? You know, I'd love to chat with you. If there was something about Alyssa's background, or experience that might be helpful to you. Valerie seemed familiar when I looked at her, and then when I looked at her LinkedIn profile, lots of mutual connections. And then I found out that a few years ago, she was a postdoc at Penn, and probably I had an appointment with her at Career Services. A secondary connection, but I know Valerie in this case, right? So although we're not connected on LinkedIn as first degree, I could reach out directly, and maybe Valerie would know me. Again, my relationship and your relationships would be different, but just as an illustration of what some of that pre-work can look like. So that was just scrolling on the website. And obviously, you can do the same as you're thinking about who's speaking, who the keynotes are, who the panel conveners are, all those things can be helpful. And then this is just a sort of a suggestion of how you might reach out to someone ahead of time to sort of, again, lay the groundwork for a conversation that you might have as you seek this person out. Now, reaching out and networking conversations are all very organic, and I'm going to give you some sort of suggested prompts. And they're just examples, not the things that you actually have to say, but sort of suggestions of what it is that you are trying to achieve, right? So in this case, trying to make sure that it's clear to Alyssa what it is that I would love to talk about, where our areas of overlap are, both in terms of research, but also in terms of having a connection in common. And then making a sort of an ask. Will you be there? Will you be at the session? Can I reach out to you, right? So laying that groundwork to have a conversation in person at the conference itself. Other things that you can think about, right, is leveraging the connections that you currently have. Your PI, your advisor, they all know people in the field. And so if you're thinking about trying to connect with someone, then make sure that you're asking faculty and advisors, hey, do you know this person? Is this someone in your own network? Could you introduce me? Could I use your name when I'm connecting with this person, right? If your advisor's going and you have a good relationship with your advisor, and they're going out to dinner with a bunch of people, can they invite you along? Or can you ask to be invited along, right? So be proactive about that. Thinking about where people from your lab or your department are right now. Are they institutions, where there may be people that you want to get to know, and maybe they can help you start conversations with these people, right? So thinking about your now network to help you build your network moving forward is a really great thing to do. You sort of have to take stock of, first of all, who it is that you want to engage with, but also who you already know who can help you do that, right? This is part of that strategic process. Then we have the actual introductions, right? You've done your groundwork, you're ready to sort of connect with people, you fly in, you drive in, you take the train in, and then you start meeting people at the conference. Most of the time when you're connecting with people at the conference, you're not giving a traditional elevator pitch straight off, right? An elevator pitch might be one minute that sort of goes into a lot of detail or a lot more detail. In most cases, you're doing very surface-level introductions where you're basically making sure that someone knows who you are, your name, making sure that you say your name clearly and that they can pronounce it easily. Your institution, your research area, right? Basic information. If you know a little bit about that person that you're connecting with, in most cases, you won't. You'll just have a name badge from where they, where they're from, but you can share that knowledge. And then trying to get a conversation started, right? In most cases, you're not pitching a thing, even if it's your own research or your own scholarly ability, you're just trying to build professional relationships. And so open-ended questions that allow those conversations to develop naturally are going to be great. Now, this is something that you do all the time anyway. Just sometimes at a conference, it can feel even more stressful because of the sort of the sheer number of people, but sometimes also the seniority of people that you might be connecting with. Again, just as an example of, you know, what it is that you might say, I am Helen, a PhD candidate in neuroscience. You know, I really enjoyed your presentation yesterday. I was there. So you're sort of indicating that you're, you're interested. I know that you're doing this thing and I'd love to hear more about that at some point. Hey, what session are you going to next? Not because you're stalking them, but just because you're interested in what they're interested in as well, right? So casual conversations that can lead to more opportunities for more detailed conversations at the appropriate time. Switching between sessions at a conference may not be the best time to have a long conversation, but might be a great time to say, Hey, if you're free at this time, you know, could I, could I find you and have a more detailed conversation with you? We do have a little bit of resources on elevator pitches in our website. If you're interested in that sort of longer spiel, you know, the more about you and what it is that you want the person to walk away with. I think it's a good thing to practice, especially about your research, right? You have to make sure that your research makes sense to people who are not in your exact field, maybe in a subfield or an adjacent field, the conference, you might have a multiple disciplines, some overlapping. So practicing that narrative about what makes your research interesting, what makes it impactful and what makes it meaningful to different people, even outside of a discipline is a really good thing to practice over time. So this is a resource. Also, you all have access to LinkedIn learning, which is a otherwise paid thing that you will have outside of Penn, but whilst you're at Penn, you can access LinkedIn learning for free. Again, you can practice your elevator pitches as part of this. The other aspect of academic conferences or any conferences is sort of the casual, you know, group mingling conversations where you're, you come into a big space and there's lots of different groups, whether it's a poster session or other types of networking events, and you're sort of moving between different people in a sort of a natural way. And so just making sure that you have good starting lines. Again, these are very much sample starting lines to give you an idea that even if you're feeling awkward, just verbalizing the fact that you're feeling awkward can make you feel less awkward. Right? Because other people are feeling awkward too, I guarantee it. So again, knowing what your starting lines are, my go-to is usually number seven. Hi, I'm Joseph from Penn. Have we met before? Because somehow I can never remember faces in different contexts, right? If I met you in one context and I remember your face there, you're in a different context and now you seem unfamiliar. So I assume that I've met everyone, but I can't remember anyone. And that's sort of how I lead that sort of conversation. But again, knowing what your conversation starters are really important. The other thing, the flip side to that, is your conversation enders, right? So sometimes you're having a great discussion, but you see the person that you do want to speak with more because they're part of your strategic plan. You don't want to sort of burn any bridges with the person that you're currently chatting with. So you just need a natural but confident way to say, I'm moving on, right? And it doesn't have to be a big deal and you don't have to be stuck talking with one person, but these are just examples of lines that you can use or suggestions of the types of things that you can say to move on to a different conversation, right? Your goal in this networking is to be strategic with your time. You have to limited time to engage with people that might be important as you are sort of doing your strategic networking. Another great networking best practice is to make sure that where you can in a conference setting that you're asking questions in sessions, especially the smaller sessions, not the giant sessions. Obviously every conference has its own sort of hierarchy of how you ask questions. Are you queuing up at a central mic? Are you raising hands? Different things happen in different ways, but the goal here is to sort of make sure that you are, first of all, listening to the presentation enough to be able to ask a smart question. But fundamentally a key goal of asking question is, well, there's two main goals. One is to introduce yourself to everyone in that room, basically. And two is to engage with that speaker so that you have more of an excuse to connect with that speaker after the session itself, right? Especially if it's a speaker that you are interested in connecting with. So obviously you can get an answer to a question. Obviously speakers feel more engaged when people are asking nice questions and smart questions, not antagonistic questions. And other people may have that question as well. But the key to the networking here is sort of how you ask the question, right? Oftentimes when people ask questions, their hand goes up, let's say in both settings, and someone says, what's your question? You give the question. And other people in the room might be like, hey, that's a really interesting question, but they don't know who asked it, right? You sort of vanish in the crowd. So a good sort of best practice is to make sure that you are introducing yourself, right? Stand up and say, hi, I'm Joseph Barber. I'm a postdoc from the University of Pennsylvania. Here's my question, right? And what that does is that anyone who's here who can hear you, right? If you have a microphone, that's everyone, can both see you because you've stood up and now know who you are. Now, the question is, what if I ask a silly question? And usually there are no silly questions, but if think about the type of question that you would like to be asked if you were giving that presentation, right? So what would make that speaker go, hey, that's a great question. You're not trying to catch them out. You're not trying to make it difficult for themselves. Some people are for sure in academic conferences, but sort of position yourself as what would make this speaker feel like I'm really engaging with what they're saying, right? What would I want someone to ask me that I can then say, that's a really great question. Let me tell you more, right? Not how do I defend myself from this question, but let me tell you more about why my research is exciting. It doesn't really answer, you know, what is a silly question because I don't think they usually is, but position yourself in that way. After asking a question, then you have a better perspective to reach out to that speaker, right? You can find them after the session, if they're just milling around or later on, you can say, hey, I was the person who asked you about this question. Thank you so much for your response. It was really helpful. The reason I asked is because of this. And then you sort of, you turn it into a conversation, right? But you, you then had two interactions with that person, two sort of significant interactions, a question and a follow-up after that question that sort of connects you in substantive ways. So really good best practice. Not all conferences have poster sessions, excuse towards the STEM fields, but there's wonderful opportunities to connect with people at posters because they're basically stuck there for a period of time. They can't even run away, which is great for them and great for you, but they can't even run away, which is great for them and great for you. Lots of things you can learn about, not just the research, but the people, the collaborations, their funding, their research methods, their institutions, their advisor, their PI, right? So many things that you can, you can get from that, but also so many things you can do to support that person and boost their research. And sometimes by boosting their research, you could have, you know, take a picture of their post and say, this is a great poster. And then you post it on LinkedIn, that content, that poster gets associated with you as well as the individual who posted that photo of it, right? So that's, right? So you sort of, you gain a small bit of oomph just by, by sharing that poster, but you're also supporting other researchers out there who, you know, much like you are having a tough time getting this research done, right? And everyone appreciates a boost, right? So these are people at their posters. These are the posts that they've made on their LinkedIn profiles. I just did a quick search on LinkedIn. Obviously they can't take their own picture. People don't do poster selfies. So even if you're going around a poster session and asking people, Hey, have you posted this an update on LinkedIn? I can take a picture on your, you know, using your phone for you. That's a really nice way of both meeting someone and supporting their research in very overt ways and a great conversation starter too. So, I mean, people get their friends to do that and their, and their colleagues. Sometimes it's just really nice to have someone offered to do this because getting that research out there is a significant part of why they're at the conference, right? And you would hope, I hope, you know, that someone would do that for you as well. So a really nice, easy thing to do to boost research and connect with people in a nice way. Number six, dry your hands. This is especially important after COVID, but it was important pre-COVID too. Here's perhaps a non-scientific graph of where you will likely meet the people that you really want to meet at a conference. Everyone goes to the bathroom at a conference, not all at the same time, but sometimes, and chances are that you will intersect near the bathroom. So as you are getting out of there, cause it's busy and you're in a rush, do remember to dry your hands because you don't want to walk out of a bathroom and meet the person that you really want to meet with and have damp hands and then have to explain. It's just damp because you didn't dry them. So just dry hands, take that moment, 30 seconds more and you'll be fine. We did pre-conference stuff, also post-conference stuff. So after the conference is over and after you've celebrated being at that conference and celebrated your successes at that conference, however small they may be, thinking about the goals that you set for yourself at the beginning, make sure you celebrate those by the end. There's lots of stuff that you can do beyond the conference to continue the conversations, right? So the people that you met, you want to jot down people's names, make sure that you have notes of new people. Many people don't do business cards. You don't really need to do a business cards. You can share your LinkedIn URL with a QR code on your phone, just from the LinkedIn app, for example, but follow up and just say, Hey, it was really great meeting with you. Can I connect with you on LinkedIn? That's a really great way of connecting with people after you've met with them to do that on LinkedIn. You know, once you've had a substantive interaction, it's the best way of doing that. And then maybe to find ways to have more of a conversation. Should you need more of a conversation, right? If there's more things that you want to talk about, finding time outside of the very overwhelming academic conference to do more of a one-on-one type interaction is going to be a really great benefit from going to that conference. What we mean by informational interviews at Career Services are having these one-on-one discussions that give you insight into different things, right? Oftentimes it's about different types of careers that you might find, but even in the faculty role, different types of schools, different types of institutions, understanding what people wish they would have known as they were applying for faculty jobs. You know, if you're in a, you know, right now on the job market or are thinking about it for the future, what can you be doing now to make it more likely that you are gaining the skills necessary to be a successful faculty member? These types of conversations that you might have with people one-on-one, these informational interviews can be really helpful to make sure that you are positioning yourself for success as you are applying for these types of roles. A few resources just to end up on the PhD career training platform. They have a whole section on how to build and grow your network. And this is sort of incorporates this idea of LinkedIn being helpful and different ways of boosting your profile. So it's sort of what you can say about yourself, your narrative, but a good session to sort of go through as part of this process. They also have a one as part of the academic career success conference, the building relationships during your PhD and postdocs. Academic conferences don't always happen at the end of the time. They happen all the time throughout your PhD and postdoc. So there's lots of ways to build relationships and strengthen those relationships over time. And this is another great panel discussion that you can watch that was recorded from the PhD career training platform. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you next time.