Transitioning from a postdoctoral fellowship to a post-fellowship career can be daunting. In a competitive job market, it is vital to cultivate your brand and develop a strong professional portfolio in order to move into the professional workforce. However, in order to take these next steps, it is critical to have a clear vision of where you want to go and where your skills, strengths and values lie.
The Postdoctoral Fellows Office is pleased to offer Foundations of Career Planning, a program designed to introduce postdocs to the support and resources required to establish the foundations of a post-PDF career.
Preparing for the next career move is an opportunity to clarify and even re-evaluate key aspects of career planning. The Foundations program begins with an interactive session on career exploration in which participants through self-reflection will be encouraged to discover their strengths, values and what motivates them. Once they have developed a vision of their desired career path(s), participants are introduced to tools and strategies for transitioning to the next phase of their careers, including developing a professional portfolio and navigating the interview and negotiation process. The goal of the program is to enable postdocs to identify and update their strengths, skills and values, and to encourage the development of a solid professional portfolio; this will support postdocs in identifying transferable skills that are applicable to multiple careers in a lifetime.
This program is designed for postdocs in the early stages of their career development journey. This journey will test your creativity and your sense of exploration as you reflect and be open to the world of possibilities.
Registration in the Foundations program is required, and all participants must be able to attend all sessions in full in order to be eligible to participate. Some pre-work will be required in advance of each session.
Postdocs who complete all sessions in full will receive a certificate of completion from the PDFO.
Program Sessions
As a Postdoctoral Fellow, you’ve made several key career decisions along the way and as you consider your next steps, it’s important to take time to pause and reflect on how your own characteristics and context fit with your future career direction. This workshop will provide an opportunity to refine your vision for the future and craft an action plan rooted in a deepened understanding of yourself.
Pre-work: Prior to session 1, ensure you’ve completed the Skill Scan and Career Values Scale assessments. Participants will not be required to purchase these assessments - the PDFO will purchase assessments and provide each participant with an access code.
FACILITATOR
Dr. Roberta Borgen
Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault), CCC, GCDF-i, CCDP, is an award-winning leader in the career development sector, in Canada and internationally. She is a published author and international speaker on topics related to career management. Roberta's academic career has involved contract work at 10 universities across Canada, the US, and Asia, including serving as the Associate Dean of a university in New Brunswick and later serving as an Adjunct Professor and Director of the Psychological Services and Counselling Training Centre (PSCTC) at UBC while running her BC-based consulting company. Her extensive experience supporting graduate students, postdocs, managers, executive leaders, and professionals brings unique perspective to crafting professional work search documents.
Compiling professional work search documents is an essential step in your career journey; however, effectively communicating your expertise and value to potential employers, whether for academic or industry positions, can be a difficult task, even for the most seasoned writers. Participants will leave this two-part session equipped to identify relevant positions, analyze job advertisements, and customize a wide variety of work search documents with clear, concise, and consistent messaging, style, and tone.
This interactive session mixes small group activities with content delivery to provide participants with practical, hands-on experience in creating work-search documents. Participants are asked to come prepared with their current resume and/or CV, bios, profiles, or any other work-search documents they would like to refer to. Please also bring or bookmark at least one specific job description or posting of interest.
Pre-work:
- Search online for 1-2 samples of resumes and/or CVs, identifying what appeals to you and what doesn’t.
- Gather your existing resumes or CVs so that you’ll have all that you need to create a “master” resume. Please create one Word document with your existing bios and/or profiles.
- Identify at least one job description, posting, or advertisement that interests you – even if you aren’t in a position to apply for that position at the moment, it will give you some concrete information to help with targeting your work search documents. The job description will be used as a reference tool to help in the creation of these work search documents.
- Come to the session with 2-3 specific questions or areas to focus on.
FACILITATORS
Dr. Roberta Borgen
Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault), CCC, GCDF-i, CCDP, is an award-winning leader in the career development sector, in Canada and internationally. She is a published author and international speaker on topics related to career management. Roberta's academic career has involved contract work at 10 universities across Canada, the US, and Asia and including serving as the Associate Dean of a university in New Brunswick while running her BC-based consulting company. Her extensive experience supporting graduate students, postdocs, managers, executive leaders, and professionals brings unique perspective to crafting professional work search documents. At UBC, Roberta currently serves as an Online Education Faculty Mentor, Adjunct Faculty within the Masters of Counselling Psychology Program, and Interim Director of the Psychological Services and Counselling Training Centre (PSCTC).
The Best Candidate Wins is a highly experiential workshop that will build your confidence and help you to:
- Strategize on ways to get your foot in the door and deliver your pitch or get an interview
- Practice pitching the value you provide to a potential “employer” in a telephone screening call and informal in-person setting;
- Prepare for and successfully respond to questions in a simulated interview; and
- Negotiate your compensation package once you are offered the position.
Pre-work is required for this session, and will be distributed by the PDFO in advance of the session date.
FACILITATOR
Dene Rossouw, Principal & Learning Coach, Possibil.com
Dene is Principal and Learning Coach at team Possibil. He has facilitated hundreds of programs for various organizations in Africa and Canada and is known for his ability to demystify complexity and explain processes using transferable concepts and dynamic models.
Dene brings an eclectic background to the table: he’s been a paratrooper and preacher and is currently a learning coach and a wildlife photographer at Fotomoods.com.
Dene is the author of A Complicated Love and Credible – The Six Leadership Conversations and the co-creator of Back.Chat, the anti-bullying web app.
Each experience has provided a rich backdrop to his approach to inviting possibility and building influence through the power of authentic dialogue, persuasive writing and compelling storytelling.
TIME COMMITMENT AND PRE-WORK REQUIREMENTS
- Due to the interactive and cumulative nature of the Foundations program, participants are expected to attend all sessions in full.
- In order to maximize time during each session, some pre-work will be required. The pre-work requirements include:
- Completing the SkillScan Drive assessment (approximately 20 minutes)
- Note: Purchase of this assessment is not required. The PDFO will provide this assessment to all confirmed participants.
- Completing the Career Values Scale assessment (approximately 15 minutes)
- Note: Purchase of this assessment is not required. The PDFO will provide this assessment to all confirmed participants.
- Watching several videos and completing questionnaires (approximately 90-120 minutes),
- Compiling a draft version of one’s personal resume, CV, and/or additional work search documents, and
- Completing the SkillScan Drive assessment (approximately 20 minutes)
- Locating job postings of interest to be used as a reference when compiling work search documents.
Any pre-work required for each program component will be circulated via email, and may be collected in advance of the session date.
UPCOMING SESSIONS
All sessions in the fall 2024 run of the Foundations of Career Planning Program will be held in person on the UBC - Point Grey Campus.
- Session #1: Starting With You: Clarifying Key Characteristics and Personalizing Your Development Plan
- Tuesday, September 24, 2024
- Pre-Work: Due Wednesday, September 11, 2024
- Tuesday, September 24, 2024
- Session #2: Self-Branding and Compiling Professional Work Search Documents
- Tuesday, October 1, 2024
- Session #3: The Best Candidate Wins: Interview to Job Negotiation Strategies
- Tuesday, October 8, 2024
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
- All participants must be available to attend all workshops in full.
- All applicants must hold a current UBC postdoctoral fellowship appointment at the time of application and for the entire duration of the Foundations program.
- Postdocs who have repeatedly missed PDFO workshops without notice/cancellation may be considered ineligible to attend.
Registration
Registration in the Foundations of Career Planning Program is required and will open in August of 2024. Please note that space in the program is limited, and submitting this registration form does not guarantee a seat in the program. Those successfully registered in the program will receive an email with additional information. Those successfully registered will receive a confirmation closer to the program date.
Accessibility
If you have a disability, medical condition, or accessibility concern that may affect your full participation in the event, please email postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca in advance of the event.
PDFO EVENT COMMUNITY AGREEMENT
The PDFO has created a community agreement for our events in order to foster an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful environment in which all event attendees feel safe and supported.
By participating in a PDFO event, we commit ourselves to:
- Treating one another with kindness, courtesy and respect in all interactions;
- Engaging in gracious, active listening and valuing others’ opinions;
- Not dominating discussions so that others can share during the session;
- Ensuring that any potentially confidential or sensitive information shared as part of the session is not shared outside of the session;
- Actively participating in the session; and
- In online sessions, when possible and if comfortable sharing audio and/or video to create a greater sense of community and participation.
QUESTIONS
Please direct any questions to the Postdoctoral Fellows Office by email at postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca.