Propelling Careers

Lauren Celano
  • 4.7 (3)
  • CAREERS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Propelling Careers

Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers. This podcast provides insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences.

  1. 4H AGO

    Ep 56: more Questions from Lauren’s talk “The Talent Code: Understanding How Companies Assess Potential” at HMS - Propelling Careers Podcast

    This podcast is a continuation from our last episode, 55, to answer questions that were asked during my recent talk to postdocs at Harvard Medical School on “The Talent Code: Understanding How Companies Assess Potential. Links in comments below.    In this episode, we cover resumes and cover letters and a few other points including these below. We hope you enjoy listening.    Do you think resumes should have a short summary statement at the start?   What is a normal page length for a resume?   Advice for how to include relevant information on your resume in the space allocated for a “normal resume length”   Advice for how much space to allocate for each of your roles in your resume   Advice for how to prioritize what bullets to add to your experiences   Advice for how much time you should spend optimizing a resume   What is the window for applying for a role before is late?   Is it necessary or preferable to separate skills into Soft and Technical?   Is it worth highlighting soft skills even if the job description does not ask for much of them?   We provide a few insights for resumes for specific roles such as medical affairs / medical science liaison roles and consulting.   How to detach your resume from your cover letter and not have your cover letter just sound exactly like your resume.   How formal should the cover letter be as far as writing style/language.   If the position you're applying for doesn't accept cover letters, how do you include one?     Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School,launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    43 min

  2. APR 18

    Ep 55: Questions from Lauren’s talk “The Talent Code: Understanding How Companies Assess Potential” at Harvard Medical School

    Lauren recently gave a talk to postdocs at Harvard Medical School on “The Talent Code: Understanding How Companies Assess Potential”.  About 150 postdocs registered to attend. The talk Lauren gave covered insight into what organizations look for in candidates as they review resumes, search LinkedIn to identify people who may be a fit for a role, and interview candidates. Lauren leveraged her >15 years of recruiting experience to help the audience have a better idea for how to stand out. In the presentation, Lauren discussed the importance of showing hard as well as soft skills in the resume, cover letter and during interview discussions so that the people interviewing you can see your well rounded background. During the talk, Lauren received many questions about job searching, applications, cover letters, resumes, references and more. We thought it would be useful to mention a few of these, including the ones below, in this podcast since many of our listeners may have similarquestions as the audience.  We hope you enjoy listening.    When should one start looking for a new job?    If you really like a company, but they don’t have any position available, is it ok to write them, should you send your resume and cover letter (or only resume) and who you should contact within the company?   What are some ways you recommend to look for job openings in industry?   So this market is super competitive and employers seem to be really picky right now - let's say I've optimized my materials as much as I can, how long are you seeing people be on the market before they land something (assuming they are immediately available)?   Could you provide some insight into a company's process for contracting (i.e. technical or scientific), including howoften they hire contractors, the types of roles they typically fill with contract workers, and any preferred platforms or agencies they use for recruitment?   Is there a stigma to contract roles?   In your experience, are you seeing more application this year for each open position as compare to previous year? If yes, how to stand out.   If there is an online application form on the company website, should you fill it out, or is it enough to just attachyour CV/Resume? Does it make a difference?   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    35 min

  3. APR 11

    Ep 54 Bolstering credentials and experience through (volunteer) engagement - Propelling Careers Podcast

    In this episode, Jim and Lauren discuss ways to build experiences outside of traditional paid work opportunities.  This topic comes up a lot since not all graduate students and postdocs can do paid work while they are in the US studying.  In addition, many people want to develop skills and gain experiences outside of their paid roles.  Many opportunities exist such as these below to gain experiences. We hope you enjoy listening.    Reflect on why you are looking to get involved.  Are you looking to connect with people, build certain specific skills, gain exposure to new areas, have fun, or other reasons?        Clubs on university campuses can provide various opportunities to engage and build skills   Local or national chapters of professional organizations can be valuable to engage with. Many have different committees, such as communications, programming, finance, membership etc that provide many ways to get involved   Teaching, mentoring and training are wonderful ways to build various skills and experiences   Engage with non-profit organizations in various capacities   Coach sports teams   Enroll in classes and workshops   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    36 min

  4. APR 3

    Ep 53: Advice for International Scientists to navigate their careers - Propelling Careers Podcast

    After having so many conversations with people at the recent national postdoctoral association conference in Boston, Jim and Lauren thought it would be helpful to put together a tailored podcast episode to highlight important information for international scientists specifically to help them navigate their careers. International scientists are a critical part of the US research environment.  In the US, more than 50% of graduate students are international and >60% of postdoctoral fellows are international.   We have covered many of these details in previous episodes including resume episodes (episodes 9, 12, 13, 14), networking episodes (episodes 33 and 34), informational interviewing episodes (episodes  16, 17) how to engage with postdoc offices in episode 25, postdoc super powers in episode 10) but we thought having a tailored episode for the international scientists to reference would be really valuable for them.  In this episode we highlight key points for international scientists from our previous episodes while also talking about a few other points relevant to international scientists.  We hope that our listeners find this helpful.      Before we dive in, we want to mention a disclaimer, that we are not immigration experts or immigration lawyers, we are sharing our experiences, resources, and insights    The first piece of advice we suggest is to know what resources are available to you. if you are a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow, you may have resources at your university / institution    The second piece of advice is to ensure you are evaluating all options.    The third piece of advice is to have your application documents together and to ensure that you use the right format for your resume and/or CV   We discuss a few countries that are creating funds to hire US scientists impacted by the current administration to bolstertheir research activities and ensure access to top talent     We talk about the importance of engaging your Network so that you are not navigating your career choices alone   When applying for industry roles in the US, you need to have alignment in your educational experiences and the role you apply for (get hired for) if you are on a Visa.   We cover details about a few types of Visa that International scientists may be on   We mention advice if you are terminated while on a visa   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    36 min

  5. MAR 28

    Ep 52: Developing and showing confidence in your speaking - Propelling Careers Podcast

    In this episode, Jim and Lauren follow up from the last podcast, episode 51, which focused on developing and delivering an effective job talk and in this episode, will give few tips, such as these below, to develop and show confidence as you are giving your talk.  These tips could also apply to other situations also.  We hope you find this information helpful and we hope you enjoy listening.    We talk briefly about the recent National Postdoctoral Association meeting in Boston and insights on some of the presentations we heard   We shared thoughts on what stands out positively about presentations   We shared a few thoughts on what could hinder presentations   We talked about a few phrases that people say that might undermine audience confidence along with a few ways to reword these statements to showcase more confidence to the audience Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    39 min

  6. MAR 19

    Ep 51: Developing and delivering an effective job talk - Propelling Careers Podcast

    In this episode, Jim and Lauren focus on how to develop and deliver an effective job talk. We will provide advice for academic as well as industry job talks. How you communicate in your job talk, is such an important part of the interview process. We cover points including these below. We hope you find this information helpful and we hope you enjoy listening.    Why organizations ask for a job talk    When in the interview process is a job talk   Understanding your audience    Types of job talks (there are many…)   What do interviewers look for in the job talk   Tips to structure your job talk   Do’s and don’ts for job talks   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    35 min

  7. MAR 14

    Ep 50: Communicating your value on LinkedIn and application materials - Propelling Careers Podcast

    In this episode, Jim and Lauren build upon our previous episode, episode 49, to talk more about why it’s important to communicate your value. In this episode, we cover advice related to communicating your value on LinkedIn and your application materials including these below. We hope you enjoy listening.     Why clearly communicating your value on your LinkedIn and application materials is important   This is useful even if you are not actively looking for a new role   How communication of your value may be different on LinkedIn and Resumes      A few ways to show your value on LinkedIn in your Summary, experience and title   Leveraging the post feature on LinkedIn   A few tips to highlight value on your resume    Can you include things in your resume or LinkedIn that did not result in something like a paper or a novel research finding   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    35 min

  8. MAR 6

    Ep 49: Communicating your value - Propelling Careers Podcast

    In this episode, Jim and Lauren focus on why it’s important to communicate your value along with a few ways to do this.  Right now, It is especially important for scientists to communicate effectively so that others know the value and impact of the work that you do. This episode will focus more generally on why this topic focusing on these points below.  A few future episodes will dive deeper into different scenarios such as networking, your resume, LinkedIn, and Interviewing. We hope you enjoy listening.    Why effective communication of your value is important   Before you can effectively communicate your value and impact, you first need to understand Your Unique ValueProposition   Self reflection is important in order to understand this   Jim and Lauren highlight a few of their strengths, skills and unique qualities     We talk about elevator pitches and storytelling   We provide a few tips to overcome imposter syndrome.   Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers.   As we develop new episodes, this podcast will provide insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences. We hope you enjoy listening!

    38 min
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    Ratings & Reviews

    4.7
    out of 5
    3 Ratings

    About

    Lauren Celano, CEO of Propel Careers and Jim Gould, the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, launched this podcast as a way for us to share our advice, insights, and reflections to help others navigate their careers. This podcast provides insights regarding career advice to help listeners navigate career choices and become more confident in their decisions. We look forward to busting myths and providing real life, timely, and accurate advice. Jim and Lauren work heavily with Ph.D. trained scientists, but the advice we provide can be applicable to other audiences.

    Information

    • Creator
      Lauren Celano
    • Years Active
      2024 - 2025
    • Episodes
      56
    • Rating
      Clean
    • Copyright
      © Lauren Celano
    • Show Website
      Propelling Careers

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