How Careers in Science and Engineering Are Changing?

Most scientists and engineers find careers in three general sectors of society: colleges and universities, industries, and federal and state agencies. Their work includes an array of activities, from the conduct of basic and applied research to the design and application of new commercial products to the operation and maintenance of large engineering systems. You can make your planning more effective by appreciating the direction in which professional careers are shifting within that larger picture. For example, for many students, a PhD will mean a career as an academic researcher. But more than half the students who receive PhDs in science and engineering obtain work outside academia proportion that has increased steadily for 2 decades. And full-time academic positions in general are more difficult to find than they were during the 1960s and 1970s, when the research enterprise was expanding more rapidly. As our society changes, so too do the opportunities for careers in science and engineering. The end of the Cold War has removed some incentive for the federal government to fund defense-oriented basic research. Increased national and global competition has forced many industries to reduce expenses and staff. That means that there are fewer research and development positions in universities, industries, and government laboratories than there are qualified scientists and engineers looking for them. Powerful changes have swept through the universities. For example, there are strong public pressures for universities to shift their emphasis toward teaching and toward undergraduate education; the number of positions for permanent faculty has decreased; professors are no longer required to retire at a particular age; and more part-time and temporary faculty are being employed. All those trends affect the universities' ability to hire scientists and engineers. At the same time, small and medium-sized companies in some fields are increasing their research and development activity as they develop new technologies. The natural advance of technology is creating new opportunities in information science, software design, biotechnology, data processing, environmental engineering, electronic networking, manufacturing and computational simulation, and forensic science. Government agencies are converting some of their defense-oriented efforts to research in environmental work, communication, information, and other fields. Recent graduates with skills in more than a single discipline are attractive to businesses in these and other multidisciplinary fields, especially if they have dual master's degrees or strong minors. Scientists and engineers are learning to apply their expertise more broadly. Professionals in the physical sciences find employment not only in the discipline of their degree but also in a wide variety of related careers where their analytic and reasoning abilities are valued. For example, increasing numbers of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers find their skills valued in the financial arena. More than 14% of the firms recruiting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 were financial companies, nearly 3 times as many as in 1983. Graduates are being put to work writing software, using computers to capitalize on market inefficiencies, constructing financial models that predict fluctuations in securities prices, and designing complex mathematical tools to assess portfolio risk. In engineering, careers are being transformed by several intersecting trends. International companies now draw employees from many nations, seeking out valued experts from a global pool of labor to work project by project. Companies value multilingual workers with a breadth of competencies—managerial as well as technical—and the ability to access and apply new scientific and technologic knowledge. The more flexible and mobile you can be, the more opportunities you will have and the greater will be your control over the shape of your career.

Even if your career might change direction as you advance, your first steps are important ones. How do you know where to begin? Do not ignore what is right under your nose: your own faculty adviser and, if you are a graduate student, your research or laboratory group. By watching the people around you, you can learn a great deal about the roles that a faculty member plays. Your adviser could be, at various times, a teacher, a business manager, a mentor, an author, a committee member, a boss. Which of those roles is appealing to you? If you are an undergraduate or beginning graduate student, you are probably not ready to choose a career. But you can start asking questions and watching people in their work. If you learn early what your options can be, you will be ready to ask the right questions when your time comes to find a position. Evaluating jobs also means dealing with attitudes. Some faculty members and students assign a lower status to nonresearch jobs for people who have PhDs. As a result, PhD students who plan for such jobs might be told that they are wasting their education or letting their advisers down. That attitude is less prevalent in some professions, notably engineering and some biology-related fields, where nonacademic employment is the norm. Also, negative attitudes toward nonacademic employment are often less evident during times of job scarcity. But if you do encounter such an attitude remember that a wide variety of positions can be as challenging and gratifying for PhD scientists and engineers as traditional research positions. Back up your assertion with facts and figures, including the profiles presented in this guide and facts about the employment situation from the Academy's Internet career-planning center. Consider the tempo and environment of various careers. Are you attracted to the pursuit of knowledge, the search for something new, the freedom to follow your curiosity? If so, you might be best suited for a career as a basic researcher, even if it means spending long hours in the laboratory or library. Or do you work best with other people and perhaps dream of the excitement of running a large operation, making executive decisions, and bringing new scientific ideas to the marketplace? Many basic researchers eventually do those things—if they have strong team and leadership skills. Think about the day-by-day activities of a career. Will they provide challenges that stimulate you? Do you like the depth of a single project or the variety of a changing scene? Do you prefer a more-formal or a less-formal atmosphere? How will your work affect family life and other obligations? How much will a job pay—not just when you start, but as you advance? For example, PhD physicists who work in industry were asked, What aspects of your work are rewarding? First on their list was the challenge of solving interesting and complex problems. Second was the satisfaction of working with people. Third was seeing a project yield a successful and useful product. Last on the list was basic research. If that order of priorities appeals to you, you might be suited to a career in industry. It is possible that you will begin as a laboratory scientist or engineer and move on to a management or other leadership position. If you recognize such possibilities, you can design your graduate education so that you are equipped for many kinds of non research activities. Remember, also, that even graduate-level scientists and engineers in "traditional" academic careers need a broad range of skills. The most successful of them might spend 70-80 hours a week at their jobs, a large proportion of which is spent in writing, lecturing, and discussing matters far removed from research. Evaluating Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses

While you are evaluating possible careers, take a close look at yourself as a person. Are you innovative or conventional? Timid or bold? Do you thrive on constant challenge? How important is your career, compared with family and other activities? Some positions in science and engineering involve long hours and a high degree of dedication. For a fulfilling career, there must be a good match between your natural abilities and what is expected in various professional positions. A useful exercise is to ask yourself what you have enjoyed most in your life and where you think that you have been most useful. Then ask what you have enjoyed least or have found most frustrating. Compare the two lists. Why did you enjoy or dislike each activity? Do you think that your attitude would change if you had more education or training? Would it make a difference if you did it in a different setting or with different people? By examining apparent mismatches, you can learn to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses in the context of possible jobs. Take advantage of computer aids and self-assessments; talk to students, teachers, friends outside school, and a guidance counselor. Planning and placement offices provide testing and counseling for students and alumni. Such tests as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a personality inventory) and the Strong Interest Inventory (which compares a person's interests with those of people employed in particular occupations) might help in finding the career best suited to your temperament. Because it is difficult to see yourself objectively, seek out other people who might have a different picture of you. A friend or colleague might see strengths invisible to you or advise you against a career that seems wrong for you. An undergraduate adviser can be especially useful—especially if he or she knows you personally as well as academically. Many publications offer inexpensive, do-it-yourself ways to assess your skills. Check your library, bookstore, and career center for guides that help you take inventory of your skills and preferences and match the results with the characteristics of different fields. The most popular is What Color Is Your Parachute? , by Richard Bolles, a new revision of which appears each November. Bolles studied chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a degree in physics from Harvard. He offers many aids to help you to determine which skills you most enjoy using, the context in which you want to use them, and careers in which you can apply them (Jensen 1995). Other tools are now available online and can be reached via the National Research Council (NRC) Career Planning Center For Beginning Scientists and Engineers ( http://www2.nas.edu/cpc ). Assessment of your skills, of your preferences, and of the careers that might be available to you continues as you complete each degree and gain work experience. The time to begin is now, and you should renew this assessment annually throughout your career. ACTION POINTS:

• Develop a schematic of your educational and career plan.  Imagine what you will be doing in 5, 10, and 20 years.  Review the current career market for your discipline and subdiscipline and for interdisciplinary areas that include your own.  Think about your strengths and your weaknesses; make a list of each.  Describe the tempo and environment of each career that you are considering. What do your strengths and weaknesses tell you about the appropriateness of each career?  For each career option that appeals to you, what skills (academic, social, and other) are needed? How successfully have you used these skills already?  Seek a volunteer or internship position in a career area that you are considering.  Participate in a career day or job fair.  "Job shadow" someone in an occupation that you are considering.