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The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology

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The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is an indispensable guide for graduate students and post-docs as they enter that domain red in tooth and claw: the job market.

An academic career in the biological sciences typically demands well over a decade of technical training. So it’s ironic that when a scholar reaches the most critical stage in that career—the search for a job following graduate work—he or she receives little or no formal preparation. Instead, students are thrown into the job market with only cursory guidance on how to search for and land a position.
Now there’s help. Carefully, clearly, and with a welcome sense of humor, The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology leads graduate students and postdoctoral fellows through the perils and rewards of their first job search. The authors—who collectively have for decades mentored students and served on hiring committees—have honed their advice in workshops at biology meetings across the country. The resulting guide covers everything from how to pack an overnight bag without wrinkling a suit to selecting the right job to apply for in the first place. The authors have taken care to make their advice useful to all areas of academic biology—from cell biology and molecular genetics to evolution and ecology—and they give tips  on how applicants can tailor their approaches to different institutions from major research universities to small private colleges.


With jobs in the sciences ever more difficult to come by, The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is designed to help students and post-docs navigate the tricky terrain of an academic job search—from the first year of a graduate program to the final negotiations of a job offer.

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Jordan Lewis.
5 reviews1 follower
July 31, 2018
Very good simple introduction to the academic job process in the sciences. I read this with my PI as our summer read and I got a lot of good information from it. It mirrored a lot of the things I have heard from Post-Docs and recently hired professors.
Profile Image for Maria.
281 reviews33 followers
July 7, 2012
Good, but as much as the authors claim they are trying to help you find any type of academic job they still lean towards the more research oriented ones. The discussion of teaching seminars, teaching portfolios, etc is fairly minimal while there are more in depth discussions of the research specific parts of your application or interview.

Still gave lots of good advice for any biologist looking for a job.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

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