I had an interesting conversation with my supervisor yesterday. I’ve been told that I can use about ten to fifteen percent of my work week as professional development, since my current position is basically a dead-end position (the only way to advance is to stay for like another fifteen years in my current position and wait for the lab manager to retire and potentially take her job)—so basically was told I need to figure out what the next position is going to be, and start working on getting there.

I’ve been looking at a career map and the industry position guide trying to figure out which positions are of interest for me and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to about four to six positions. These include positions within research & development (R&D scientist [and then work up to R&D project manager], Health Economics & Outcome Research; Sales & Marketing (Market Research Analyst, Product Manager), IP (Technology Transfer Officer), and Financial Services (Quantitative Analyst). Yes, I know they’re still all over the place, but I think they’re also pretty well ranked from top to bottom, though I do realize that by keeping the R&D scientist as the top choice, I’d be staying within my safety zone.

So with having six different positions picked out, I’m going to determine what the top twenty to forty skills are for each position and see which skills I already have and which ones I would need to pick up. The reason why I’m going to stick with just the top twenty to forty, is that I know for the research scientist position (since it can go with any field of science) there is over seventeen hundred skills listed when you do the “Research Scientist AND Linkedin Summary” Google search.

So now I’m going to focus on the skills and determining the geographical region(s) of the country that I would like to re-locate to (probably back to Boston; though I’m open to basically any large city that has a decent public transportation system), and then looking into the different companies in those regions.

I have also determined what my new core values for 2018 are (and these can be for both personal and professional lives/development):

Synergy

Vitality

Flexibility

Adroitness

Cognizance

Openness

Creativity

Curiosity

Fascination

Exploration

Evolution

Intuition

Empathy

Dignity

Some seem like common sense (empathy and dignity), but I have them listed to remind me that I should always remember that there are two sides to every conversation and argument, and that I should always try to react as an adult and not cause a scene if an argument is started in public or in the office.

I going to try to follow the advice of these quotes: “Never be afraid to try something new, because life gets boring when you stay within the limits of what you already know” and “If you’re too comfortable it’s time to move on. Terrified of what’s next? You’re on the right track”.

So now that I have some positions chosen, I’m going to look at the skills (see which ones I may need to pick up), and then determine if I can learn those through some e-courses (with hopefully a certification of completion that I can put on Linkedin) or if it could be necessary to think of going back for an master’s degree in something.

So I’ve managed to complete two of my goals so far for transitioning into an industry position: I’ve made a new list of core values, and I’ve picked four to six positions that either fit some of those core values or are of interest to me in that they’d get me out of my comfort zone.

I still need to continue working on networking with more people on linkedin, and then trying to determine exactly which companies or businesses could be a good match for both the jobs I’m looking for and my core values.