Biocareers: Some Advice for Would Be Entrepreneurs
More and more people are losing their corporate jobs because of the recession. The bleak job market coupled with diminishing opportunities for older, seasoned employees is forcing many to consider starting their own businesses to join the ranks of the self employed. However, before you take the leap, I highly recommend that you read Phyllis Korkki’s article in this Sunday’s New York Times entitled “Taking the Leap To Self Employment.”
As a person who successfully made the leap, she offers amazing insights into what it really takes to be successful as an entrepreneur or small business owner. Most importantly, would be entrepreneurs must possess three important characteristics: motivation, drive and passion. If you lack any of the three, chances are that you are not cut out to be self employed or entrepreneurial enough to start your own company. Also, she aptly points out that one of the major drawbacks of self employment is loneliness. I cannot stress enough that this is the major complaint of most self employed persons that I know.
While nobody wants to admit it, humans are social animals who need to interact with one another to fulfill the evolutionary need to be “social.” Luckily, the advent of social media has helped to overcome the daily loneliness experienced by many entrepreneurs and self employed persons. That said, before you make the leap, please read the article—it will help to determine whether or not self employment is right for you!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting
Like most graduate students, I diligently followed the advice of my thesis advisor and was lucky enough to land tenure track position at the University Of Miami School Of Medicine. While I was slogging my way toward that appointment, I began to experience some troubling and persistent concerns about my career as an academic. I really didn’t like doing bench research that much, I wasn’t a very good politician and I had a burning desire to teach. Unfortunately, I chose to listen to what others thought was in my best interests rather than listen to myself.
For the past five years, I have been giving career development seminars that offer graduate students and postdoctoral fellows alternate careers choices (instead of research) for life scientists. The intent of these seminars is to get students who may not be enamored with a possible life long career at the bench (I know that there a lot of you out there) to think about what they really want to do after they complete their graduate or postdoctoral training.