CBE—Life Sciences Education

Vol. 13, 49–53, Spring 2014

Essay

Putting PhDs to Work: Career Planning for Today’s Scientist

Jennifer A. Hobin,* Philip S. Clifford,† Ben M. Dunn,‡ Susan Rich,§
and Louis B. Justement
*American Association for Cancer Research, Washington, DC 20005; † Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
and Departments of Anesthesiology and Physiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53295;
‡
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610-0245;
§
Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294;

Medical Scientist Training Program and Department of Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham,
Birmingham, AL 35294

Submitted April 24, 2013; Revised September 24, 2013; Accepted September 30, 2013
Monitoring Editor: Diane Ebert-May

Individual development plans (IDPs) have been promoted nationally as a tool to help research
trainees explore career opportunities and set career goals. Despite the interest in IDPs from a
policy perspective, there is little information about how they have been used. The authors ex-
amined IDP awareness and use, the benefits of creating an IDP, and ways to facilitate its use by
administering a survey to current or former postdoctoral researchers via the National Postdoctoral
Association (NPA) and University of Alabama at Birmingham email lists; individuals belonging
to Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology member societies who mentored
postdocs; and postdoctoral administrators at member institutions of the Association of American
Medical Colleges and the NPA. Although most postdoctoral administrators (>80%) were familiar
with IDPs, less than 50% of postdocs and only 20% of mentors were aware of IDPs. For those
postdocs and mentors who reported creating an IDP, the process helped postdocs to identify the
skills and abilities necessary for career success and facilitated communication between postdocs
and their mentors. Despite the fact that creating an IDP benefits postdocs and mentors, IDP use
will likely remain low unless institutions and research mentors encourage trainees to engage in this
process.

INTRODUCTION a demanding endeavor, the challenges have become more

acute with the flattening of federal research funding (Ameri-
Graduatetraining programs in the sciences have historically can Association for the Advancement of Science, 2012), the in-
focused on training individuals in an apprenticeship mode. crease in the number of doctoral scientists in the United States
Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers were af- and abroad (National Science Foundation [NSF], 2012a), and
forded the opportunity to specialize in the discipline of their the decline in the proportion of scientists holding tenured or
mentor and to develop the scientific acumen and the tech- tenure-track positions in academia (NSF, 2012b).
nical skills needed to pursue an academic, research-focused
position in that discipline. Although this has always been
The Benefits of Career and Professional Development
Planning
DOI: 10.1187/cbe-13-04-0085
Devotinggreater attention to career planning with a focus on
Address correspondence to: Jennifer A. Hobin ([email protected]).
setting clear, attainable goals will undoubtedly help trainees
c 2014 J. A. Hobin et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education  c 2014 meet the challenges of today’s highly competitive job mar-
The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed ket. Goal setting has a positive impact on performance and
by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from
the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution– career outcomes (Locke and Latham, 2002). Simply imagin-
Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons Li- ing future goals motivates us to pursue them (Ajzen, 1991),
cense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0). and we are more likely to reach our goals when we de-
“ASCB R
” and “The American Society for Cell Biology
R
” are regis- velop specific plans for pursuing them—deciding when,
tered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. where, and how to take the necessary steps (Gollwitzer, 1999).

49
J. A. Hobin et al.

People who develop and implement strategies to pursue 90%

career-specific goals achieve greater career success as mea- 80%
sured by salary, promotions, and level of responsibility. They
also report greater career satisfaction and consider them- 70%

Percent of respondents
selves more successful than do their peers without career 60%
plans (Ng et al., 2005; Abele and Wiese, 2008). Postdocs who
50%
developed training plans with their advisors at the start of
their appointments published more papers,reported greater 40%
satisfaction with their postdoctoral experience, gave their ad- 30%
visors higher ratings, and experienced fewer conflicts with
20%
their advisors compared with postdocs who had not devel-
oped plans (Davis, 2006). 10%

0%
Aware Recommend Require Aware Used Aware Used
of IDP IDP IDP of IDP IDP of IDP IDP
Creating an Individual Development Plan Postdoctoral offices Postdocs Mentors

To assist trainees in the sciences with career planning, the Figure 1. IDP use and awareness. Many postdoctoral administra-
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology tors are aware of the IDP, but fewer recommend or require that post-
docs develop one. Less than half of postdocs who were aware of the
(FASEB) promulgated the idea of an individual development IDP created one, and less than half of mentors who were aware of
plan (IDP) for postdoctoral fellows (FASEB, 2002). The IDP the IDP helped their postdocs to create one.
outlines a career-planning process designed to help postdocs
identify career goals and develop a plan for meeting those
goals. Constructing an IDP is an iterative process (Clifford, spondents and a mere 20% of mentors surveyed were familiar
2002) that involves assessing one’s career skills, values, and with the process.
interests; exploring job opportunities and determining which Lack of awareness only partially accounts for the failure of
career is the best fit for one’s skills, interests, and values; and trainees and their mentors to develop career and professional
developing a realistic set of goals to help prepare for that development plans, however. Only 43% of the postdocs and
career. 43% of mentors who knew about IDPs had actually started the
Since FASEB introduced the IDP, it has received consider- process, equal to 19% of all postdocs and 9% of all mentors we
able attention in the research training community: the Na- surveyed, and many of the postdocs who began an IDP did
tional Postdoctoral Association (NPA) recommends develop- not complete it. Although 92% conducted a self-assessment,
ing an IDP as a best practice for postdoctoral scholars (NPA, only 79% surveyed career opportunities, and even fewer dis-
2011), training institutions and professional societies have cussed their IDPs with their mentors (58%). The primary rea-
offered IDP workshops to their trainees, and the National In- son postdocs did not develop an IDP was simple: they were
stitute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS, 2011) and the not required to do so (45%). They also indicated that they
National Institutes of Health (NIH, 2013) recommended that did not know how to conduct a self-assessment (19%), did
graduate students and postdocs create an IDP. not have or know where to find career information (9%), had
already decided on a career (14%), or simply did not have the
time (16%). Twenty percent of postdocs were uncomfortable
IDPs in Practice giving feedback to or receiving feedback from their men-
In spite of significant interest in IDPs, there is a dearth of infor- tors (20%), and open-ended responses to questions inquiring
mation about how widespread awareness of IDPs is and how why postdocs did not complete an IDP or discuss their IDPs
the resource has been used. To address this information gap, with their mentors revealed that some postdocs thought their
FASEB administered surveys (see Supplemental Material) to mentors were not interested in the IDP concept, thought their
postdoctoral office administrators, postdoctoral researchers, mentors were unwilling to assist them with the process, or
and current and former mentors of postdocs. Fifty-seven peo- thought faculty discouraged them from completing an IDP.
ple responded to the postdoctoral administrator survey. This These responses, although anecdotal, suggest that greater re-
group consisted of postdoctoral affairs office staff (45.8%), ceptivity to IDPs on the part of mentors could facilitate IDP
deans of postdoctoral affairs (31%), other institutional offi- completion by trainees, although additional data are neces-
cials responsible for postdoctoral affairs (15%), postdoctoral sary to test this possibility.
association leaders (3%), and a group titled “other” (5.1%) Our data reveal a disconnect between trainees and their
that included a director of professional development and an advisors when it comes to career conversations. Although
assistant dean of graduate education. Two hundred and sixty many postdocs were reluctant to discuss their career plans
people responded to the postdoctoral survey, including 233 with their principal investigators, most mentors reported that
current postdocs and 27 former postdocs; 337 mentors re- they had assisted or were willing to assist their postdocs in
sponded to the mentor survey. this regard. Indeed, among mentors who had not helped their
Postdoctoral office administrators and staff were the most trainees develop an IDP per se, 75% helped them to develop
familiar with the IDP (Figure 1). Eighty-eight percent had some kind of career or professional development plan, al-
heard of IDPs, 65% indicated that their institutions recom- though only 5% helped their postdocs develop a written plan.
mended that postdocs develop an IDP, and 8% required their The majority (71%) of mentors who did not work on a career
postdocs to do so. Most postdocs and mentors, on the other plan with their postdocs reported that they would be willing
hand, had never heard of the IDP. Only 43% of postdoc re- to help them create a written plan. Still, what accounts for

50 CBE—Life Sciences Education

 IDPs: Career Success in Science

Helpful Neutral Not helpful search for new ideas, to exert effort to actively seek feedback,
P
and to be reflective.
Identifying careers Research also shows that individuals are more likely to
M
Facilitating P achieve their goals if they are involved in setting them. One
communication M
study found that scientists and engineers who were allowed
Assessing skills and P
abilities M
to participate in goal setting performed significantly better
Identifying needed P
than their counterparts who were assigned goals by their
research skills M managers (Latham et al., 1978). People persist in expending ef-
Identifying needed P
fort toward goals if there is a relationship between what they
professional skills M are doing and outcomes that are important to them (Latham
Overall
P and Locke, 2007). The goal of an IDP is to develop an “indi-
M
vidualized” career and professional development plan based
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% on one’s unique skills, interests, and values. Trainees are at
Percent of respondents
the center of this process and responsible for setting their own
Figure 2. Postdocs (P) were asked to rate how helpful the IDP pro- goals.
cess was overall and for various aspects of their career and profes- As we noted above, research also shows that individuals
sional development. Mentors (M) were asked to rate how helpful are more likely to perform at a higher level if they set specific
the IDP process was overall and for various aspects of their trainees’ rather than general goals (Gollwitzer, 1999). FASEB’s IDP rec-
careers and professional development. Ratings were on scale of 1–5,
wherein 1 was “not at all helpful” and 5 was “very helpful.” Scores
ommended that trainees “define the approaches to obtain the
of 1 and 2 were considered “not helpful,” a score of 3 was considered specific skills and strengths” they want to obtain and to set a
“neutral,” and scores of 4 and 5 were considered “helpful.” time frame for obtaining them. A new, interactive Web-based
IDP called myIDP (myIDP, 2012) goes even further by help-
ing users to set specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic,
the many mentors who had not developed any type of career and time-bound (SMART) goals and to develop a plan to en-
plan with their postdocs? The primary reason mentors cited sure they are accountable for meeting those goals. myIDP also
for not helping their postdocs develop an IDP or some other recommends that trainees break their goals into subparts so
type of career plan was that their postdocs had not asked for as not to become overwhelmed by the complexity of a given
help (65%). Many mentors reported they were not required to goal, another practice found to be important for accomplish-
develop a career plan with their trainees (36%) or that it was ing goals that are likely to take a long time to complete (Seijts
not necessary, because their postdocs had already decided on and Latham, 2012), as is the case for many research-related
a career (28%). A lack of information about career options goals, such as developing new technical skills, carrying out
(8%) and the skills needed for those careers (9%) were also research projects, and writing grant applications and research
factors for some. papers.
Bothpostdocs (71%) and mentors (90%) who worked on Implicit in the IDP process is the notion that goals should
an IDP found the process to be valuable overall (Figure 2). be written down. Only 5% of mentors we surveyed helped
They reported that it helped postdocs to assess their skills their trainees create a written plan. The literature shows that
and abilities (postdocs: 56%; mentors: 86%), helped postdocs people are more likely to pursue their goals if they record
assess the research skills (postdocs: 63%; mentors: 83%) and where and when they will accomplish specific behaviors
additional skills or abilities (postdocs: 64%; mentors: 90%) (Gollwitzer, 1999; Brown et al., 2003).
they would need to succeed in their careers, and facilitated Although the responsibility for creating an IDP ultimately
communication between postdocs and their mentors about lies with each graduate student and postdoc, trainees are
career goals (postdocs: 56%; mentors: 97%). strongly encouraged to solicit feedback from their mentors.
Although we did not examine the impact of creating an In fact, FASEB recommended that mentors meet with trainees
IDP on postdoctoral performance or goal attainment, the IDP on an annual basis to review progress and revise plans as
process is consistent with best practices that have emerged necessary. Research shows that obtaining feedback is impor-
from decades of research on the impact of goal setting on per- tant for goal achievement, as it helps individuals to gauge
formance (Seijts and Latham, 2012). Goals affect performance their progress and determine whether a change of strategy
by directing attention to goal-relevant activities, energizing is necessary (Latham et al., 2008). Moreover, when individu-
people toward greater effort, and helping them persist in als receive feedback that they have achieved a proximal goal
that effort (Locke and Latham, 2002). With its focus on skills (e.g., developing a new technical skill), it signals that they are
development, the IDP process emphasizes setting learning making progress toward a distal goal (e.g., obtaining a po-
goals rather than performance goals. Learning goals focus an sition conducting cutting-edge research), thereby sustaining
individual’s attention on the process of discovering how to their effort toward that goal (Latham and Seijts, 1999).
perform a task correctly, such as learning how to write scien-
tific publications, rather than on specific performance metrics,
such as publishing a certain number of papers per year. Learn- Facilitating the Development of IDPs
ing goals motivate better performance in individuals who do Our data show that simply making postdocs and their men-
not yet have the knowledge or established behavioral rou- tors aware of IDPs will not ensure that they will create one.
tines necessary to perform a particular task (Latham et al., However, the trainees we surveyed reported that having in-
2008), which is arguably the case for most research trainees, formation about career opportunities for scientists (87%), the
who are still novices at many of the skills needed to succeed skills and abilities needed to pursue those careers (89%),
in science. Such goals lead these individuals to systematically self-assessment tools (82%) and workshops (72.5%), career

Vol. 13, Spring 2014 51

J. A. Hobin et al.

exploration and planning workshops (88%), and profes- inars, and email announcements. Do not simply post this
sional development resources (88%) would make it easier to information on a website.
complete an IDP. It follows, then, that providing access to r Send annual reminders that postdocs and mentors should
these resources in the context of a framework for creating an develop or update the IDPs.
IDP could make trainees more likely to engage in this process. r Consider ways to integrate IDPs into your training pro-
The myIDP tool does just that. Unlike FASEB’s original IDP, gram, such as by developing an IDP course or requiring
which only outlines the planning process, myIDP provides completion of the IDP as part of the appointment process.
tools to help users assess their career-related skills, interests, r Convey to mentors that postdocs want assistance with their
and values; identify and explore possible career paths based career planning.
on their assessments; and set realistic career goals. r Remind mentors that creating an IDP is valuable for post-
Although pressure from federal funding organizations and docs and themselves, and encourage them to integrate the
the availability of IDP resources is likely to increase IDP IDP into their training activities.
awareness, we fear that engagement in a deliberate career r Remind mentors and trainees that the IDP process is de-
exploration and goal-setting process will remain low unless signed to set goals that will facilitate acquisition of knowl-
research training institutions and, most importantly, men- edge and skills to enhance an individual’s ability to achieve
tors support and encourage the use of IDPs. Indeed, research long-term career success, as opposed to being a tool for per-
demonstrates that support from key decision leaders is im- formance review.
portant for motivating goal achievement and improving per-
formance (Seijts and Latham, 2012), and we believe it will
be important for promoting use of IDPs. Therefore, we offer DEVELOPING A NEW PARADIGM IN TRAINING
the following recommendations for increasing IDP awareness
and use. Going forward, it will be important to develop a culture in
which creating an individualized training and career devel-
opment plan is an accepted practice for trainees, faculty, and
Recommendations for Postdocs institutions. The benefits are potentially significant. Creat-
r Recognize that the responsibility for exploring career op- ing an IDP will help postdocs prioritize their research and
tions and developing a career plan lies with you. training goals, increase their research productivity while they
r Begin career exploration and develop an IDP early in your are training, and enhance their awareness of and success in
appointment. competing for a wider range of career paths. For faculty, the
r Meet with career advisors and postdoctoral office staff to benefits include more productive and harmonious labs, im-
discuss what resources are available to you. proved chances of obtaining funding from agencies that take
r Do not be afraid to discuss your career plans with your training into consideration during review, and the recogni-
mentors. tion that comes through the successes of trainees. We also
r Remember that the IDP process is valuable, even if you believe that this process could be beneficial to the enterprise
have already decided on a career and even if you are pur- overall. Providing guidance and resources to help trainees
suing a career in academic research. identify rewarding and stable positions that utilize their sci-
r Do not expect to complete this process in a day, a week, or entific training and fulfill their career aspirations could en-
even a month. Career planning takes time; it should be an courage continued interest in biomedical research training,
iterative process during which you periodically reassess thereby ensuring a constant supply of research talent.
your goals.
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Vol. 13, Spring 2014 53