Make the Most of Your Lab Job

Congratulations on your new lab job!  Take time to celebrate, but don’t rest on your laurels too long. Lab jobs are hard to find and even more difficult to maintain, especially when balancing a busy schedule of classes, clubs, and possibly another job. 

The trick once you find an in-person lab position with a university professor? Taking full advantage of the opportunities working in a university laboratory can provide. 

Publication and Presentation

A lab job also opens the possibility of publication, which can significantly impact your future career because it will live on your academic resume for the rest of your working life.

Nearly as impactful as a publication? Presenting at a national conference. Even if the lab’s focus doesn’t perfectly align with your intellectual objectives, a publication or conference presentation to your credit will benefit you throughout your career.

While it’s best to discuss publishing and presenting with your PI (principal investigator or lab director) before accepting the lab position, it’s not always practical or possible. If you’ve started your job, talk to the other students — preferably those close to your age — about whether they’ve published or presented. 

In some labs, only graduate students or post-docs are named authors. Presentations are also sometimes reserved for senior students or post-docs. Ask about funding to attend conferences and presentations. Sometimes, funding, not seniority, determines who can attend a conference. 

Share your interests with your PI because you may be working on a project that is not destined for publication. Also, ask the PI about the timeline since a great accomplishment years after you’ve left the lab doesn’t help your CV.

Letters of Reference

It’s standard practice to ask your lab PI for a letter of recommendation for a future job, another lab position or applications for higher education. Ask your lab PI sooner rather than later if they’ll write a letter, assuming you do well. 

While you might primarily work with a graduate student or postdoc, don’t ask them for the letter. While they may know you better, they may be less familiar with how to write a great letter of recommendation. In fact, yours might be the first they’ve ever written! Instead, suggest that the PI request and include the feedback from the graduate student in their letter.

Graduate School

Perhaps you took a lab job because it will help with graduate school admissions. You’ll need that letter of recommendation for your application. Unlike undergraduate admissions processes, individual faculty (rather than a committee or office of admissions) has a much greater influence on who’s accepted. Because of grad schools’ heavy reliance on faculty selection, if you have a great conversation or build a relationship with a single faculty member where you hope to attend grad school, you’re more likely to gain admittance.

Your lab job may outshine even an industrial internship in this case. Talk to the senior graduate students and post-docs you work with because perhaps they attended a university on your shortlist. Chat with everyone in the lab about the schools you’re considering because you never know which of your colleagues knows and can introduce you to a faculty member there!

Why make so much effort? Unlike most industrial bosses, your PI has attended grad school somewhere and probably changed university jobs several times, giving them a vast, university-focused network — including connections with faculty at your target schools. Ask your PI if they’d be willing to write an introductory email and make a follow-up call on your behalf. You should also follow up these introductions with emails, phone calls, and visits, but making these connections dramatically increases your chances of admittance.

The Director of Graduate Studies

Don’t overlook another resource at your university: the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) for your department.  The DGS can frequently influence your acceptance to graduate school at your current university — and sometimes others. While this department officer rarely meets with students individually except at recruiting events, your lab job might enable you to secure a one-on-one meeting. Ask your PI to introduce you via email (or, even better, a phone call) to the DGS. 

Follow up that introduction with an email reiterating that you work in your PI’s lab and that you’d like to discuss grad school admission. If you want to attend the school where you work, meeting with the DGS offers a golden opportunity to increase your chances of admission. Prepare a list of questions about the admissions process and ask the DGS what characteristics, skills, and qualities the faculty seek in their grad students. When you meet, answer honestly if asked whether you’re considering other universities; you’re not obligated to list them.

Attend Talks

One of the great pleasures of working in an active university lab at a university is having the opportunity to attend talks PIs host. Find out the procedure to attend. Some talks may require signing up on an announcement list or your department’s website. 

Attend as many as possible because it’s a great way to learn more about your fields and others that might interest you. So many areas of inquiry exist — including many you may not know about. Any might be something that you find fascinating. 

More importantly, you might listen to a talk given by a professor from a university you’d like to attend. Take advantage of this networking opportunity by starting a conversation that might lead to an invitation to visit the campus visit — and even improve your odds of admission.

Future Industry Jobs

You may decide that you want to work in industry when you graduate. Discuss this career path with your PI.  While they may not have as strong an industrial as a university network, they probably have some contacts. Connections are the best way to hear about industrial jobs long before they appear on a posting. If your PI is willing to pick up the phone and make a call on your behalf, you’re much more likely to get an opportunity to secure a prime placement.

Taking a lab job is a great way to learn, network, make money and, probably most importantly, propel your career long into the future.  Be sure to make the most of it.