Sacramento—Fall 2015

On November 9, 2015, Humanists@Work headed to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California for our statewide graduate student career professionalization workshop.

Workshop Sessions

Theorizing our Moment

A two-part conversation moderated by the HumWork Graduate Student Advisory Committee and continuing the interactive, DIY activities began in San Diego last year, the HumWork grad committee facilitates a conversation about issues such as: the possibilities for work outside/alongside academia, graduate student education and support, the general conditions of the humanities in higher education and society more generally, and the role of gatherings like HumWork to intervene in the many structural, cultural, and practical issues surrounding humanities work.

Stories from the Field

UC Humanities PhDs share their stories as humanists@work in the world.

Résumé Redux: Using the Writing Process as a Tool for Career Discovery

The quest to create a replicable résumé development framework for humanities PhD candidates exploring a variety of careers continues!

Since UCHRI’s February 2015 Humanists@Work workshop in San Diego, Jared Redick of The Résumé Studio, Kelly Anne Brown of UCHRI, and selected UC humanists have been hard at work refining the process of presenting academic experience within the boundaries of a non-academic résumé. This iteration of the workshop builds on the work of past presentations at Berkeley and San Diego, focusing on how the writing process is being used as a tool for career discovery. Highlights include:

• A glimpse into how current PhD candidates and other graduate students have used the Job Description Analysis to translate their academic and dissertation experience into transferable skills useful within a reimagined résumé.
• Before and after samples from graduate students who have gone the distance and turned their backgrounds into marketable résumés, several resulting in new jobs this year.

Unsurprisingly, the work focuses on the student’s ability to convert academic activities into work experience that resonates beyond academia. Sounds easier than it is—which is why this series continues. UCLA PhD candidate Dana Linda joins the discussion to share her own experience, as well as insights she learned while going through the process.

Sketching Your Career’s Unique Chronology in the Résumé Context

Working one-on-one with University of California PhD candidates and other graduate students this year, one of the surprising elements Jared Redick has discovered has been the complex task of distilling the hierarchy of one’s career within the limitations of the chronological résumé.

And chronological résumés are essential in the world beyond academia because functional résumés—while sometimes useful—are frequently regarded by recruiters and hiring managers as tools for masking periods of unemployment.

In this breakout session, Dana Linda joins Jared Redick for focused table work that utilizes the simplicity of 3×5 cards to wire frame your experience (institution names, job titles, dates, buckets) in a way that is readily understood by recruiters and hiring managers. This breakout is intended for people who are, or will soon be, deeply focused on the résumé development process.

Decoding Work: A Values-Based Approach to Understanding Careers for Humanities PhDs

In this session students connect their unique strengths and value system to career trajectories by surveying how values are expressed through work, organizations and industries. We will identify concrete UC-humanities PhD career paths, and discuss ways to “decode” jobs, imagine possibilities, and identify starting points.

A Mindful Inquiry into the Right Kind of Work

Many of our assumptions about the job search are predetermined by the routines and rules of our educational institutions, and accordingly, we learn to package ourselves like products for sale to potential employers. If instead, we regard ourselves as in-process and engage in mindful practices with an attitude of receptive non-judgement, we can free ourselves from fixed notions of self and success.

In this participatory workshop, we practice “generative mindfulness” exercises designed to inspire greater insight into what might bring us true professional pleasure and fulfillment.

Mindful meditation is known to facilitate decision-making and cognitive flexibility and enhance well-being, creativity, social performance, and health (Langer, 1989; 2005; 2009), so a mindful inquiry into the right kind of work may help us conceptualize and create a career deeply aligned with our skills and values.

Session Videos & Reflections