Dear HMS Master’s and HILS Students:

With the start of the Spring semester upon us, we are writing with updates to professional development resources and services and to invite to an event later this week.

As a reminder, the Career Navigator is a centralized professional development portal for Harvard bioscientists serving all of you across our 9 HMS master’s and 13 HILS doctoral programs.  The Career Navigator has been undergoing a series of important updates to better serve our broad community.  We wanted to take this opportunity to highlight changes on the Resources, Events and Job Postings pages. 

Upcoming events

• Join the Career Navigator team for an overview of the Career Navigator network and all its integrated platforms: get a real-time, in-person demo and ask questions!  This is also a social event with food provided.  Sign up here for this event on Thursday, January 26th, starting at 4:30 pm.

Changes on the Resources page: 

• Last September we launched Career Cognitive City, a free-standing repository of all free, publicly-available resources relevant to bioscience graduate students.  Career CogCity is a searchable database of all resources applicable throughout graduate and postdoctoral training and spanning a variety of media including articles, books, podcasts, simulations and networking groups.  Harvard maintains this platform to keep access to this wealth of resources free and available to bioscience graduate students anywhere.   We encourage you to share this resource with colleagues - prospective and current graduate students, postdocs and faculty as well as with alumni.

• All Harvard-created resources remain listed on this general Resources page: this includes resources intended for the public and other resources accessible to you as a graduate student at Harvard

• Coming later this year…new Navigator handbooks for the job search (CVs, resumes, cover letters) and animated tutorial case study videos on how to use CogCity

Changes on the Events page:

• Please note that all Spring 2023 professional development events are now visible on Career Planner.  On Thursdays, starting with our session on getting to know The Career Navigator Network…and all is platforms and running through the semester, members of the Career Navigator team will be leading workshops related to navigating the internship and job search.  On Tuesdays, starting January 31 and running through the semester, Archer Career delivers the Archer APEX series of workshops targeting students interested in roles in management and strategy consulting.  

• Last September we also launched Career Planner, the calendar and events management tool that helps us better serve you.  Each Monday, you automatically receive a digest of events coming up in the next two weeks including direct links for easy registration.  HMS Master’s and HILS doctoral students are all automatically set up to receive this digest (and you can opt to unsubscribe).  Anyone can sign up to receive the Planner digest.  You can also submit an event for approval, posting and circulation in the digest.

• We have also added a Student Defenses calendar highlighting these milestone events from across all our bioscience programs.  We coordinate directly with administrators in your programs to receive defense notifications for posting.

• Coming later this year…a new interactive map of all recurring events to aid your time management and planning 

Changes on the Job Postings page:

• This past summer, we launched Career Launchpad with student sign-in embedded on this page.  Access to this platform is automatic for all HMS master’s students and HILS doctoral students.

• HMS master’s students can sign into Career Launchpad to sign up for 1-on-1 career advising appointments with Evan Walsh; HILS doctoral students continue to sign-up for career advising sessions with Laura Stark and Caroline Rende via Crimson Careers.  (Please note: HILS students cannot sign up for career advising through Career Launchpad; HMS master’s students do not have access to Crimson Careers and cannot sign up for career advising on that platform.)

• We have recently implemented a project collaborating with Career Services offices across Harvard to better integrate our platforms; moving forward job postings are being shared across systems which will increase the number and diversity of postings accessible via Career Launchpad.

• Starting this semester, open Teaching Fellow (TF) positions for biomedical and life sciences courses will be posted to Career Launchpad making them accessible to all students who have access to this platform.  TF postings will still need to be submitted to contacts in the Office for Graduate Education at HMS to be reviewed ensuring all postings meet minimum requirements and foster equity and open recruitment options.

• Coming later this year…new internship database, process to register for and transition into internships and new policies for internships and entrepreneurship

Be on the lookout for additional updates as we approach the summer!