“Eternal Verities” on Career Planning (As of 3/19/18)

This is a list of “Eternal Verities” on Career Planning (Well, maybe the word “Eternal” is a bit too much. How about a few “gems” on career planning? Well, maybe “gems” is too much.  How about some things about career planning everybody should know by now?).
(The title, “Eternal Verities,” is meant to be humorous. The items listed below (1-27) are things I’ve picked up over many years I would add as comments in teaching about careers. I took this commonly repeated list of comments and put in these side comments and called them “Eternal Verities,” a.k.a. “Very Important Statements,” not just “Tidbits in Talking about Careers.”)

1. Something to Write About: Give me (or the writer of your letter of recommendation) something to write about. Do something so that your letter’s author has material that can help you get what you are applying for.
2. Close Supervision: One of my mentors talked about a letter of recommendation he supposedly would write for a student who earned such a citation, “John Doe does good work under very, very close supervision.” You should do good work without the need for very, very close supervision.
3. Beyond the “Call of Duty”: In your demonstration of your strengths for a letter of recommendation, go beyond the “call of duty.” Do more than the minimum required; that little extra sounds good, and is good.
4. Save the World: Dick Malott puts it thusly: “Save the world with behavior analysis.” Can you find in your life work the type of motivational variable Malott is referring to, where you are working to save the world with your job? As enough people put time and energy into that effort, can the area of your life work have that kind of impact? A scientific analysis can help solve problems. Keep in mind this does not happen overnight. (Or even 2 nights.)
5. Find a Career Field With a Built-in Reinforcer: Can you find the career area that if somebody paid the rent and provided you food, you would find reinforcers in your work to do it for no pay? (Still take your pay, of course!) It is great to find a career that is fun. A life of a “Job-Job” (doing dislikable work only for money) can be an aversive for a whole lifetime.
6. Hooked on What a Career Offers – Not on Glitz: Skinner stated that bright flashing lights and fancy advertisement should NOT be the reason for a student’s (or anyone’s) career choice. If someone gives you a glorified impression of career work in one area, saying that job would provide you with a lot of honor, a great reputation, big money, pretty pictures of people working in your area of interest, etc., you should be careful, and be sure not to get hooked by the glitter. When you are considering a career area, consider/explore the work itself in that career, like what you will specifically do in that area day after day, what challenges you may encounter, and what repertoire you need to do quality work in that career area. Will the career meet your requirement level for an objective look at behavior? One benefit of my TA opportunity is to see what the life of a college professor can be like.
7. Work on Deficits: If you have math repertoire deficits, for example, a math course now in college can be an effective way to work to improve your chances of not having a GRE nightmare in the future. Be proactive; the days before taking the GRE are not the best time to try to learn the needed repertoire to take the test.
8. Career preparation: I can summarize over 50 years of St. Cloud State University students and their way of looking at career preparation: they could try harder for a higher level of being the best they can be. In undergraduate and graduate schoolwork, try hard to maximize the rest of your life.
9. “Handshake in Parking Lot”: After 50 years of working together, Malott and I have an understanding that he trusts my recommendation for students entering his Behavior Analysis Training System program at Western Michigan University. When I recommend a student for his program, he will take them. This is a very good way to transition into graduate school. For most students, this type of arrangement will not exist. However, you may find a faculty who can help you by contacts she or he has, programs where the people at the new location you are applying for know your advisor. Perhaps some of the features of the arrangement Malott and I have could meet with your mentor/faculty advisor and a graduate school, a practicum site, etc.
10. Career Planning Bridges – Don’t Burn Them: In career planning, a student can never be sure when a relationship formed between student and a faculty (or any source) can be a possible bridge (a reference, for example) for some work in the future. Therefore, the message may be to try to keep all routes and bridges open. At times, one may be tempted to “burn a bridge” (e.g. telling off someone not needed at the moment). It may be wise to resist this temptation. Sometimes a kind of unofficial reaction can be a subtle “letter of recommendation.” If a student impresses some enthusiastic individual, this person may be quite enthusiastic in their reaction to other people talking about that student. Just bringing up a student’s name might be all that a potential employer needs to do to get the needed information they are looking for in an unofficial recommendation. Every time someone says, “XX was a psych student at your school, did you know him/her?” The enthusiastic responder need not be an official reference for the student.
11. Everybody has to be Somewhere: Don’t focus in your application material on your decision to go to graduate school, because everybody has to be somewhere. Present yourself with some gusto. Be honest, but present yourself in the most favorable light. Don’t make it look like today is the first day you looked for a graduate school, and their school appeared.
12. Start: Start as soon as possible on your application. Reports continue to surface of graduate schools offering a graduate school slot to an applicant who looks well qualified. The graduate school will take the qualified students if they accept the position at that early date. It is not known exactly how frequently this practice is going on. There is competition for good graduate students. Thus this early accepting of high quality students means there are less positions left open on the date when applications are due, and students will be evaluated for the remaining openings. One of the terms used to decrease this selection is “rolling enrollment.”
13. Best Letters of Recommendation: The repertoire and reputation of the writer of your letter of recommendation can help you. The reader of your letter of recommendation having high regard for your writer of the letter helps you. Try to find writers that are the best supporters and qualified to write. If you are applying for a behavioral position, cognitive people may not be your best writers (and vice versa). Also, some who agree to write are brief with no specifics, so even their good letter will not really be helpful to you if the competition is stiff.
14. Overdose: Don’t “overdose” on poor looking credentials on your application for jobs or graduate school. You can list too much other stuff that looks like the activities will take away from your study time, or your work time as a worker. The potential graduate program, or your potential job employer, will wonder if you have time to do what you are committed to do with your application, that is, study or work. Even if your activities on the list are very worthwhile, the reader may see you cannot commit enough time to the task you are applying for. The list might include all or some of such things as hobbies, clubs, church related activities, student government tasks, contests, social clubs, international involvement, vacations, entertainment interests, business ventures, political activities, veteran groups, anti-war groups, sports (participant or spectator- “I have to go to Twins games”), tournaments (e.g. weekly Frisbee tournament), minority time consuming commitments, family commitments (vacations, trips, home visits, campus visits, or other demands), time demanding professional groups, loyalty under any circumstance demands, volunteer work, charity work, social action activities, various treatments you need, music as a player or need attend every concert of “group X,” other unusual listings, and even academic interests that pull one away from your major commitment. Likewise, if you use “get out of work” courses to be lazy, it is noticeable by an astute employer/reader of you letter.
15. Prisoner Looking Profile: With any potential letter of recommendation writers you should gain the best possible credential. You don’t want to lose that contact. When it is time to get your letters that source could be a great help as a writer for you. Try to think of ways to maintain that contact in someway. I try to be honest with the way I start my letter of recommendation. I start my letter of recommendation with how long I have known the person I am writing about. If it looks like a person who has been in prison for the last 2 years, it is not good. For example, “I knew Mary very well for 3 years as a student. When I knew her a long time ago, she was a good student. However, I have not had any contact with her for 2 years now. So I cannot tell you what she has been up to for the past 2 years.” Some potential writers of your letter of recommendation might suggest you get a more up-to-date writer for your letter. Some will write something for anyone, although they are usually not very helpful.
16. Work to Avoid Low Grades: Malott (in chapter 30) talks of a number of things you can do to improve your GPA. The more important thing Malott does not mention on his list is don’t get there in the first place. Take respectable courses and get good grades. A transcript of someone taking easy “Mickey Mouse” courses just to get good grades is usually obvious, and not a big help for you in the future if the program or job you are applying for is competitive.
17. You Can Improve Your Faculty Members: Good students improve faculty. Faculty behavior is controlled by the same behavioral principles that control all behavior. I have always found as I work with good students, I am pushing to a higher level. As a faculty and a good student look critically at issues together, both the faculty and students gain. One message is that a good student can help the course. The comment, “I am a better teacher because of this student,” is a strong statement for a letter of recommendation. Try to get that comment on your letter from all your faculty writers. There is a saying, “Don’t run unless you are chased.” Some only work harder when pushed. When a good question is asked, all listeners are pushed to look at the topic in a better way. For example, in our critical analysis stunts, I fall into the old routine stunts, and I do old routines until a good student analyst pushes me. I then pull out more challenging tasks for students and myself.
18. Help Your Letter of Recommendation Writer: Give the writer of your letter of recommendation time to write, and check what information he or she would like from you. You might have a list (see below) ready to give the writer as you come to the appointment to ask about getting a letter of recommendation. Some writers do not want anything.
    -Certainly, telling the writer any materials from graduate schools, jobs, or agencies describing what they want to be covered in the letter.
    -Courses taken
    -Due date for the letter of recommendation
    -Grade earned
    -Your GPA & GRE scores, and GPA & GRE scores the school requires.
    -Independent studies taken with the writer
    -Title of term paper(s) completed for his or her class
    -Projects in the writer’s class
    -Enrichment attended for his or her class
    -Group work completed in classes
    -Course participation events
    -Related meetings or conventions attended related to class
    -Memorable conversations with the faculty members
    -Relevant goals and aspirations
19. An Aversive Nature in Career Planning: Because of the importance of career planning in all of our lives, one might think there would be considerable positive reinforcers associated with career planning. However, it appears that many students avoid career planning because of the aversive things associated with it. There are many aversive things associated with career planning, for example:
    – What if after so much work, time, and money spent on my part, there are no jobs in the career area I would like to work in?
    – Will I get into graduate school in my career area?
    – I am not sure of so many things about my career.
    – I am not sure what I want to do.
    – What I thought I wanted to do, now I see it is a “fraud,” and as a cause of behavior has no more evidence to support it than saying the Easter Bunny caused the behavior.
    – I have no support for what I would like to do as a career.
    – So much uncertainty – with the aversive nature associated with uncertainty.
    – Finding something I would like to do for the rest of my life is impossible.
    and on and on.
    With so many aversive things present, many avoid working at their own career planning, and this just increases the chances of more problems in career selecting.
20. Waiting for the “Bolt from the Blue” (That is, a career plan to just jump out at you.): If you are waiting for some mysterious bolt from the blue to give you light for a career choice, you may wait forever; others have. Career questions will always be there:
    -What career is for me?
    -How do I even decide on how to decide on a career?
    -How do I even decide on the criterion to decide about career or graduate school?
    -What courses would help me get to my goal?
    -What graduate school would be best for me?
    -Who do I get to write a letter of recommendation for me?
    -They say look for an experience, a reading, events, that might be something that would be fun to be a career. For me there are many such happenings. (Or for some others, they never happen, not even once.)
    -Will I be able to handle problems in my career choice?
21. Don’t Jump on the “Bandwagon” of Fraud: I believe in the future cognitive psychology, as we know it today, will be held in the same very poor light that we view some popular mental health procedures techniques of the past: lobotomy, regressive E.S.T. (Electric Shock Therapy), boiling mental patients to cure them of their mental illness, “Salem” Witch Hunts, and many more. My suggestion is to at least try to pick a career field that has a science base. Science has a “self-correcting” mechanism to prevent you from falling into a “fraud” for a prolonged period. Students in the past have found this harsh, e.g. talking to a Dean who was livid because I worded it in such a way. I see it as worth thinking about as you consider a career selection.
22. Suggestions for My Letter Writing:
    a. Before I firmly commit to agree to write a letter of recommendation for you, I want to know you are close to a “ballpark” figure of meeting the requirement for admission to that graduate program you are applying for. For example, GRE & GPA scores. You do not need to have taken the GRE, but an “official” practice test that is close to the official GRE score is required.
    b. I generally will not write a letter of recommendation for a student who does not have the GPA, GRE score, or other requirements for the program they are applying for. I would look at very extenuating circumstances.
    c. Be honest about your repertoire with anybody you ask to write a letter of recommendation. Long ago a grade school nun gave us a secular environmental analysis of why not tell a lie. In essence, it had as a basis you will not keep up with (keep straight) your lies. I have seen this a number of times.  (1) in the “Honesty or Inquiry” on science, here lies have come back to “haunt” (i.e. being caught) later. (Even after death some researchers data gave their cheating away.) (2) In letters of recommendation draft writing students have hidden items that contradicted drafted material elsewhere in their letter.
23. Career choice: Career choice is not a “bolt from the blue experience.” Below is a partial list of things in life that may serve as a prompt for a person in his or her making a career choice.
    I. Malott, in his text Principles of Behavior, places a subtitle for a career area that the intervention cited in that section relates to. This can serve as a prompt for the student for a career consideration, as it illustrates the kind of work done in that particular career area.
    II. In any of the encounters cited below a student might say something like this as they read, “Hey, that work might be fun to do as a career.”
    a. You read something interesting in an article.
    b. Someone talks about his/her work and you find it interesting.
    c. You see part of someone’s work.
    d. Someone helps you and you are impressed by the work that helps you.
    e. A news item on TV that relates to a possible career choice.
    f. Experiential-I talked elsewhere about how volunteering for a LSD experiment in the military put me in contact with some variables that later lead me to go into psychology as a career. I certainly am NOT suggesting LSD should be taken to help in your career choices. There are other interesting things happening to you that can produce responses useful in career choice consideration.
    g. One might come to select a career just considering what are problems or issues in life that could be a part of making a better world, as Malott put it, “Save the world.”
24. Be Dependable, Do Good Work, and Be On Time (Those are minimums.): Demo these in your work prior to a letter of recommendation.
25. Work Done With Me: My letters of recommendation are only about the work I can talk about, the work you did with me.  In the long run that kind of letter is more valuable.
26. Get A Head Start: Getting an early start on career planning is key. There are many steps involved, such as achieving letters of recommendation, internships, doing research, taking the GRE, and the application to grad school itself. Having plenty of time to complete these tasks will reduce the aversive property of meeting countless deadlines. Also, the efficiency will make you stand out compared to peers, and ensure success. If you run into a problem during career planning, having time to fix these will also ensure success. You have to start career planning sooner or later, might as well make it sooner so you can enjoy it later.
27. Quantitative/Math Deficits: If you are seriously thinking about graduate school, consider taking a math course. It may be only be for review purposes. The math skills one needs for the GRE are not really high-powered math. Math as a way of thinking about problems is what the GRE literature refers to as the math skills you need to do well on the GRE.