Careers Day at the Wellcome Genome Campus – in search of career happiness

Careers Day at the Wellcome Genome Campus is now an annual event, mainly targeted at those at an early stage of their careers (which is not me!) Luckily, all are welcome. The day kicked off on a ‘happy’ note with careers coach, Susie Edwards.

“I’m quite annoying because I’m happy!” she smiled. “But it’s taken me a long time to be happy in work.” Given that we spend 92,000 or more hours at our jobs, happiness might be worth aiming for.

“Happy is something we tend to put off,” she explained. “When I get the degree, finish the project, land the dream job, then I will be happy.” Unfortunately the traditional equation of hard work plus success then automatically equalling happiness does not always add up.

Edwards has identified some key elements that do tend to lead to happiness at work. Freedom, or autonomy, is first on the list. To be autonomous, you need to trust your team and, most importantly, your team needs to trust you. Challenge is another important factor. Too little challenge and we become bored. We might be known and valued for doing certain things very well, but personal challenge may be lost. It’s a double edged sword of course – too much challenge becomes stressful. Stress can mean different things for different people. Some thrive on it, some avoid it – you need to find the right amount for you.

As we all know, balance is vital, if hard to achieve. We hear a great deal about work-life balance but Edwards thinks we should also have scope to be curious thinkers at work and have a life outside the office or lab. We all make intangible investments in our working life, whether that’s time, commuting or going the extra mile. In return we expect not just money, but also a decent working environment, compatible colleagues and for our work to be valued. Most importantly, we need to feel that our work has purpose.

“Money from your work doesn’t lead to happiness on its own, it’s often a by-product,” counselled Edwards. “Have you chosen your role or fallen into it?” Edwards asked us. “What is it like to be around you at work? Do you bring the joy?”

Dr Candy Hassall, Head of Researcher Affairs at Wellcome is in the business of tracking where our careers take us. “A career is not usually a steady progression, but varies between progressing so slowly we can’t see where it’s going or feeling like its zooming out of control,” said Hassall.

Wellcome uses long term surveys to track the careers of those it funds over a period of years, partly to understand where its money has the biggest impact. This research not only informs strategic decisions on funding but also reveals when and how academic careers change. A slight majority of respondents to the survey were male, and the majority had remained in academia, although Dr Hassall reminded us that this was a self-selecting group. “Those in academia who might be in search of future funding may well be more likely to respond to a survey from Wellcome,” she remarked, drily.

The top three reasons to stay in academia reported were enjoyment of the benefits of academic research, the availability of work and the ability to pursue research interests. When people leave academia, it can be a persistent change, but twice as many return as leave. Hassall noted that the highest earners had actually left academia.

Reasons to leave academia included work conditions and work-life balance, new opportunities, stability, pay and lack of choices. More women with PhDs than men were working outside academia, but in roles that still tended to be science-related, possibly involving research.

Dr Hassall had some final advice for early stage researchers. “Plan your career as you would your research,” she advised. “Take responsibility for the things you can control, and don’t let chances pass you by.” She suggested seeking advice – and listening to it. “But don’t rely on gossip,” she stressed!

“At the end of the day, funding is not going to walk to your door, nor can you control what reviewers think,” she reminded us. “But you can make your applications strong and build your confidence to take advantage of opportunities when they come along.”

I might not be applying for Wellcome funding myself any time soon, but that sounds like useful advice to follow for anyone in search of a purposeful – and hopefully happy – career.

Is there a right time for entrepreneurship?

In early December, two female entrepreneurs joined us at the Wellcome Genome Campus as part of the Sex in Science programme to answer the question: “Is there a right time for entrepreneurship?” Julie Barnes, Founding CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Abcodia and Jelena Aleksic, CEO and Co-Founder of Gene Advisor were hosted by Adrian Ibrahim, Head of Business Development at the Sanger Institute.

Ibrahim first pointed out that there is currently a tax on being different. If you compare career trajectories using online profile data, you find that years more education and hundreds of thousands of extra dollars are needed by some groups to level the playing field. A ‘José’ will need 6 more years of education to rival a ‘Joe’ and female software engineers must often obtain a higher level of degree altogether to get the same job as their male counterparts.

This disadvantage translates across to entrepreneurship, where at events such as TechCrunch New York, male-led start-ups attract five times as much starter funding as women. Men and women are often asked very different questions by investors – men are asked how they plan to ‘win’ against the odds, while women have to account for how they will avoid the pitfalls. In Silicon Valley, the Elephant in the Valley survey showed that women tread a fine line between being seen as too meek and too aggressive, with 84% having been accused of being too aggressive (perhaps understandable if they are constantly being asked how they will avoid failure!)

“Being an entrepreneur is tough – it’s tough to get out there, tough to get funding. These additional barriers are not helping,” warned Ibrahim.

Julie Barnes of Abcodia first headed a company at 49. She has always loved science and spent 15 years at GSK, dealing with the constant change and constraints that go with working for a large company. Barnes moved to an SME at the Babraham Institute site and from there was able to identify a market need and build her own company around it. While some might think of entrepreneurship as the preserve of the youthful ‘garage geniuses’, Hitachi Capital and the Centre for Economics Research tell us otherwise – self-employment for the over-50s has risen more quickly that it has for younger cohorts.

Jelena Aleksic told us that from an early age she has always found herself joining things, such as University societies and ending up leading them. She hadn’t really thought of herself as an entrepreneur even though she had started two companies by the time she did an enterprise course at Cambridge University. “I always thought of entrepreneurs as men who wanted to get really rich!” said Aleksic. She quickly figured out that if you want to take over the world, you need a unique product, preferably one that needs little marketing to get off the ground.

How important is mentoring?

Ibrahim asked our panellists about the importance of mentoring. Barnes said that she regretted not having a formal mentor as she thinks this can be very useful. Instead, she has relied on introductions to move forward, the so-called ‘male trail’. “Networks are crucial,” she advised. Aleksic agreed that networks and mentors can help you to progress faster and get introductions. She feels that women can be over mentored and over sponsored within companies. “If you ask 5 different mentors, they will tell you 5 different things,” she warned. “You need to trust your own decisions and develop your own autonomy too.” Both Barnes and Aleksic are obviously taking the time to pay it forward and help informally mentor new entrepreneurs through talks and presentations. They also believe that we shouldn’t just be hearing from the success stories – there is much to be learnt from failures in business, especially if you can ‘fail well’.

How do you triage ideas?

For many of us, business ideas may sometimes pop into our heads. Right now, facing the task of putting up the Christmas tree at home, I would love to be able buy a big pre-decorated net I could just throw over the tree. But most of those ideas get no further than that – an idea. Entrepreneurs make their living turning those fleeting ideas into reality. So how do they know when they’ve got a winner? For Julie Barnes, it’s all about your value proposition, your Unique Selling Point. “No USP, no business,” she stated baldly. Operating in a very competitive space can limit company growth. Abcodia has focused on an area where the competition is not as fierce, so their relatively long set up time has not incurred too much penalty. “Your business plan never translates directly,” she said. “You need to be flexible and change as you go.”

For Jelena Aleksic, the ideas are the exciting part of the process but you shouldn’t get carried away by the beauty of a concept. Doing your research is the key. Is there demand? Can you get it off the ground? How hard is it to achieve? What’s the competition? Potential users might also get buoyed up by your enthusiasm and skew the results of your research. For her, market research surveys work best when they include a call to action, as this gives you an inherent measure of user interest. No-one even clicked on your survey link? Maybe you need to re-think your product idea.

How important are the kick-off team?

Many companies would say that they are only as good as their staff. So for a start-up, the founding team is particularly important. Barnes confirms there are only so many skills you have as an individual, so you need other people on board to close any skills gaps. Having someone to bounce ideas off is essential, as setting up a business can be a lonely process.  Try to leverage the existing reputation of the partnership members to build credibility for a brand new business. “It’s tough to be the expert scientist and the business leader at the same time,” Barnes admits. She herself has swapped between these roles at Arcodia and found both rewarding.

Jelena Aleksic believes you need both complementary skills sets and dovetailed personalities. In a partnership, you need the enthusiastic and outgoing person but also an analytical and cautious opposite number. “You should enjoy working with them or it will seem like a very long haul!” she remarked.  As a scientist, you have the advantage of being able to speak the same language as your customers, even if you are not actively making scientific breakthroughs yourself. She has found it fairly easy to stay up to date with the progress that is relevant to her business. “Do what is most natural for you,” she advised. “Make your strengths stronger, rather than persisting with the things you can do if you have to.”

Where is the journey taking you?

Ibrahim asked both entrepreneurs where they think their entrepreneurial journey is taking them. Julia Barnes focused on the end point. For her, it’s about getting the business adopted and translating Abcodia’s cancer detection tests into clinical practice. Making money is fine but she asks herself: “Have I learnt something, become a better person? That’s the safeguard, the rest is gravy.”

For Jelena, the destination of your particular journey depends on your own definitions for success. “Usually you start a project because you want to change something,” she states. “Have you done that? There are always new goals for personal development – new challenges, a bigger company, new skills, an opportunity to ‘level up’. The process doesn’t really end.”

What are the consequences of failure?

Failure can be an uncomfortable topic for aspiring entrepreneurs and it’s probably a key reason why many people don’t give up the day job. For Julie Barnes, just as for success, it depends how you define failure. Companies may run out of money and not be able to pay creditors – that could be seen as a failure to be feared. “Winding up a company because the business idea didn’t work is not necessarily failure,” assured Barnes. “If people were more aware of their legal responsibilities, this might help to mitigate their fear of failure.”

Jelena Aleksic has had to close a company, but found it wasn’t the end of the world. After all, investors back businesses for all sorts of reasons and can claw back some costs from the UK government. “It’s not whether you fail, but how you fail,” she said. “You need to keep everyone informed, be transparent and reach decisions together with investors.” Many entrepreneurs go through this during their careers but don’t often talk about it – perhaps it’s time to be more open.

And finally, IS there a right or wrong time for entrepreneurship?

Yes! And also no…. Julie Barnes thinks that you should start as young as possible, when you first feel equipped to do so. “Have the courage to take the step early,” she urged. “You will learn a lot and then have your whole career ahead of you. Timing is everything – family can make it the right, or the wrong time. It’s a lot of hard work and you need to be very flexible but you can juggle things the way that you want.” As a business leader, you have a lot of control over the way that you work and you can set things up the way you need them to be, which can be much harder within a rigid company structure.

Wrapping up, Jelena Aleksic compared the entrepreneurial spirit to the urge to write a poem. “If there is company inside you, it will make you feel a pull. If you start to feel that pull, then that is the right time for you!”

So what are you waiting for? Now is the time!

The Inclusion Imperative with Stephen Frost at the Wellcome Genome Campus

“It’s easy to miss what you’re not looking for.”

Stephen Frost, formerly Head of Diversity and Inclusion at KPMG, and leader of the inclusion programme for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games joined us at the Wellcome Genome Campus to discuss inclusive leadership. As he pointed out, even people who rely on high levels of objectivity in their role at work are no more likely to be aware of their own biases in other areas. Which makes it easy to miss what you are not looking for, such as the diversity of candidates you want to hire, colleagues you recommend for promotion or speakers you invite to conferences.

Getting back to basics, what is diversity? “High entropy!” was the first answer (you could tell we were on a science campus). Diversity is about more than just ‘difference’ – partly it’s related to who you are, your DNA, but it also includes social context. Life experience adds a depth and richness to diversity. Who is represented at your organisation, in terms of gender, race and sexuality? Who has the opportunity to shape the company culture that is supposed to represent everyone?

Studies by organisations such as McKinsey have shown that homogeneity is correlated with lower productivity and less financial success. The key success factor is cognitive diversity, the ability to challenge the status quo. Sameness, even of brilliant minds, can lead to much less resilience against systemic risks. The Scott Page equation also shows that a diverse crowd will fail less than an educated but non-diverse group. James Surowiecki speaks about the ‘wisdom of the crowd’, arguing that there is an inherent value in diversity.

“Diversity is a reality, inclusion is a choice,” advised Frost. Or if you prefer, Verna Myers puts it this way: “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance.” But too often, bias in the system means that those party invitations get lost in the post for many people.

In 2009, the UK Government carried out a study into systemic recruitment bias within government departments. They submitted CVs for real jobs with only one element changed – the name on the top of the CV. Rather shockingly, it was the traditionally English sounding name that got the lion’s share of the call backs.

There’s a (kind) name for this kind of bias – homophily, where we inherently seek sameness and prefer that to difference. You only have to think about your friends, colleagues and partners, your ‘in group’ to see that they probably have an awful lot in common with each other. This then becomes your unconscious frame of reference for people who are trustworthy, successful and sensible. Where are the areas of challenge coming from, to address your blind spots? Most of us are pretty guilty of existing within our personal bubbles, our social media ‘echo chambers’ (including me).

How to break out of the bubble

There are laws against bias to provide motivation to break out of the bubble of course, such as the Equality Act 2010 and the UK requirement to publish gender pay gap information. Blatantly ignoring diversity on your website and in your marketing materials can be bad for your corporate reputation. Or you can focus on yourself and try to eliminate your biases (try taking the Harvard Implicit Association test if you don’t think you have any!)

Kahneman talks about two modes of thought, fast and slow thinking. “System 1” is fast, instinctive and emotional; “System 2” is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Frost recommends that organisations set up their systems to nudge us towards System 2 thinking, where there is less opportunity for unconscious bias to creep in.

But can you realistically train yourself in every area of difference and eliminate every blind spot all by yourself? “It’s a lot simpler to just surround yourself with people who will do this for you, if you let them,” said Frost.

Making it personal

There is a clear business case for inclusive leadership: to realise everyone’s potential, to achieve better objectivity and to create leading edge science, to name just a few. You can also make a moral case – organisations should make sure that everyone is able to bring their whole self to work. Individually, work is more rewarding, more inspiring and leads to greater personal growth if you are part of a varied and diverse environment (although easy it is not).

To achieve better diversity when hiring, try hiring in groups so that lack of diversity shows up more clearly. Apply proportionality tests – ideally you should be promoting in proportion to your talent pool. Make sure that your definition of the ‘best fit’ for the job doesn’t just relate to the strengths of one particular group. During meetings, make sure everyone gets a chance to speak and give non-native English speakers some reflection time (or whatever the language of your meeting happens to be). Try rotating the chair role and assign a Devil’s advocate for the duration of the meeting to make sure the point of view of those not in the room can be heard. Call out bias when you see and hear it, don’t let it slip by unchallenged.

But really change starts with you. If it matters to you, and to your organisation, why wouldn’t you do it? Change who you have coffee with, or who you mentor, to change your frame of reference and connect with your ‘out groups’. You can’t challenge every norm all at once, but if you start with yourself, you may find that change actually starts to happen.

How to relaunch your career with CamAWISE

‘So what do you do?’ As we come up to the Christmas party season, this is a standard, supposedly inoffensive small talk opener. For those in work, it’s an easy way to get a conversation started. ‘I’m a scientist / accountant / teacher / high wire trapeze artist. What do you do?’ And so on. For those of us who might have done a few years in one role, switched careers and restarted at the bottom, gone part-time to pursue some extra study or taken a break to look after children, this is a much trickier question, and often one which does not do much to boost your self-esteem.

At the ‘Relaunch Your Career’ event organised by CamAWISE at the British Antarctic Survey, Katherine Wiid of Career Ambitions urged us to get away from labels. Qualifications do not speak for themselves unfortunately, you need to stress what they enable you to do. What has your study added to your skillset? What do you offer that is unique or different? If you have taken a career break, what skills did you learn during that time? Often, we miss our most important skills off our CVs – networking, relationship building, organisational skills. Find out where your strongest skills match weaknesses in the companies you are approaching for work and stress how this will help them to realise new opportunities.

“It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with what you got,” urged Wiid. “If all jobs paid the same, what would you do?”

Claire Button of coaching firm CB Partners found that the best solution to getting the flexibility she needed in her career was to create her own role and even her own company. Cambridge is particularly rich with small start-ups and innovative companies that are open to new ideas. You can also tap into networks and conferences designed to give career returners a leg up. Approach people who already have the role you want. How did they break in? Try volunteering or pro-bono work to boost your experience, or try a skills swap with a colleague. Don’t be put off by long shopping lists of requirements in job descriptions. Usually these are a wish list – call up the contact on the job ad and find out what they really need and always ask for feedback after your applications. You don’t have to wait for an ad for your dream job to appear either – send in a speculative application to the leader of the team you want to work in. “Once you’re back at work after a break, be kind to yourself,” warns Button. “Don’t pile on the pressure to ‘get back’ where you were.”

Christina Youell of People & Performance Ltd reinforced this message. “Don’t wait for the tap on the shoulder! Go ask for opportunities,” she advised. ‘Imposter Syndrome’ is a common issue, especially for women in the workplace. Youell talked us through the Bath Confidence model which has three key elements: authority, presence and impact. In an interaction, you first establish your authority through your title, qualifications, the research you’ve done on the company. Your presence comes from the rapport and connection you establish with others. People tend to remember not what you said, but how they felt when they were speaking with you. Finally, impact comes from where the conversation goes, perhaps reframing the discussion or moving forward to a concrete outcome.

Once you’ve authoritatively established your presence and made an impact with an employer though, it’s time to negotiate. This could be on salary, but equally on flexible working or part time hours. Everyone should go into a negotiation with an ideal position, a realistic position and a reserve position, your ‘walk away’ point. You should also do some thinking about what your employer’s version of these positions is likely to be. The overlap between your respective positions is your negotiating space. Research expected salaries in the industry and even ask agencies what a company’s approach is likely to be on salary. It can be tempting to accept a lower salary in recognition of the fact you have been out of the market for while, but bear in mind that it could be difficult to step up from that point later. You could try linking a salary increase to completing re-training but at the end of the day, you may need to switch companies to get back to a more realistic market rate for your role. Don’t find yourself being exploited!

If returning to full time work is not for you, for whatever reason, you could always give job sharing a try, or ‘talent partnerships’ as Sara Horsfall of Ginibee prefers to call them. Talent partnerships are now present in the workplace at all levels, from junior roles right up to the leadership of political parties. Benefits for employers include improved productivity, a greater breadth and depth of experience, improved communication and collaboration and often more diverse teams. For the job sharer, you can return to inspiring, highly skilled roles but still keep your work-life balance – what’s not to like?

I walked away from the event in Cambridge with a fresh perspective on my working life. I saw the potential for my career to be a journey that adapts to the different phases of my life, rather than an anxious dash from job to job, bending my work-life balance until sometimes, it really does break. These career ‘breaks’ can be opportunities to refocus on the things that really inspire you about work, instead of draining and wearing you down. Food for thought indeed!