FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

If you don’t find your question answered here, just contact us directly and we’ll be happy to help!

There are four reasons why STEM Career Services should be your TOP choice for career counseling if you earned your BS, MS or PhD in a STEM-related discipline.

1. We only focus on STEM graduates. We are experts in your disciplines and understand the STEM workforce from both the candidate’s perspective as well as the employer’s perspective.

2. Our career counselors also received MS degrees and/or PhDs in STEM fields. We understand the challenges of the academic environment, working in a laboratory, getting published, the lack of career support at institutions, etc. We empathize with your struggles and we know how to help you.

3. Our career counselors currently work in STEM careers in a hiring capacity. Therefore, we know what hiring managers across the industry are looking for in candidates, and we understand the hiring process for jobs. We can share this “inside” information with you so that you can be more informed than your competition when you apply for positions.

4. Our founder, Josh Henkin, PhD, is on the Board of Directors of the National Postdoctoral Association. Josh is deeply engaged in the lives of graduate students, postdocs and early career scientists. We understand the challenges specific to this workforce demographic and are the experts you want helping you find your next position.

There is no other career coaching service available that is more experienced or qualified to help STEM graduates at all levels of their careers than STEM Career Services.

The easy answer to this question is 100%.

We haven’t had a client yet that has not found significant value in our services, and nearly all of our services are in the domain of helping clients find jobs. We believe the more important question is “Are our clients finding jobs that are challenging, rewarding and in areas that they are passionate about?” That is the metric that we care most about, and we believe that our highly satisfied client reviews, strong word-of-mouth referrals and frequent invitations to speak at conferences, universities and institutions across the country prove that we are on the right track.

There is no magic recipe for finding a rewarding career that will happen after “X” number of hours of career counseling or after “X” number of months of effort. The job market is dynamic and every client has incredibly unique characteristics, preferences, needs and wants. This is why we do personalized one-on-one and small group career counseling instead of having you download a one-size-fits-all tool kit. We spend time getting to know you by reviewing your application, resume and career-aspiration information. Next, we help you identify the types of jobs that you will love and, lastly, help you get those jobs. On average, we probably spend about 10 hours working with each client. While some clients use us for a simple resume tune-up, others seek our guidance for everything from identifying their career calling to negotiating their signing bonus.

Our goal is to quickly and efficiently prepare you to be successful at finding a great job and help you gain the confidence to get that job by providing you with tools and insights that allow you to work independently from us. This streamlined mentoring approach is what gains us great referrals and has earned us a reputation as being the best in the business for STEM graduates.

Not only can the actionable and proven strategies, skills and techniques that we teach you immediately help you make the difficult transition from your current situation to your next job, but, more importantly, they can also help you throughout your professional career as you take on new positions and challenges.

No. We only want clients to work with us because of the results they achieve with our support. We provide tremendous value to our clients, which is why they keep coming back for follow-up sessions and continue to work with us to find their dream job.

We charge on an hourly basis for all client contact hours. We also charge for the time it takes our coaches to review your work during noncontact hours, when applicable (typically 30-60 minutes). We do this as a service to you in order to come prepared to every meeting and maximize the time we are working together.

We fully acknowledge that there is a “leap of faith” in choosing a career counselor and that you are choosing to invest a significant amount of your time and finances to jumpstart your career. Because of this, we waive the document review fee for the first session with all of our clients so that you get a chance to experience our service and see for yourself how valuable we are at assisting you in your career pursuits.

We invoice through PayPal and request that you pay the invoice in advance to reserve your time on our calendar.

No. The majority of STEM Career Services clients contact us from all over the USA, and we frequently get requests from overseas clients as well. The majority of our sessions are held on the phone or via video chat, but we see clients in person in the Washington DC metro region or when we travel for workshops or on corporate business. If an in-person meeting is your preference, please contact us and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

It’s rare for a client to be dissatisfied with our work. When clients struggle to find positions or don’t find them fast enough, it often comes down to two things: lack of client motivation and/or lack of client time. Finding a great job that you will love can take time, and you need to be motivated to do this. For example, creating position-specific resumes takes much more time than using a generic resume to apply for all jobs. However, data clearly demonstrates that a position-specific resume is far superior to a generic resume in advancing to the interview stage. Once in a while, we find that clients underestimate the commitment required to find their dream job, or even their next job, and that can lead to drop-off.

CLIENT SUCCESS STORIES

One of the smartest investments I have made in my professional journey is in signing up for career coaching sessions with Josh. Among his broad array of talents, one that I am very appreciative of is his ability to help me paint a meaningful and impressive story about my career trajectory. Having had multiple prior fellowship and job experiences that may not seem connected to the untrained eye, Josh helped me to take a step back and brainstorm how to present these backgrounds in an engaging, cohesive manner… Josh was also very strategic in how I should generally present myself in my application materials, giving me tips (both small and large) to stand out in the job search. I also appreciated the supportive nature he provided during our sessions, how he challenged me to think more critically about my prior impact and my future professional desires, and how he highlighted skillsets I didn’t even realize I had… I am genuinely excited to utilize all the advice I’ve received from Josh as I enter the job market, and hopefully find the job that will be the perfect combination of elements that I am looking for out of a career, and that will allow me to thrive and make a meaningful impact.

Agnes Varghese, PhD

As a mid-career professional who was trying to switch my focus, Josh was exactly what I needed… Josh was an amazing career coach for my job search. He knows what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for. He explained not only that, but also how to tailor my message to the exact position I was applying to. He has a great system that I have recommended over, and over, and over again to friends and colleagues. After changing my LinkedIn page, I went from 0 recruiters messaging me in a decade to about one a month. His focus on breaking down every step of the process from LinkedIn page to resume to informational interviews to the interviews themselves was phenomenal.

After working with him I gained both the knowledge of how to do a job search in today’s environment and built up my own self confidence with tips he tailored specifically to me. By working with Josh I saved valuable time and likely salary far beyond what I paid to him. His services were a great investment in myself, and he was worth every penny.

Karl Putz, PhD, Problem Solver, Team Leader, Engineer
“Working with Josh has completely changed my ability to promote myself in my resume, respond to interview questions with poise, and negotiate contracts to achieve the best possible outcome. I had a hard time taking credit for my achievements or even understanding how to determine what metrics demonstrated my capabilities. I had no idea why my resume/CV was not working for me to get interviews. Josh was able to help translate some of the rather technical jargon that I use on a daily basis to something that speaks to a broader audience… I went from having about a 10% success rate in getting interviews to 100%… I started career coaching with Josh using professional development funds from my employer but continued on my own once I saw what an unbelievable difference this coaching is making in achieving my career goals. Best use of money I’ve ever spent.”
Amanda Shores, PMP, PhD

Before I started working with Josh I was struggling with confidence. I knew my resume didn’t showcase my skills in the optimal way, but I didn’t know how to improve it. Much of the advice you find online is low quality so you can spend months trying to follow bad advice without getting anywhere. Working with Josh saves you a lot of time and effort. Working with Josh gave me confidence because I finally had concrete steps to take. These steps ultimately led me to accept an excellent job offer within a few months. For anyone who’s thinking about working with Josh, he’s worth every penny. He’s highly knowledgeable and he goes above and beyond to help you.

Patrick Drew, PhD