National Postdoctoral Association

RCR TOOLKIT
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Parts of this article were adapted from the NPA Postdoc Office toolkit article on "Organizing Career Development Workshops" (requires NPA member login) as well as from advice contributed to the ScienceCareers.org forums on how to encourage postdocs to attend career development events: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/tools_resources/forum/view?id=23905

There are many different strategies for marketing your program to postdocs, which depend upon a variety of characteristics, from your institutional culture to the size of your postdoc community.  The following suggestions on how to attract postdocs to a professional development event should be applied with these broad considerations in mind.

Making the Content Attractive

Perhaps the most important aspect of making your event attractive to postdocs is to ensure that they feel it will have a return on their time. Your event needs to provide a benefit that makes a busy postdoc take time away from his or her research, so be sure to emphasize what they will get out of the event in all your publicity.  You might even consider taking the straightforward approach and bulletize these things in your announcements, such as professional development, aid in career advancement, or ability to compete effectively for grants.

Another consideration is building "buy-in" from administration or faculty.  If a postdoc's supervisor supports the event, he/she may feel more comfortable leaving the office or lab in order to attend.  An added benefit is that support from the institution could also lead to additional resources for your event. Some ways to do this are to emphasize the benefits to the PI, such as fulfillment of training requirements, strengthening of a postdoc's writing and publication skills, or even reducing the likelihood of research misconduct.

Research integrity programs in particular can benefit from integrating responsible conduct of research (RCR) topics into a larger context of professional development or lab management skills for postdocs.  Not only will this make the program more attractive to postdocs it will reinforce the connections between RCR and everyday research tasks and skills. The advantages of these types of approaches are discussed in the toolkit articles on “Tailoring RCR Programs for Postdocs” and “Choosing a Program Format.”

Another way of attracting postdocs -- and building faculty support -- is to try to enhance the prestige of participating in the program. This could mean instituting an application process that makes it an honor to be selected for the program or offering a certificate of completion or a certification that can be listed on a CV.  An application process can accomplish several things.  It can add selectivity to participation, and thus increase interest and attendance.  It also has several practical benefits, such as gauging the level of interest in advance and providing a vehicle with which to request endorsement for postdoc participation directly from PIs.  Requiring a signature from the postdoc's supervisor not only ensures that the supervisor supports his or her attendance, but it can also foster communication on research integrity between them.

Receiving some kind of certification is another way that postdocs can feel they are deriving a concrete benefit. Several institutions have begun offering "Certificates of Participation" to postdocs who attend a certain number of professional development events or who participate in some sort of defined curriculum.  These offerings have been successful in increasing postdoc attendance, which in turn can encourage faculty and administration support. Many institutions may already have something like this in place for any required training programs. A potential downside of institution-specific certifications is that they typically have no official recognition outside the institution.  So while they can demonstrate a participant's interest and commitment to professional development, they may have little tangible benefit towards future employment.

Scheduling and Logistics

Another important consideration is the location and scheduling of your event. Make the event location convenient to the audience you are trying to attract. For example, do they have to walk down the hall or across campus?  Similarly, try to make the time and date convenient for your community, while acknowledging that there is likely no perfect solution for everyone.  Lunchtime events like brown bag meetings or seminars let postdocs turn "down" time into productive time and can often avoid friction with supervisors.  On the other hand, your lunchtime event may incur competition from other institutional events also held during that popular timeslot.  Late afternoon events can be convenient because experiments can be set to run and coffee breaks are often taken then in any event; however, some postdocs can be reticent to leave the lab during "business hours." An alternative is early evening events which cause fewer conflicts with research and supervisors, but can be problematic, for example, for postdocs who have young children.  The best approach is to know your community and its habits and be flexible and responsive to their needs. You may, for example, choose the time of day based on the type of event you are offering.  Often one-hour seminar-style workshops can be successful during lunch, whereas more open-ended or longer types of events, like round-table or panel discussions, work best when held in the evening or on a weekend. Along the same lines, all-day events for postdocs will have a much higher attendance on a Saturday than during the week. No matter what time of day you hold your event, food always provides a major incentive for people to attend.  This is especially true if your event encroaches on a mealtime. Moreover, it can make your event seem like an efficient use of time, since at some point they will have to eat anyway.

A critical component to planning your event is feedback and assessment. Be sure to evaluate any program you run, which can give you valuable feedback on your planning process and can help you garner resources and support for future events.  Another approach that can provide feedback in advance of your event is to require pre-registration.  This can give you a sense of the interest level, can help you tune your program to the interests of your postdocs, can help you optimize your resources such as how many cookies you should buy, and can allow you the option of rescheduling to a time that might give you a better turn out. Some examples of evaluation forms, with varying audiences, topics, and formats, are below:

• http://www.conservation-us.org/_data/n_0001/resources/live/wrkeval.pdf
• http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/instruction/workshop.htm
• http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/CWSP/fac_seminar/sem_eval.html

A tool that can help you plan such events is the Conference and Event Planning Checklist.  Distributed at the 2006 NPA Annual Meeting in a session on "Organizing Career Fairs and Professional Development Events," it provides a series of planning milestones for professional development events.

Spreading the Word

A first step in publicizing your event is finding a good way to identify and reach the postdocs.  Postdoc offices and associations often have a list of all current postdocs.  Other places to talk to are human resource offices, graduate schools, and sponsored research offices. Once you know where the postdocs are, you need to decide how you will reach them. Email lists can be effective at getting the word out, although they are often impersonal and risk being unread in a full inbox. Other ways are to reach postdocs through their departments or offices, either via email or through actual snail mailings.  Compared with an email from an external source, an email sent from a local contact -- such as someone known, like the department assistant or chair -- not only seems more targeted to the postdoc, it also tends to carry some degree of endorsement of the event which can make postdocs more comfortable with leaving their offices or labs. Another traditional but effective approach is posting flyers on bulletin boards or distributing flyers during other events at which there will be postdocs.

Your announcements themselves also need some consideration in design and content. Try to be creative with event titles and information and really try to catch postdocs' attention.  This can help make it more of an "event" that should not be missed, as opposed to the weekly seminar that often is. You may also want to consider "branding" your events, with a logo or slogan that is used in all your advertisements.  An event that is regularized in scheduling is also easier to plan around (e.g. "First Friday Seminars").

Part of your publicity effort should focus on building support and interest from faculty, administrators, and staff.  This of course requires a somewhat different approach than in reaching out to postdocs.  Identify individuals who have oversight of research and training policies.  This may include the "usual" suspects who work with postdocs, such as Postdoc Office Directors, VPs of Research, Graduate Deans, and Human Resource Officers.  But, also talk to people in Employee Assistance Programs, Career Centers, Teaching and Learning Centers who may have an interest in helping with professional development and training programs.

You can find more information on these issues in the NPA Postdoc Association toolkit articles on "Identifying Administrators Responsible for Research and Training Policies" and "Gaining Support from Faculty and Administrative Advocates" (both require NPA member login).

Other Marketing Resources

A general introduction to marketing in the business world: Marketing: An Introduction

Science Careers has a series of articles written for scientists on some lessons that can be learned from MBA training.  The following articles are part of a larger series, but deal specifically with aspects of marketing.

Marketing I, Introduction

Marketing I, Figuring Out Your Product

Marketing I, Mass-Market Promotion Strategy

Marketing I, Mass-Market Channels in Promotion

Marketing I, Promotion Strategy and Personal Selling

Marketing I, Pricing Strategy

Marketing I, Distribution Strategy

Marketing I, Brand Equity

Marketing I, Marketing Yourself

For additional information on organizing such events, peruse the NPA Postdoc Office toolkit article on "Organizing Career Development Workshops".