People Skills

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People Skills

• Nick Feamster and Alex GrayCS 7001

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Personal Promotion
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The Market

• Think of yourself as a kind of mini-startup
  company that is selling
• research technique, results, etc.
• yourself (reputation, problem solving ability)
• Your goal high-quality buyers

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Finding a Buyers Market

• Hot topics will change
• The buyers market is not about research area
• rather, its about putting yourself in some kind
  of niche
• Ultimately, if you are looking for a job, you may
  have to place yourself in a certain
  nicheversatility helps

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Develop a Brand

• People want to assign labels to everything, or
  put you in a bucket
• Its better if you choose that bucket for them
• What problems, people, etc. are your customers?
• Previous lecture Sound bytes/memes
• Someone outside of your area should be able to
  succinctly summarize your value

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Business Model

• Effectively, this is what weve been talking
  about in previous lectures
• What is your product, why will people buy it,
  why/how is it sustainable, etc.?

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Advertising

• Think of having an advertising budget
• Currency Time
• Many possible media for advertising
• Talks (in particular, job talks)
• Web site
• Popular press
• Awards
• Schmoozing at conferences

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Web Page Your Advertisement

• How people find you
• They may also use it to form their first
  impression of you
• Often, they come looking for something and find
  other things about you
• Things to include
• Recent developments
• Papers and talks
• Photo and contact information
• Pointers to project pages

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Staying Marketable

• People are forgetful
• Need consistent (though not necessarily
  continual) reminders of your work
• Reminders are not personal annoyances, but rather
  accomplishments and results
• Papers
• Results

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Networking
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Know Your Goals

• Why do you need to network?
• Getting a job
• Meeting collaborators
• Enhancing your social or work life
• Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you
  figure out who to talk to (and budget your time
  accordingly)

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Identify Relevant People

• What does relevant mean?
• Typically, in research, this means that you share
  a common interest, etc.
• Chance of forming a connection for research,
  career, etc.
• How do you find them?
• Other well-connected people
• Bibliographies, etc.
• Name dropping
• The best people of your own generation

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Approaching People Writing

• Maintain a persona
• Others know you by a combination of your publicly
  visible activities (writing, talks, email
  correspondence, etc.)
• Your papers can be a valuable representative for
  your persona
• In some cases, your work may precede you
• very different from ordinary social settings!

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Approaching People In-Person

• Study some aspect of the persons research
• Ask questions for which you are generally
  interested in the answer
• Approach them with an intelligent question
• Avoid negativity and gossip

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Exchanging Paper Drafts

• Providing or receiving feedback about a paper is
  a good way to form a connection
• By exchanging feedback, you may converge to a new
  idea to work on
• Form another connection (perhaps eventually
  helpful)
• Phrase criticism constructively

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Following Up

• Keep your network warm
• Once you have identified a few key people, keep
  them up to speed
• Send them your recent papers
• Meet them at conferences and pring them up to
  speed
• Stay low-key
• Exchange favors our of courtesy and respect
• Dont have colleagues fill social voids

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Email

• Think of email as
• The front page of the newspaper
• searchable
• highly distribut-able
• You should assume that your email will be
  forwarded
• Email shrouds subtleties, like tone it also has
  brings out a lot of tendencies

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Email Tendencies

• Knee-jerk reactions
• Treating people like machines
• Getting overwhelmed
• Having your time wasted

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Multi-person research
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You and your our advisor

• Ideally, your advisor
• Feeds you with funding
• Feeds you with good problems to work on
• Guides you along the way to a good solution
• Teaches you all the unwritten skills of research,
  explicitly or implicitly, including writing,
  speaking, reviewing, grant-writing, etc
• Promotes you, internally and externally, for
  fellowships, jobs, committees, etc

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You and your our advisor

• This is the closest of all your interpersonal
  relationships
• Look for compatibility in
• Ideas ambition level, vagueness level, goals
• Management style independence, hands-on vs.
  hands-off, structured vs. unstructured
• Personality humor, life perspective, etc

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You and your advisor

• Your advisor is
• Overloaded
• Ultimately an intellectual, and excited by ideas
• Your advisor is happy if
• You save him or her time
• You dont create last-minute emergencies
• You understand the high-level goals, and come up
  with things he/she didnt think of
• You learn on your own, and teach him/her
• You dont give up instantly

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Working well in a team

• Clear division of labor
• No duplication of same parts of the task/project
• Accountability
• Clear coverage of all parts of the task/project
• Clear leadership (if large or remote)
• Regular/tight communication