Top companies your searchers work at

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Clip of the LinkedIn section listing the top companies my searches work at

Linked in won’t tell me much, without my paying for Premium membership, which I’m not going to do. Still they’ll tell me the top three companies my searchers work at. Frankly, I’m surprised by their names. I’m particularly surprised that IQVIA (a real company) has looked me up again, considering I have spoken to a real, live person – well, I assume she was real and live – to point out that I am absolutely not who they are looking for. So, why have they looked me up again? Didn’t they remove me from their list of hopefuls, as I rather strongly suggested?

This is Who I am Not

I am not, never have been, never will be a medic of any description. Do they really think that just because I have a PhD and am a post doctoral research fellow, I must therefore be a medical researcher?

I was not a straight-A-in-every-subject all-rounder: I have one narrowly-passed O-Level in Physical Chemistry. That’s is my sole scientific credential. The other ten O-Levels, and all subsequent qualifications, are non-scientific.

This is Who I am

I work in a Conservatoire! (To anyone in the USA, it would be called a conservatory.) I’m a musicologist, and my historical research crosses over into social history.

Anyway, to make things easier for them, I have improved my profile. Before tonight, perhaps it was a little ambiguous – to headhunters not familiar with what a Conservatoire is all about:-

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project.

And now?

This is What I do

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project into a Dundee Scots Song Competition 🎵.

  • I haven’t said I’m ‘Open to’ work of any kind, because I’m semi-retired, live in Glasgow with an elderly spouse, and could only possibly entertain part-time research which did not entail relocation.
  • I don’t wish to Enhance my profile using AI.
  • I shall, however, Add a section to help clarify that medical research is really, truly not my forte! I’ve linked to my publications list, and featured the paper I’m giving at the Royal Academy of Music’s September conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914:- ‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

Having written my conference paper and devised a PowerPoint, it’ll be back to transcribing oral history interviews on Thursday. The kind of thing you’d expect a musicologist/social historian to be doing, in fact!

And it Goes on

A week later – now we have pharmaceutical companies and animal health experts looking me up. What do I have to do …. ?!

LinkedIn Wrote about Changing Jobs

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

‘Changing Jobs? It’s emotional‘, says Jennifer Ryan, Segment Editor at LinkedIn. I settled down to read her posting, which collates what a number of people have said about the challenge of leaving a job you’ve held for a very long time. A lot of their comments made sense.

Retirees, This is Not About You

But then, just when I was thinking, ‘this is helpful’, Ryan threw a curveball:-

It’s one thing to retire after a decades-long career, relishing a chapter successfully concluded, say authors Dorie Clark and Natalie Nixon, PhD. However, leaving a job you’ve held for years in order to start your own venture or go to another company is “a different emotional and practical experience altogether”.

However, I AM retiring.  And rather than starting my own venture, I am just continuing part-time with the interesting research element of my job, that has hitherto been a partial secondment

Don’t Look Back

What I must do, I’ve decided, is STOP LOOKING BACK. Remember the Biblical story of Lot’s wife? She turned to look over her shoulder and turned to a pillar of salt.

Relishing a Chapter Successfully Concluded?

So, I need to make a concerted effort to stop kicking myself for opportunities I didn’t get, things I didn’t achieve, and disappointments I could do nothing about.

After all, I got a PhD whilst working full-time. I raised a family, ditto. I was a Fellow of CILIP, my professional association, until I decided to let the fellowship go, now that I’m ceasing to be a librarian. I’ve been an honorary Fellow at the University of St Andrews, and I’ve been elected an honorary Fellow of IAML (UK & Ireland) – my other professional association. And my second monograph is at the publisher’s.

Who cares if I’ve catalogued so many jazz CDs that my brain-cells have practically ossified? (They haven’t, or I wouldn’t be capable of writing books etc.) In five and a half weeks, it won’t matter how many of the things are still waiting to be catalogued, because I won’t be cataloguing them.

Maybe I should start repeating this mantra:-

Don’t Look Back (Boston)

(I was 20 when this song was written.  And I only stumbled across it tonight!)