Dr Becca has a nice reminder to send thank you notes after you interview. Totes. After the workshop we hosted last year, I sent hand-written, snail-mail thank you notes to every speaker. It might have been overkill, but I think it left a positive impression. In fact, a few of the speakers emailed to thank me for the thank you note!
That workshop was a ton of work. Work that kept me from doing other things, like research. It was worth it, though, because I got a ton of visibility and really expanded my network. I sent the thank you notes because we were genuinely grateful to have such great talks, and because I wanted to reinforce my new relationship with the excellent scientists who gave them. On the flip side, I think there was some risk of seeming like a secretary with the hand-written notes.
We'll probably have another workshop this year. I'm trying to decide how much involvement I want (to the extent that I'm allowed to decide). I have lots of ideas for how to improve it, I'm intensely interested in the topic, and it's an amazing opportunity for networking. But: I don't want people to think I'm a postdoc who organizes meetings instead of doing serious research. I think the key is to approach it as a group effort by the organizing committee instead of one person (me) being the obvious lead.
2 comments:
Hand-written thank you notes sound lovely, and it seems like your speakers appreciated it. (I see the risk of seeming like a secretary, but I really hope they did not take it that way.) I was part of the organizing team for a meeting here, and some speakers wrote us thank you emails because they enjoyed it so much.
Also, I agree with you that it's a lot of work -- I might do it again, but not so soon. Right now there's a new team organizing the 2nd round of this meeting, and while I'm happy to answer any questions and tell them how we did what, and whether it worked well, I wouldn't be able to spend all this time with the organization right now.
Yeah, I'd rather not do it again right away. But I also don't want to give it up to anyone else who'd be available to do it! I guess that means that if I do it, I shouldn't complain about it being a time suck. :)
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