Career counseling

The OITE is here to support you in the process of exploring career options and deciding what comes next for you. We empower you to make informed choices that align with your unique goals and values.

Whether you are just starting out and want to broadly consider your career options or you are ready to apply and want to make sure you are as competitive as possible, our career counselors are here for you. We provide support for postdoc searches and job applications in all sectors, in the U.S. and abroad. All careers are valuable careers – you have our support, whatever your goal.

Our counselors begin by getting to know you and your career development goals. We will discuss career readiness skills and help you understand how the career process works. We will help you prepare for informational interviews and use assessments and discussion to identify your skills, values, and interests. We appreciate that you may change your mind and will tailor our approach to support you through that process.

Our career counselors can help you refine your application documents, such as cover letters, resumés, and CVs. They can prepare you for your interviews with all types of employers. Once you have a job offer, they can help you consider negotiation strategies.

Drawing from their extensive expertise, our career counselors provide recommendations and strategies to weigh your career options, to make decisions, and to manage the stress of career planning.

Get support for graduate and professional (including medical) school from the OITE educational advisors.

The OITE is committed to assisting you with your next step. However, given the large number of trainees, we want to clarify the extent and nature of the services we can provide.

1. In order to maintain availability, each person can only book one appointment, with one counselor, at a time. All staff have been trained for consistency so you need not contact multiple staff for different perspectives.
2. Cancellations should happen at least 24 hours prior to scheduled appointment time. Appointments are in high demand, and your early cancelation will give another person the possibility to have access to a career counselor.
3. Our application material reviews critique the structure and organization of near-final documents. We do not provide correction of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

Our workshops, courses, Q&As, and other resources support you every step of the way. We also coordinate with the OITE well-being team to offer workshops and small group discussions focused on application stress, performance anxiety, the long wait for employers to get back to you, and the disappointment of rejection.  We will support you through the stress of the process and welcome you to talk about reapplication strategies while hoping they are not needed.  All of our events are advertised online and in our daily emails. Trainees who start the process early do better than those who wait. We are here to help you every step of the way.

View our career readiness resources.

Reach out to us with questions at oite@nih.gov