Two scientists tell Julie Gould about how they planned their careers as junior researchers, and if their plans worked out.

In the third episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about career planning, Sam Smith, a behavioral oncologist at the University of Leeds, UK, reflects on his plan as an early career researcher to relocate to the United States and become a professor. Did things work out as planned?

Instead of chasing job titles at defined points in his career to help him achieve his goal, Smith says he focused on winning specific grants that enabled him to do “cool science and solve problems” along the way. But becoming a parent and needing to earn a higher salary led to a rethink.

Milicia Radisic, a cell and tissue engineer at the University of Toronto, Canada, left Serbia during the Yugoslav War in the 1990s, motivated in part by problems accessing scientific journals to develop her career expertise.

Radisic tells Gould that she now encourages her students to work on both high and low risk projects simultaneously. Having this kind of contingency plan protects them if, say, a high-impact paper in Science or Nature doesn’t work out. She also recommends that junior colleagues allocate plenty of time to regularly think about their career path and the direction it is taking.

Each episode in this series concludes with a sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) with the support of the China Association for Science and Technology. The ISC is exploring perspectives on career development in a changing world through conversations with emerging and established scientists on themes such as policy, AI, transdisciplinarity, mental health and international collaboration.