1. How Should I Prioritize My Time and Energy as an Undergrad?
Focus on learning, building your professional social skills, and developing your network in the alternative protein space.
2. Which Skills Should I Focus on Developing First?
What skill to focus on first depends on your long term career goal so I’d suggest thinking about that first. If you are unsure though, I’d suggest focusing on general skills (i.e. strategic and applied skills).
3. What Kinds of Internship or Project Opportunities Are Available in the Alternative Protein Space at the Undergraduate Level?
4. How Can I Help Make Our Alt Protein Project Chapter as Impactful as Possible?
Many high impact actions are doing something that’s never been done before. They are usually high risk, high reward (assuming you have some reasoning to justify so) which may be worth pursuing. Such ideas include starting an alt protein hackathon on campus, organizing an alt protein career fair, etc. That said, if you don’t want high risk, some more tried and true ideas for impact are creating a course on alt proteins, convincing professors to do research in alt proteins, and advocating to campus food services to have more plant-based options (or a meatless Monday).
5. Is It Too Early to Be Thinking About My Long-Term Career Direction?
It’s never too early to start thinking long term but just be aware that your interests change over time as well as the world job market changes over time. That said, I think creating a plan with specific goals for the next 1, 5, 10, and 30 years would be a useful exercise (80,000 Hours has templates/exercises to help with this, https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-plan-template/).
6. How Should I Balance Multiple Interests Without Losing Focus?
There are pros and cons to being a specialist as well as being a generalist. I’d say which to pursue depends on your career goal. For example, if you want to go into academia, then being a specialist is probably the best bet. However, if you have a lot of uncertainty about your career, then it might make sense to still be a generalist for now.
7. Who Should I Reach Out To and How?
Cold-email companies/organizations you’re interested in to learn more about them. Reach out to people whose role you’d like to have one day and request a meeting to learn about their journey.
Hello Elif,
Here are my thoughts on your questions.
1. How Should I Prioritize My Time and Energy as an Undergrad?
Focus on learning, building your professional social skills, and developing your network in the alternative protein space.
2. Which Skills Should I Focus on Developing First?
What skill to focus on first depends on your long term career goal so I’d suggest thinking about that first. If you are unsure though, I’d suggest focusing on general skills (i.e. strategic and applied skills).
3. What Kinds of Internship or Project Opportunities Are Available in the Alternative Protein Space at the Undergraduate Level?
There are many internship opportunities. Talist’s job board (https://altprotein.jobs/?s=vV4CAzhDojAgzfv1IuZN&utm_campaign=job-board&utm_medium=forward&utm_source=talist) has a filter for internships. It doesn’t hurt to reach out to companies to see if they are willing to hire an intern (you’d be surprised how many companies would find an intern very beneficial to them and are willing to hire one). In terms of projects, I would suggest either working on one of GFI’s solutions (https://gfi.org/solutions/) and/or find a researcher working on alt proteins (https://gfi.org/resource/alternative-protein-researcher-directory/) and offer to help them.
4. How Can I Help Make Our Alt Protein Project Chapter as Impactful as Possible?
Many high impact actions are doing something that’s never been done before. They are usually high risk, high reward (assuming you have some reasoning to justify so) which may be worth pursuing. Such ideas include starting an alt protein hackathon on campus, organizing an alt protein career fair, etc. That said, if you don’t want high risk, some more tried and true ideas for impact are creating a course on alt proteins, convincing professors to do research in alt proteins, and advocating to campus food services to have more plant-based options (or a meatless Monday).
5. Is It Too Early to Be Thinking About My Long-Term Career Direction?
It’s never too early to start thinking long term but just be aware that your interests change over time as well as the world job market changes over time. That said, I think creating a plan with specific goals for the next 1, 5, 10, and 30 years would be a useful exercise (80,000 Hours has templates/exercises to help with this, https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-plan-template/).
6. How Should I Balance Multiple Interests Without Losing Focus?
There are pros and cons to being a specialist as well as being a generalist. I’d say which to pursue depends on your career goal. For example, if you want to go into academia, then being a specialist is probably the best bet. However, if you have a lot of uncertainty about your career, then it might make sense to still be a generalist for now.
7. Who Should I Reach Out To and How?
Cold-email companies/organizations you’re interested in to learn more about them. Reach out to people whose role you’d like to have one day and request a meeting to learn about their journey.
Additional resources are my career guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHUQgAfMyQTMMcpLZ5LPNcQa7GJ6-JcqXYQ3KOGfuzE/edit?tab=t.0) and podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1884302). Also, feel free to reach out to me for a call if you want someone to bounce ideas off of.