Dates: Fall 2025-Summer 2026. Potential for renewal.
Deadline to apply: July 7, 2025
Compensation: $1300/month
Positions available: 2
Work location: Hybrid, flexible (most work will be done virtually; occasional Mission Bay or Parnassus events)
Hours: Expectation is that hours average 10 per week, with flexibility around academic and personal obligations.
The Office of Career and Professional Development is hiring two PhD students to join our team of Career and Professional Development Interns. (Learn more about our vision and values.) We’re looking for students who are excited to support career and professional development for the UCSF community and are interested in learning more about evidence-based approaches to professional skill-building, career exploration, job applications, and other career and professional development topics.
Why become a Career and Professional Development Intern?
Interns will have a significant impact on the future of career and professional development at UCSF by working directly with students and postdocs in your community. Our interns benefit from embedded career and professional development for their own career journey while also strengthening and demonstrating skills that employers in all sectors find valuable, such as leadership, collaboration, and communication.
What you’ll be doing:
- Self-directed projects: Interns will spend a majority of their time working on projects of their own design, supervised and mentored by both an OCPD Career Consultant and a senior intern. Projects should support one of the following focal areas:
- Feedback data and assessment: OCPD is dedicated to continuous improvement and meeting the needs of our community as they change. Interns may focus on designing a project to gather feedback and assess the impact of OCPD at UCSF.
- Presenting/facilitating programs: In our mission to provide new and responsive career education, interns may focus on presenting and facilitating new programs, workshops, or trainings.
- Career path education: The diversity of jobs that UCSF graduates pursue is expansive and nuanced. In order to support the widest possible range of career options, interns may focus on collecting career path specific information (through research, informational interviewing, etc.) to disseminate back to the UCSF community.
- Resource development: We are committed to having a wide range of immediately available resources on all subject areas covered at OCPD. Interns will be encouraged to develop resources that help meet areas of need.
- Outreach: Promoting understanding of career and professional development amongst students and postdocs on campus, and encouraging students and postdocs to engage with us
- Meetings: Interns spend (about 1-2 hours/week) meeting as a cohort, for trainings and to get group feedback on their projects; and/or meeting with their supervisors for mentorship and check-ins.
- Self-directed training: Interns are supported to work toward their own career and professional development goals by familiarizing themselves with the OCPD’s resources and receiving mentorship from peers and supervisors. Examples could include attending an OCPD workshop, researching a career path of interest to you, doing informational interviews, or attending a networking event during working time.
Eligibility:
- Current UCSF PhD student in any program who has advanced to candidacy or will advance to candidacy before starting the position. We will entertain applicants for a start date as late as October 2025.
- If you are offered the position, you must receive written permission from your P.I. and department
- International students may be eligible depending on visa type and should consult with ISSO.
What we’re looking for:
Required skills and experience:
- Demonstrated strong judgment in navigating group dynamics and the needs of different participants
- Proactive communication style and record of successfully communicating with diverse groups
- Experience working collaboratively
Any of following skills and experiences are not required, but would be a plus:
- Established involvement with organizations or community that would benefit from partnership with OCPD
- Group or 1:1 facilitation, mentoring, or coaching
- Leadership
- Advocacy/activism
- Enacting the principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion
- Needs assessment
- Website development; video creation and editing; email marketing
We especially welcome applications from those who have lived experience with or expertise in the career and professional development needs of:
- BIPOC students/postdocs
- First-gen students and postdocs
- Humanities, social science, and population science students/postdocs
- International students/postdocs
We currently have two positions available. To apply, please email a resume and cover letter to Dr. David Blancha at [email protected] by Monday, July 7, 2025 at 5pm PT. In your cover letter, please describe your initial ideas or interest in the focal areas for self-directed projects described above. Please indicate the area that you are most interested in working on. We are excited to hear about your ambitious ideas for supporting the UCSF community!