Job Search the Smart Way

Networking is really hard and difficult. It's hard to put yourself out there and ask people for help. So, it's demoralizing when you are reaching out to people on LinkedIn but nobody is writing you back. 

In this episode, Dr. Maren Wood talks about some of the biggest mistakes graduate students and PhDs are making when reaching out to people on LinkedIn. To be effective at networking, you need to think about WHO you're reaching out to, WHEN you're reaching out to them, and WHY you're reaching out to them. 

Many graduate students and PhDs try to stay "open to anything" in their job search. They wrongly assume that staying broad in their job search will help them land an opportunity quickly. They worry about being "too picky."

While you don't want to unnecessarily limit your options, you DO want to be clear on who you are as a job candidate and how your unique combinations of talents and skills can help an organization succeed. This means conducting a lot of market research to really understand your audience. 

In this episode, you'll learn how to find the "sweet spot" between being too narrow and too broad in your job search. 

Networking is one of the most important ways to explore career options and land jobs. But it can be intimidating and overwhelming, especially if you don't have a network. How do you build a network if you don't have a network? In this episode, Maren shares tips and strategies you can use to help graduate students, PhDs, and alumni, build authentic networks so that they can identify career options, land opportunities, and build meaningful careers.  

Many job seekers spend hours stressing about perfecting their resumes. It makes sense - it's something you can control. We often use resumes as a metric in the job search, counting the number we've submitted or the number we plan to send per week. It can be frustrating and demoralizing when we don't hear back from employers.

In this episode, Maren discusses 3 common myths about resumes, and how job seekers can actually land interviews for coveted positions. 

Alumni are struggling. In study after study after study, the evidence is clear: alumni are not able to build the careers they want with their degrees. And when alumni struggle, they blame their institution and their education. 

And they do so, publicly. 

In this episode, Dr. L. Maren Wood shares data on the underemployment crisis affecting graduate students, and how their negative experiences are impacting the reputation and long-term financial future of graduate programs. 

Graduate alumni are struggling to land jobs where they can leverage their education and training. About 40% of master's degree holders and 34% of PhDs report being in jobs that don't actually benefit from their advanced education and training. 

In this episode, L. Maren Wood, PhD, talks about the implicit and explicit promise of graduate education - that it will help students build jobs and lives they couldn't without their degrees. But, when so many alumni are underemployed, it erodes the American public's trust in graduate education. 

The way to fix this problem? Universities need to scale career education and job search support so that alumni are able to build careers where they are paid for their education and training. 

There's a trend happening in tech: companies are including language in job ads stating that they will not accept academics transitioning out of higher education for new positions.  Why? 

In this episode, L. Maren Wood discusses the chasms between industry and academia that make it difficult for new graduates to land opportunities. While academia values credentials and academic disciplines, employers value skills and the application of those skills. Industry and academia have very different work styles, and master's students and PhDs have an enormous learning curve when they enter industry; many companies don't have the resources to retrain academics.  And finally, universities are doing an inadequate job of preparing students for the job search. 

We talk about "graduate students" as though doctoral and master's students are the same. They are not. PhD and master's students pursue their education and training with very different goals in mind. Doctoral programs and master's programs look nothing alike.  The challenges that master's and doctoral students encounter when they apply for jobs in industry are also very, very, different.

In this first episode of season two, L. Maren Wood, PhD, shares research findings about the unique challenges facing doctoral students and  master's students. To provide effect career and professional development training, we need to understand the different segments of the graduate student population. 

We're concluding our final episode for Season 1 of the podcast with some big wins! 

In this episode, Maren shares success stories of podcast listeners who recently landed nonacademic jobs. What did they do to be successful? They evaluated their strategy and identified where they were going wrong in their job search.  

In this episode, Maren shares these wins, what these PhDs did to land their new jobs, and gives you that pep-talk you were needing to make big changes in 2022. 

A lot of PhDs are frustrated by the idea that they need to start entry-level in their nonacademic careers. That somehow, entry level is an insult to our advanced education and training. In this episode, Maren talks about why entry level positions are actually an opportunity and a critical component of building a new nonacademic career.