PhD Transition Report On-Demand

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah reveals how you can better understand your profesional brand by discerning what others think about you
• Next, Isaiah explains how you can use your understanding of your professional brand to ensure you connect with the right employers
• Finally, Isaiah illustrates why this is important from the employer’s point of view

Imagine giving everyone you know plus a handful of strangers post-it notes and asking them to write down three things they can always count on you for, as well as three things they can never count on you for. What are the people who know you best going to write down? What are the people who barely know you going to write down?

The sum pattern of their answers is a strong indication of your professional brand—or how you will come off to employers prior to being hired and certainly after being hired. You could take the above exercise a step further—and I recommend you actually do—by asking different questions to tease out exactly how people see you.

You could ask: What three traits describe me best? What did you think of me when we first met? How has this changed over time? What made it change? The key to understanding your current professional brand is understanding how you come across to others holistically.

Once you understand this, all you have to do is either find an employer who is aligned with your professional brand or adjust your professional brand to align with an employer whose brand you value. You will likely end up doing some combination of the two.

Once an employer is aware of you—you’ve crossed over from invisible to visible—they carefully evaluate whether you are going to disrupt their professional lifestyle, their team’s current dynamic, or the company’s overall culture. In short, they’re looking for red flags. That’s right—every employer you interact with during the hiring process is asking themselves, Can I stand to be around this person for eight hours a day, five days a week?

You want to avoid them thinking, My God, I can’t even stand talking to this person on the phone for five minutes, let alone having to interact with them day in and day out. If you come across overly awkward, arrogant, defensive, boring, or negative, what does it say to your potential employer? What person in their right mind would recommend that their company hire such a person?

This may seem overly critical to you, but their scrutiny during the hiring process is justified. Consider it from the employer’s perspective. Even if you have twenty interviews with an employer and talk to dozens of people at the organization, they still have very little information about who you actually are.

Employers must carefully evaluate your candidacy and make certain you will not have a negative impact on them. They must also—and this is good news—go into the hiring process with positive intent. The intent must be to hire you, train you, and keep you on for years to come.

There’s no way around it. You must start considering yourself from the employer’s perspective because no employer will sacrifice their job for the sake of yours.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post What Would Others Write About You appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah tells the story of what used to happen to him when he relied on to-do lists to increase productivity
• Next, Isaiah reveals the scientific reasons of why to-do lists limit success
• Finally, Isaiah presents a strategy you can use to increase your productivity and keep your job search on track

In graduate school, I loved creating lists. I would write and rewrite lists of journal articles to read, experiments to do, people to network with, and workout routines to complete at night. 

Every time I created a new list, I felt really productive, like I had just created something concrete, something that moved me one step closer to accomplishing my goals. 

Of course, I never read any of the articles on the list; I only did the experiments I was told to do, and, once I showed up to the gym, did the same workout routine I had been doing for years. 

Every Sunday, I would spend an hour writing a list of fifty tasks to complete during the week. Then, I would stare blankly at the monster I just created, put the list aside, and continue checking my email and scrolling through my Facebook feed. 

Eventually, I realized that these to-do lists never resulted in practical results. Worse, they were reducing my productivity levels and damaging my initiative. Not only was creating these massive lists wasting significant amounts of my mental energy, but the infinite number of tasks on each list was also inhibiting my brain from deciding on which to complete.

Action items are rarely actionable. The greater the options you have, the fewer the decisions you are likely to make.

There are two scientific reasons why to-do lists limit success. The first is that the average to-do list exhibits heterogeneous complexity. In other words, the list contains some tasks that will take ten seconds to complete, some that will take ten minutes to complete, and some that will take ten hours to complete.

The average person will automatically focus on crossing off the ten-second tasks so he can receive the psychological payoff and dopamine release that comes with it as soon as possible. This means that tedious, yet important tasks (like writing a business proposal or completing the first chapter of your book) will stay on the list for a very long time.

The second reason why a to-do list limit success is that the average to-do list displays heterogeneous priority. Most to-do lists lack both context and hierarchy. This means the tasks that are most important to you “right now” will take top priority, even if they are a low priority overall.

Simultaneously, the tasks themselves do not provide any information about the best time to complete the task or how long each will take.

Learning to say “no,” on the other hand, protects productivity. Saying “no” also helps you prioritize. The fastest way to figure out what’s important to you is first to know what’s NOT important to you. (Just like every failed relationship you’ve ever had has taught you what you do NOT want in a partner more than it taught you what you do want.) 

This is true in even the smallest matters of life. For example, I may not know what I want for dinner, but I definitely know what I do NOT want for dinner. This process of elimination can help you narrow down what you really want most in your career.

Which careers do you definitely not want to get into? Which day-to-day activities do you definitely not want to do? Do you recognize what you do NOT need in your career and life? If not, it’s time to gain an intimate understanding of the magical two-letter word, “no.” This one, simple word can eliminate a lot of distractions, problems and even toxic people who might be holding you back in your career.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post Don’t Use A To-do List For Your Job Search appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah explains that the brain has a negative bias and how that works in our everyday live
• Next, Isaiah points out that you can use your negative bias to your advantage, but that won’t work if you just complain about the situations in your life
• Finally, Isaiah states that the best way to leverage your negative bias is by taking action

Your brain has a negative bias—it has a preference for negative information over positive information. This can help you in your job search. 

Studies show that negative information is quickly routed through your amygdala and into your long-term memory banks while positive information has to be held in your awareness for more than 12 seconds to be stored in your long-term memory banks. 

This is why you will remember the one negative comment your boss said to you during your performance review forever but will instantly forget the fifteen positive comments he made before and after. This is also why someone cutting you off in traffic or failing to hold the elevator for you on the way to work can ruin your entire day but someone smiling at you and saying “hello” or “thank you” barely alters your mood. 

What if you started using this negative bias to your advantage? What if you leveraged everything that happened to you, the good and the bad, into meaningful action?

The key is always to channel your mental energy into productive action—not just talk or, worse, complaints. No matter what happens to you, there’s no value in complaining about it. Complaining only makes things worse.

A study in the journal Developmental Psychology reported by the American Psychological Association found that people who vent to one another about their problems for extended periods of time are more likely to develop depression and anxiety.

Moreover, when you whine, you encourage other people to do it too. If you complain long enough, you’ll start to get pulled into other people’s conflicts.

Whether it’s a condescending comment from your advisor, a friend calling to complain, some troll baiting you on social media, or a colleague sending you a passive-aggressive email, you’ll dive headfirst into the drama. You can’t wait to mix things up and prove you’re right. But by doing so, you let these cynical and manipulative people win.

When mistakes, failures, and frustrating events happen, the only way to leverage them to your advantage is to regain control of your mindset, and start transforming your pain into productivity.

Don’t fall into the trap of complaining about the negative event or allowing other people to complain about it. Instead, channel all of your mental energy into positive, pragmatic action.

When something goes wrong, take action. When someone else complains about their life, ignore them and take action in your own life. See everything negative as a reason to work harder in your job search so you can move yourself into increasingly positive and productive positions in life.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post Use Your Negative Bias To Get Hired appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah states why your technical skills won’t get you hired in industry and why you should focus on your transferable skills instead
• Next, Isaiah reveals why PhDs overlook their transferable skills when creating their professional profiles, which makes them lose professional opportunities
• Finally, Isaiah discusses why you need to let go of your technical skills if your want to advance your career and get an industry job

The idea that you will be hired because of your technical or specialty skills is a lie. That’s one of the last things employers truly care about. Sure, if you put buzz words on your resume that match the words in the job posting, you might get a callback, but those skills are not going to get you a job offer.

There’s an immense amount of data showing that the number one reason employers hire PhDs is because of their transferable skills. Your transferable skills are the softer skills that transfer from sector to sector, company to company, and job to job in industry.

Unfortunately, most PhDs cannot swallow their skills being labeled as “soft.” Most PhDs struggle to list even the most basic skills industry employers are hoping to see: project management, time management, writing and editing, and market knowledge.

These sound too simple, and academia has taught you that simple means less intelligent and less valuable, when most often the opposite is true. Most PhDs don’t even list research, analysis, work ethic, innovation, comprehension, or problem-solving on their résumés or LinkedIn profiles.

They would rather posture and list niche-specific skills that sound impressive (but are skipped rather than read) like fluorescence microscopy, real-time PCR, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and anything with the word qualitative or quantitative in it.

I know what you are thinking: … but … but … I have a PhD! What did I do all my advanced technical training for if I can’t use it to get hired? You have a PhD? Me too. So what?

Guess who are some of the most overworked and underpaid people in the world right now? Guess who has more debt than anyone else? That’s right—PhDs. Despite all the education and advanced technical training, most PhDs are unsuccessful in their careers.

Perhaps you spent your time in academia developing some extraordinarily complex laboratory technique. Did you learn advanced molecular biology techniques or how to rewire commercial electrical systems? Did you study for two years straight to master a field and then spend several years compiling a thesis that helped push a niche scientific or interdisciplinary field forward?

While that’s great, the technical skills you learned along the way will be obsolete in a few years, if not a few months. In fact, many of them are obsolete already. And the specialty methods you learned, while useful in academia, have been streamlined or completely replaced with more innovative methods in industry.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post How To Communicate Your Skills To Employers appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah explains why mental energy is your most valuable asset
• Next, Isaiah discusses why it is so difficult to protect your mental energy
• Finally, Isaiah gives some advice to make the most out of your mental energy

Fatigue can ruin your career. Whether it’s burnout, exhaustion, stress, apathy or up and down energy levels, nothing has ruined more careers than mental fatigue.

This is because nothing can save you from your fatigued mind. Not time—hours don’t matter when your brain is incapable of making good decisions. Not money—dollars won’t buy you clarity or stamina. Not relationships—how can you make others happy when you can’t do it for yourself? 

If you’ve ever sat in front of the TV to watch something you’ve seen before because you’re tired, you know that time is not your most valuable resource.

If you’ve ever bought anything beyond food, water, shelter, or your other basic needs, you know money is not your most valuable resource. 

If you’ve ever wanted to help more people, give more to your current relationships, or build new ones, but were stretched too thin by your current obligations, you know that relationships are not your most valuable resource either.

Mental energy is your most valuable asset. Without it, you won’t have the enthusiasm, motivation, drive, and physical energy to live a full life rich in all of those things listed above.

Scientific studies published in the Harvard Business Review and Cambridge University Press evidence that you only get about 90-120 minutes of peak mental energy and five hours or less of “near” peak mental energy each day, respectively. For the rest of the day, your mental energy levels are medium to low at best.

The good news is that if you get enough sleep, your energy replenishes 100%. Studies published in the journal Studies in Sleep Medicine reveal that the right amount of REM sleep (four to six cycles) completely restores your mental energy each day.

That’s good but even if you start each day at 100%, your mental energy is going to drop quickly and you want to cherish your mental energy.

People carefully protect the money in their bank account and the time in their calendar, but they do little to protect their attention. Attention is the gateway to your mental energy.

Where your attention goes, your mental energy flows. And more often than not, it’s flowing toward something someone else wants. Taking back your mental energy is not a cakewalk. It’s a dogfight. Even your own mind is going to fight viciously to keep you distracted.

All the “yeses” you’ve said and all the obligations you’ve taken on in the past have created a kind of “psychological immune system.”

This immune system has evolved to protect your sense of homeostasis. It does so by rejecting any attempts you make to change where you direct your effort. Your brain hates change; it likes distraction. It wants you to stay in this comfort zone of distraction you’ve created, wasting your energy on the wrong things.

Distraction is safe, see? There are other rewards, too. Your brain likes the approval you get by saying “yes” to others. It likes the stimulation of drama and gossip. It likes being a small part of everything and a big part of nothing. You need to repair this immune system if you want to get hired in industry. It starts with being highly selective in what you invest your mental energy in.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post Your Most Valuable Asset appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah presents the number one reason why you don’t have an industry job: you’re invisible to employers
• Next, Isaiah argues that you’re invisibile by choice and what you can do to change that
• Finally, Isaiah discusses how academia tends to isolate PhDs and makes them prone to come up with excuses and why you need to stop this trend and take action

The number one reason employers are not hiring you in industry is because you’re invisible to them. We live in the attention economy, and as a PhD who has spent their entire life in academia, you’re attention-poor.

Your resume is being ignored due to obscurity. Despite what they admit publicly, most industry companies care very little about your technical skills. They can teach you the technical skills you need to learn on the job.

With attention to technical skills off the table, industry employers are not hiring you because you’re invisible to them. Everything else you tell yourself about why you are being ignored is a waste of time and is a cover for your unorganized, inactive job search.

It’s so much easier to blame lack of success in your job search on the lack of some skill, certification, or degree when the hard truth is that you can’t get hired because you refuse to reach out to meet employers or employees.

It’s your refusal to have challenging conversations with people in industry that is keeping you from transitioning. Think of all the tools you have at your disposal today for getting an employer’s attention. You can find everything you need to know about an employer on their website. They might even have a careers page that gives you specific information about how to get in touch with them. You can find these employers on LinkedIn too, including every employee who works at these companies. You can email these employers or simply pick up the phone, call their office, and ask to speak to someone in the hiring department.

So, let’s not pretend like you can’t get an employer’s attention. Instead, let’s admit the truth: you’re invisible by choice.

As PhDs, we are trained for years and years to keep to ourselves, and, over time, we have become isolated in our ivory towers. In our isolation, we tell ourselves stories that fit our situation and shift blame off ourselves and onto imaginary forces.

We imagine that we’re not being contacted by industry employers because our PhD has made us overqualified. We imagine that our PhD background is too niche or that we lack some specific skill on a job posting.

In reality, we just don’t want to reach out to anyone because it’s too uncomfortable. Nobody in industry knows you, and nobody will know you if you keep doing what you’re doing.

There’s a cost to playing the attention game incorrectly. Many hiring managers and recruiters will never come back to a job candidate’s LinkedIn profile once they have decided that you lack industry credibility. Worse, many top employers have a mandatory six- to twelve-month waiting period before they will reconsider you for a position at their company once they have reviewed your resume and rejected your candidacy for a position.

Your industry job search is not a trial-and-error affair. This is not academia. If you’re performing a poor and sloppy job search, you’re burning bridges, and it’s time for you to stop.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post The Invisible Job Candidate appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

Do you know which career is right for you? Most PhDs never set professional goals even though university studies show that just writing down your goals increases your odds of attaining them by 33.54 percent. Instead, most PhDs work on whatever is put in front of them. They fall into whatever position academia gives them permission to hold.

The few PhDs who start searching for a job outside of academia and do the research necessary to start understanding the industry landscape, sectors, and job titles often get lured into chasing a title that sounds impressive but will never lead them to the professional lifestyle they truly want.

Who cares if Medical Science Liaison is trending if you don’t want to travel and hate giving presentations? Sure, the title of Management Consultant demands respect and recognition, but does that matter if you hate Microsoft Excel and your personal situation would never allow you to work eighteen hours a day, five days a week, onsite in a different city every week, fifty-two weeks a year?

Perhaps you thought becoming a PhD and being called “doctor” was going to automatically result in a tenured, untouchable position that came with respect, rewarding work, and all the resources needed to excel. How did that work out for you?

How is that working out for your advisor or for most lifetime academics? What if you could go back and shadow your advisor or any professor or principal investigator (PI)? Would you have planned your career differently?

Would you have created a better target for yourself? Actually, let’s back up. Do you even know what’s important to you in life? Do you know what you’re chasing and why? If not, you’re in trouble.

Let’s make things more practical. Start by asking yourself, which activities do you want to spend your work day doing? Which will make you feel the happiest? I’m not talking about overly simplistic, hedonistic happiness. I’m talking about deeper, more complex fulfillment—the lasting happiness that comes with meaningful achievement.

What daily professional actions will lead you to the most meaningful achievement? What characteristics of your career would lead to those actions? Let’s find out with some simple questions you’ve likely never asked yourself.

Do you want to work with a large team or a small team? Or perhaps no team? Do you want to work with numbers? If so, are you interested in large data sets or smaller data sets? Do you prefer to collect and analyze quantitative data or qualitative data?

Do you want a position where you have to read and write a lot? If so, you will want to consider writing-intensive positions. Do you want to work at the company’s headquarters or at one of their smaller, remote, satellite locations? Or do you want to work full-time in the field (or at a home office)? Are you willing to travel and, if so, how frequently?

When it comes to a company’s operations, where on the spectrum of innovation and commercialization do you want to be? Without asking yourself these tougher questions first, you’ll never be able to set a target career path for your job search.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post What Does Your Perfect Work Day Look Like? appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah presents the innovation and commercialization career spectrum and goes into details about the innovation side of the spectrum
• Next, Isaiah dives deep into the commercialization side of the spectrum
• Finally, Isaiah presents a list of PhD-level industry positions ranked on where they fall in the innovation and commercialization career spectrum

All industry job titles can be considered in terms of where they are on a spectrum of innovation and commercialization.

This may be a new concept to you if you’ve been in academia your entire life where nearly two-thirds of all research is basic, so let’s break it down. The world of business has innovation on one side of a spectrum and commercialization on the other.

The innovation side might start with a company’s intellectual property (IP), or perhaps the very beginning of an idea before it becomes a company’s IP. It includes ideation (brainstorming ideas), validation (validating the best ideas based on what a company’s clients want, need, and might buy), and the creation of a value proposition (an offer to solve a problem that a client has).

Across the spectrum, these phases of conceptualization (or innovation) slowly transform into production, or the commercialization of products and services.

There are many phases and job titles that span the middle of the spectrum, including ones in manufacturing, quality control, and quality assurance.

Once the product or service is complete, it would “go-to-market” and be put on shelves (physical, online, or otherwise) to be sold.

These products and services would then need to be supported by sales teams, marketing teams, customer services teams, and even installation and engineering teams.

I alluded to dozens of different careers, or job titles, as I was discussing the spectrum of innovation and commercialization above.

On the innovation side, an employer might need a Patent Examiner, Patent Scientist, Technical Advisor, and Patent Agent. They might also need a Regulatory Affairs Associate, or perhaps a team of Recordkeepers or Documentation Specialists.

As an idea is turned into a product, the company would need Project Managers, Product Managers, R&D Researchers, Scientists, Engineers, Quality Control and Quality Assurance Specialists, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, Informatics Specialists, Clerks, Technicians, Operational Support Specialists, and more.

Once production crosses from early stages of development to manufacturing and distribution, Manufacturing Agents, Product Engineers, and factory positions of all kinds are needed, such as Shippers, Truckers, Distribution Agents, and Delivery Agents.

Additional marketing positions would be involved throughout this process, including Strategic Marketers, Tactical Marketers, Marketing Communication Specialists, Medical Writers, Technical Writers, Marketing Education Writers, Editors, Translators, Portfolio Managers, and more Project Managers and Product Managers.

Once the product goes to market, Technical Support Specialists, Customer Service Representatives, Sales Associates, Sales Managers, Application Specialists, Retail Associates, User Experience Researchers, IT Specialists, and Storefront Support and Online Support positions of all kinds are needed.

The questions to ask yourself again are: what activities do you want to do on a daily basis and where do you want to be on the spectrum?

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post The Innovation And Commercialization Career Spectrum appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah discloses what a pragmatic mindset is and how it’s different from other mindsets
• Next, Isaiah presents data on the positive effects of having a pragmatic mindset
• Finally, Isaiah discusses why having the right mindset is the most important aspect to keep motivation high

Your mindset defines your point of view, or the way you look at the world.

If you’re always looking at things from a limited viewpoint—you don’t have enough time, you’re too old, you’re too busy—you’ll always have a limited attitude, and you’ll never make progress in your job search. You’ll never reach your full potential in your career either.

Likewise, if you’re always taking on too much at once—inflating what is logically possible for you to achieve or succumbing to every desire that presents itself—you’ll always feel behind, overwhelmed, and out of control. As a result, you’ll always be in pain.

The only way to relieve this pain is to transform your mindset. You must develop a pragmatic mindset. You must become a pragmatist. A pragmatic mindset will ensure that you stay in touch with reality while always maintaining a sense of personal responsibility in your life.

A pragmatic mindset will also increase your resilience, which is the key to overcoming the pain associated with trauma, tragedy, or adversity.

Studies reported by the American Psychological Association confirm that people who have a pragmatic mindset are more resilient and that resilient people, when faced with stress, are measurably happier than those who are not resilient.

The same studies showed that resilient people, in turn, have a more stable state of mind overall. Pragmatism is about protecting your mindset, and protecting yourself against unwanted thoughts and desires is essential for goal attainment.

Research from the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin agrees that if you don’t strategically protect yourself from damaging internal influences by controlling your mindset, you are more likely to sabotage your success.

Have you ever pulled back right before reaching a big goal? Have you ever refused to ask for help and tried, unsuccessfully, to do everything yourself? Have you ever overthought a situation and, as a result, failed to make the right decision? This is self-sabotage and it’s the result of impractical thinking.

A scientific study in the Journal of Applied Psychology looked at personality and goal-striving and found that a person’s mindset emerged as the most important aspect of the self-regulation process and an important motivational strategy that successful people use while working toward goal achievement.

Your mindset today will control where you end up tomorrow. Science shows that when a pragmatic mindset is maintained, goals get achieved, and people feel an increased sense of well-being and improved mood, as well as an increased ability to select, set, and achieve future goals.

Maintaining a pragmatic mindset will protect you against threats of both internal and external distraction. By learning to think pragmatically, you’ll notice an increase in self-reliance, internal motivation, and commitment to your career goals, which will transform the pain of your current position into productivity in your job search.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post Having A Pragmatic Mindset appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah illustrates why you should never rely on trial and error during your search by telling the story of a PhD he recently talked to in a transition call
• Next, Isaiah gives an example of how using trial and error will significantly reduce your chances of getting hired
• Finally, Isaiah gives some advice of the strategy you should follow if you want to see results in your job search fast

Experimentation is a horrible transition strategy. I recently talked to a PhD who had lost funding and was unemployed. They were completely desperate to get hired, which is something I hate seeing but, unfortunately, see too often.

Like most PhDs, this person thought that getting hired would be pretty straight forward. They thought that once they really started trying in their job search, opportunities would come faster and faster. Only, they didn’t come faster. In fact, they came slower.

That’s when this PhD sent me a direct message and we ended up talking on a Transition Call. “It seems like the harder I try in my job search, the harder things are getting.” Well, I said, that’s because it is getting harder. As you continue to get rejected through your trial and error approach, your reputation is going down in industry.

Trial and error works in research, not in a job search. Industry employers talk and if your job search approach is sloppy, other hiring managers, recruiters, talent acquisition specialists and HR managers will start avoiding you.

The applicant tracking systems and AI that employers use talk to each other. That’s right, your data is being collected in your job search, just like everywhere else in life.

Sure, it might be partially de-identified or encrypted (probably not but maybe) and as you get rejected more and more in these AI systems, your reputation score will start to go down.

Take LinkedIn for example, if employers keep “bouncing” away from your profile because it’s too academic, your visibility score will plummet. If you apply to a company’s AI system and get rejected, that system will often prevent you from being considered by an actual person for up to a year.

If this is news to you then you need to wake up and realize that no one is going to wait around for you to figure out how to execute a job search properly. No one is going to give you the benefit of the doubt and think, well, they don’t know what they’re doing now but I’m sure they’ll figure it out later.

You need to get organized, get the right information, execute the right job search strategy, and start having a much higher level or professional awareness.

Otherwise, you will damage your reputation in industry before you even transition.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.

The post Trial And Error Works In Research, Not A Job Search appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.