PhD Transition Report On-Demand

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

• First, Isaiah explains what should PhDs know about referral and informational interviews
• Next, Isaiah reveals the different parts of informational interviews leading to referral
• Finally, Isaiah describes the questions that frame things positively in an informational interview

Referral is one of the most reliable methods for getting hired. But it starts with networking. Setting up informational interviews is imperative for networking. PhDs often get stuck at the connection phase. Some may not hear back even after sending a personalized message to recruiters, talent, acquisition specialists, or even just employees working at those companies. You may doubt if you are even on the right track or following the right strategy. You don’t know how to go from connecting or even getting a connection to getting that job referral. It is important to learn how to ask for a referral in your informational interview without sounding awkward. 

You need to interview the person, with a discovery mindset. There is an authentic process, a structure. Something that is not painful to you. When there’s a lot of uncertainty, we feel like we’re putting ourselves out there without knowing what’s going to happen next. You will have to understand what’s going to happen next and control it. An informational interview is your conversation that you have to carry forward. You’re the one that wants a referral. 

At Cheeky Scientist, we talk about the three-step job search referral strategy to attain success. And this is a proprietary methodology that I invented for PhDs because we like structure. 

Informational interviews to generate referrals have three main parts. So the three parts are getting a reply, adding value, and then going into the deeper stages of the informational interview. You need to understand that every problem is followed by another problem in your job search. You reach out and the person answers, and then you’re stuck. Next you wonder what to speak about. 

Going from getting a reply to the second step needs adding value. This requires you to carry the conversation forward. And from there, you can go into more informational interviews and structured questions. You can congratulate them on where they are in their career. You could ask them what they’re working on at their home? And then that goes deeper into asking about challenges and more. 

As you get into that third stage you would have more formal informational interview questions. They’re clearly informational interview questions about the person and their career, but not formal. You should never ask somebody to do an informational interview. It adds too much pressure, you want to keep it casual. 

You’re keeping things within the realm of professionalism, career, but you’re keeping it light. 

The way you do this casually is to start from the first level of professional intimacy. After getting a reply, you can ask them what they’re working on that they’re excited about. Although, it’s the same thing as asking, what’s new, but you’re keeping it within the context of their career. This is a great way to get people talking. When they talk, they’re going to tell you something it’s easy for them to think about. There’s always something in the mind of every individual that they’re working on.  So that allows you to go to the second level of professional intimacy. 

Just extending the first question you can comment on something that they mentioned. And ask, what are some of the challenges that are associated with that right now? They’re going to go deeper. But now you’re elevating not just their credibility in the sense, but you’re elevating their work ethic. You’re showing appreciation for the challenges they’ve overcome. And they’re going to tell you the challenges at the same time that what’s going on subconsciously, this person is having a deeper conversation about the challenges that they’re facing.

The first level of professional intimacy may be topical with everything’s going fine. But you just subtly went a little bit deeper. You asked them about the challenges associated with what they said to the first question. Subtly, change the context from talking about their career, to specifically asking them how they got hired.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post How To Ask For A Job Referral Without Things Getting Awkward appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains what PhDs should know about using LinkedIn for their job search
• Next, Isaiah reveals the different metrics LinkedIn uses to highlight people seriously looking for jobs
• Finally, Isaiah describes the 5 strategies to follow everyday in order to procure high-paying industry positions

PhDs should work everyday to land their dream job. You have to attract recruiters on LinkedIn who are looking for PhD job candidates. You spend a lot of time in academia following academic social norms. So, the number one thing you require is to overcome that obscurity. This is something that I know very well, not just from working with thousands of PhDs, but myself. I thought I would be found much easier until reality showed me otherwise.

No matter how many resumes I uploaded, or how much time I spent on LinkedIn, nobody contacted me. But I still saw some employers looking at my page. The question hounded me: why were they not reaching out to me? I could not understand this. If my profile was unsearchable, how did they come across my profile in the first place? I had no idea how  I would show up if I wasn’t even connected to them. 

Later, I found out that there was a separate LinkedIn page called the LinkedIn recruiter or LinkedIn talent insights. Recruiters use the platform to scan for potential candidates. I was showing up and of course they were coming to my profile but they were bouncing away. 

Recruiters were bouncing away everyday. That’s what is called when you bounce off of a webpage or a profile page. This metric shows how quickly somebody bounces off of your page is used by LinkedIn. If your bounce rate is very high, it decreases your visibility. This was all new to me. 

As academics, we really get into the weeds of a particular field. We may know how academia works, but we certainly don’t understand how industry works. This makes it difficult for us to comprehend how a job search for an industry job works. And so we get demotivated pretty quickly. We do something, but it doesn’t yield results. So, we learn to be helpless. It may look like what we do doesn’t matter but that’s not true. We just don’t have the right strategies. PhDs need to learn the rituals that must be done everyday. The little things that you can do everyday matters. 

The number one metric that LinkedIn uses to determine who’s seriously looking for a job in industry, is updating your LinkedIn profile. PhDs have to update your LinkedIn profile a little bit every day. Now, if you’re LinkedIn, you would want to keep all of your big contracts with big companies open. You can do that by making sure that you’re showing them the job candidates who are actively looking for jobs. So they don’t waste their time. 

Update your profile a couple of days in a row, it’s like putting your hand up and waving it on LinkedIn. Then, LinkedIn takes your profile and shows it to the recruiters. 

So I want to recommend updating your profile a little bit every day. You could start with your headline then go to your summary. Then go to your experience section every day, this can go on for months, depending on when you need a job. But you’ve to start this extremely early and do it seriously for months.

Make your resume keyword-intensive. You see a job posting, you take your resume template and look at the key words. You must read the job posting carefully, which is a good daily practice in itself. And target your resume to that job. This is so important because it’ll help you start seeing things from the employer’s point of view. 

Reach out to two new people every day. Just do every weekday to start. That’s 10 people, 10 new people a week. On average, if you’re using our networking scripts, you’re going to get 30-40% replying to you. You will have activated a network. You’re having these conversations, which will further increase your visibility on LinkedIn. 

Conduct an informational interview per day. This can be simply by LinkedIn chat or email. Make it about their subjective experience. Always build your rationale. As PhDs you should dominate any rationale based questions. Build rationale for the job you want and stick to it.

Remember you’re selling yourself. This is persuasion. You have to have confirmation bias. You have to tell them I want to work here over anywhere else.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Do This Everyday If You Want To Attract Recruiters appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should know about wage push inflation
• Next, Isaiah reveals the different checkpoints to go through for transitioning from academia to industry
• Finally, Isaiah describes the 5 strategies to use wage push inflation to procure senior industry positions

Wage push is imperative especially when we are in a very rare time in terms of the timeline of humanity. We’re going through a period that’s called wage push inflation. So it’s an overall rise in the cost of goods that result from a rise in wages. Companies need to maintain corporate profits even after an increase in wages. Therefore, employers must increase the prices they charge for goods and services that they provide. The overall increased cost of goods and services has a secure, circular effect on the wage increase. Hence, everything increases together. 

Globally, since the pandemic we are seeing inflation occur. Governments helped people with money stimulus packages because of the pandemic. These have caused an influx of liquidity into the marketplace which has pushed wages up. Although money in the market has increased there is a shortage of labor. People are reluctant to get back into the job market, many of them have either gone back to school or they’ve applied to higher level jobs at the same time. 

So there is an increased liquidity but a decreased supply of labor. 

There’s a lot of different checkpoints that you have to go through to get a transition. Some goals for transition can even be just moving out of bench work, getting into a better management role and a good salary hike. This is something every PhD can get whether you have industry experience or not. You may have a gap on your resume or been in academia for too long. But now is your time to take advantage of the wage push inflation, and what’s going on in the job market. You must understand where you have leverage.

So number one, it’s important to face the reality that you are still invisible. Arguably, PhDs are now more in demand than they ever have been before in the job market. But you’re fighting obscurity right now. Many PhDs don’t even have their recruiter button turned on. They haven’t even alerted LinkedIn that they’re looking for work. Many of us don’t even know there is a LinkedIn Recruiter, the separate LinkedIn that employers use or LinkedIn talent insights, many don’t know what their SSI score is. Their social selling index, which is a metric that measures your visibility. 

Most PhDs have at most a couple of hundred connections on LinkedIn when they need thousands. You must construct a complete LinkedIn profile and position it for an industry job. If you don’t, you will never be found by employers who are just searching on LinkedIn Recruiter. 

The top three search fields are job titles, locations, and skills, and mostly transferable skills.

The opportunity here in terms of wage push inflation lies in starting at a higher job title that pays you a higher salary. Think about it as, somebody at level one because of wage push inflation is now getting a job at level two slightly higher than the entry level. So everything is shifted up because of the liquidity and because of the labor shift. So this is your chance to get into a higher job title.

There was an article that came out from the wall street journal talking specifically about data scientist roles, how there is a shortage because that’s a higher level role. A lot of people start as data analysts, but now these individuals that would get into data analyst roles are getting into data scientist roles. This is the best time to focus on your ideal career, not as an entry level-career. A lot of us as PhDs have a sense of imposter syndrome. When we start our job,we think we need a safety net. We look for safety jobs that we can do. Instead, you need to show your commitment. Build a rationale for why you’re the best person for the job and why this company is your number one choice for some reason. So find a reason that has to do with their mission statement, or their values, etc… Every company can be your number one choice. For a reason, every company wins in the marketplace in a different way. Find out what that reason is and build a case. 

Remember you’re selling yourself. This is persuasion. You have to have confirmation bias. You have to tell them I want to work here over anywhere else.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post How Wage Push Inflation Is Getting PhDs Hired Into Senior Roles At Higher Salaries appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah interviews a panel of PhDs who have successfully transitioned  into industry careers
• Next, Isaiah explains what is an industry research scientist role and how it is different from academic researcher 
• Finally, Isaiah reveals the strategies for PhDs to get hired into top paying industry research scientist roles

As PhDs, trying to transition into industry, you need credible information about the R & D roles. You have to build a professional network using the right protocol. Get ambient exposure to decision-makers in your job referral network who are willing to do informational interviews with you. The  industry norms are different from that in academia. The big key here is to go from the academic mindset to an industry mindset. There are a few challenges though that PhDs face moving from academia to industry R&D roles. 

Some of the biggest pre-transition challenges that we had was transitioning from an academic CV  into a clean, crisp, marketable resume. I respect the illustrious history of everything you’ve ever done since you first picked up a pipette but filling your resume with job-irrelevant information is unnecessary. I think it was really killing my prospects. And my CV was not able to beat some of the electronic screening to get into the hands of a hiring manager. Now I’ve written industry resumes, and learned how to look at the job description. I zeroed in and had a hyper-focus on what skills I do have. This makes it so much easier for a hiring manager to understand why I’m the best applicant for a job and why I would be worthwhile bringing in for an interview

I was doing cold applications, 200 plus applications. My applications were rejected. I had no idea what ATS was. So my applications went nowhere. I didn’t know how to approach people for networking. I was sending LinkedIn requests without the note. Then I took a step back and started networking. Giving 70% of my time towards networking instead of cold applications made the major difference.

Research scientist position is one of the research driven roles in the industry. Academics have a research background. But in R and D, research is only half of the equation. In academia, PhDs do research but little or no development. Most development is done in the industry. So if you want to get hired as a research scientist, you need to learn about development, distribution and commercialization. A lot of the questions asked in the interview will revolve around this. Recruiters want to know if  you’re thinking like an academic. And they don’t have the time to completely wake somebody up to the reality that R and D requires developing a product, a treatment, a drug. 

You need to understand that language of the industry.  As a research scientist, you’re going to work in an R and D team that facilitates companies to stay ahead of the competition. You would be creating things that people need now, not something that they needed 20 years ago. So you have to be very innovative. You also have to realize that you’re trying to commercialize and scale things. This is the process that most PhDs don’t understand. 

As a research scientist, you’re going to do  applied research development. Rarely done in academia. You have to develop something first to innovate it. Innovation and development are closely linked in the industry. 

Research scientists are hired in Hilton hotels, Nestle Hershey, Estee Lauder or Trivago. And it’s not just in the biotech or pharmaceutical sectors. All sectors of industries such as telecom, automotive, gaming, tourism etc. hire research scientists. Advertising revenue has plummeted at companies because they know that PhDs in the R and D teams can innovate. 

As PhDs, you’ve gone beyond mastering a field to pushing a field forward. You have skills, you have experiences. But you have no industry network. PhDs have no exposure to industry hiring managers or decision-makers. A robust professional network is a critical factor for R and D. 

Coming from academia PhDs like to flex their technical skills, publications. They’re speaking the language of academia. They talk about technical skills such as HPLC or chromatography. You don’t really have numerical values in terms of results, quantified results. PhDs highlight their 10 years of experience in microbiology on their resume. No one does these manually in the industry. Advanced robotics, or bachelors graduates, that are far cheaper than a PhD perform these tasks.

On the contrary companies hire you for your mind, your ability to manage those robotics and the technicians. You are able to comprehend, do research analysis, innovation and work autonomously. Hiring in the industry is based on these expertise.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post A Complete Guide To Getting Hired As An Industry Research Scientist appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhD students should understand the structure of project management in industry
• Next, Isaiah reveals the different phases of project management in the industry
• Finally, Isaiah describes the models of project management in the industry

Project management in industry is different from project management in academia. This is important to understand because if you’re still in academia, you might think that managing small projects or thesis is project management. But the level of structure that is required to manage projects in industry is much greater. There are different lifestyles and factions of this process in the industry. 

In industry, people attend even a week-long conference to learn about one style of project management. Companies dedicate millions of dollars on this, because how projects are managed will determine what gets done at a company. For instance, budget timelines, resource allocation, scope of the project, the milestones and the like. 

There are four different parts in project management in academia. Academics usually plan a project, and then execute it. Subsequently, we may get some negative or some positive data. Then we go back to planning and then we execute. However, this is only half of the equation in industry. 

Even though, you don’t plan to join a company as their project manager, you must learn how companies get stuff done. You will be asked questions related to how the company gets their stuff done. Can you get stuff done according to their project management methodology?

PhDs are expected to provide convincing answers to these questions during their job interview.

There are several facets of specific and structured project management in the industry. It starts with the initiation phase which includes paperwork, such as the statement of work or a project charter. There might be an office where projects need to get approved. So, first comes the initiation phase and then following approval comes the planning phase, and the execution phase. Lastly, a prolonged closure phase analyzes the project. There’s a lot of signing off on different parts of a venture before going from one phase to another. We call it the phase review. 

The scope of the project, budget, timelines, the actual milestones and then where all of these things converge is quality and it’s never perfect. That’s what a lot of PhDs struggle with. Sometimes you have to sacrifice what’s best, just because there’s a tighter deadline or a smaller budget. So you may be able to get it done on time on budget, but the quality is not quite there due to a tight budget. And this is something that employers are really concerned with when it comes to hiring PhDs. You have to balance all of the different factors to get a project done in the best way possible for that situation. Things are contextual. 

In academia we are most familiar with the waterfall model. It’s a sequential, non iterative process made of discrete linear phases that do not overlap. Once planned the flow is like a waterfall going down. The agile model is more popular in the industry. A PhD invented agile method.

Agile consists of a series of regular and consistent iterations called sprints. At the end of each sprint, the team has to deliver results and discuss how the project is advancing. You aim at discovering important deliverables as early as possible. Companies also use a combination of both agile and waterfall methods for maximum productivity.

Another important document for project management other than the statement of work is the blueprint. A project management blueprint is a document that delineates the goals of a project. Sometimes it will also describe how the project will contribute to the organizational objective. Yet another measure is the burndown chart. This chart is used for scrum and agile project management. Burndown chart shows the relationship between the number of tasks to be completed and the amount of time left to complete the task.

You will be involved in a lot of project management. As a project manager, business development manager, or in R&D applications. Get this information. Learn about management. Understand the industry structure. Begin expanding your industry vocabulary.

Speak the language of the industry.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above
To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post How Projects Are Managed In Industry & What All PhDs Need To Know appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhD students should follow the comprehensive job search process
• Next, Isaiah reveals how lack of specific keywords weeds phd resumes out of the system
• Finally, Isaiah describes the 5 core steps of the comprehensive job search process

Today , I will talk about a comprehensive job search guide for PhDs. If you could break down the job search process into steps, what would those steps be? The PhD job search process is extensive and mandates planning and determination. Each step has to be carefully planned and executed to land success. 

PhD job search is a multi-step strategy. Learning about only one or two steps will only let you reach a certain point and not the ultimate goal. You never stop at one step, you need to read it through all the way from beginning to finish.  Gather all the information about all the steps to know the scope of what is involved. You need to be prepared for the next step. 

Many PhDs don’t update their resume, they use the same resume for every other job posting. Some PhDs started targeting their resume to specific roles a few times. Then they stopped as it didn’t work. They just started using the same resume or they targeted it with a bare minimum amount of change. A perfect resume alone can’t get you the job but a bad resume can keep you from getting a job. Resume is the only document that is pertinent to all stages of the job search process. Even during the last stages of the interview, a resume is analyzed to finalize your candidature.  It is a very important document and has to be very specific. 

PhDs must follow a comprehensive pattern and set that into their schedule for achieving success.

Some academic keywords are weeding PhDs out of the race. The applicant tracking system sidelines you when it can’t find the relevant experience as you have listed your academic job titles as graduate research & assistant postdoctoral fellow. Algorithms are smart today. It goes into your work experience section. And keys in on that title to compare it with the database that the employer has put in as important words. If there are no matches, you won’t proceed to the next step. 

Salary expectations are the second criteria. Hence, don’t leave that blank. If you do, you will be weeded out. There’s a strategy for filling in the salary expectations. So, you need to find out the salary of that position from a few websites. And take their average. Then decrease it by 10% and make that your top number for the salary range question. Now you can’t put zero in the bottom. So cut that top number at half. That’s your bottom range. 

Remember this early on in your job search, that you don’t negotiate unless you have a written offer. You just want to deflect. 

Job titles, resumes, LinkedIn, referrals and interviews are the five core steps that need attention. You need to go through the entire process not just a part of it to ensure transition into an industry position of value. Recruiters don’t just hire people, they ensure that you are the perfect fit for the company and its culture. 

You have to choose your right resume format. Give a different resume to a recruiter because they know that you’re prioritizing them by putting those technical skills to the top. Therefore, you have to get your resume into a functional format, a recruiter format, a combination format, or a sidebar format. Then remove the phrases that have been seared into your resume from reading outdated articles. After that choose a few job descriptions of your interest and go through them with a fine-tooth comb. That will help you while creating your bullet points. Each bullet point must highlight your transferable and technical skill with the results accomplished. 

Highlight your skills but in corporate language. Hence, scan through a few job descriptions, look at the way the technical skills are highlighted. Then use the exact terminology to highlight the relevant skills on your resume. The ATS software is way too smart. Hence, don’t generalize your skills as, 10 years of experience in microbiology, team player, enthusiastic, you’re weeded out. They have databases of the words they’re looking for which can be found in the job description. 

Concrete numbers, results oriented bullet points will increase your credibility. 

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Comprehensive Job Search Guide For PhDs: Job Titles, Resumes, LinkedIn, Referrals, And Interviews appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhD students should focus on their job search
• Next, Isaiah reveals how lack of specific milestones holds PhD students back in academia
• Finally, Isaiah describes how PhD students can have a job lined up with their graduation date

If you are a PhD student, you may have several questions regarding your future.  How soon should I start my job search? If I’m a PhD student, what should I be doing, degree or job search? If I’m a first year, a second year, a third year, fourth, fifth, or even beyond a fifth, what can I do? How can I avoid the most common fate of ending up unemployed after I defend? Or I am a PhD student, I have defended and now I’m unemployed and even more broke. I’m working for free, while trying to do a job search. Some PhD students have also faced an awkwardness once they confessed to their PIs that they would like to graduate. 

How do you get around this? What are the activities you should be doing? How do you make an employer wait for you? Because you started your job search and you don’t have a defense date. Surely, there’s going to be some stress there. But that’s a good stress to have as opposed to being unemployed. The reason that this is so challenging is because there’s so much uncertainty. The path has not been laid out before. The academic department that you’re in is very vague on this on purpose. But the one thing they’re not vague on is that the mentors advising you cannot impede your career progress. 

Take charge of your career. Move ahead. Learn about the process and the best practices. Such as when you send your resume on a Monday, you can increase your hireability by 40-50%. Recruiters come in the most motivated on a Monday. They read through all the resumes and mark the ones they want to call back. And if your resume is in on a Monday, your odds of getting a call back again just jumped to between 40 to 50%. 

PhD students must focus on their job search as early as possible to avoid being unemployed after graduating. 

If you’re a PhD student, you are not crazy for wishing to advance your career. You are not crazy if you want to know the next step in your career. Neither is your desire to set a milestone, some actual goal or target weird. The academic mindset is flawed. They’re making it vague and not giving you a target on purpose so they don’t have to commit. Think of how hard you’ve worked for the promise of authorship on a paper. That’s what blows me away when I think about it. And when you’re out of academia, you’ll think about it too. But the order of the names so that our name could be second instead of third on a paper, that’s how small the stakes are now in academia, but they feel so massive. The authorship order was also used against me.

My PI said I couldn’t graduate with my paper since it’s a shared first author. That’s not in the graduate student handbook, at least not in my institution. You don’t have to have a first author paper to graduate from my institution. They said let’s look at all the figures in the paper to see what percentage of data I contributed to the paper. This happens a lot at different universities. That’s why they don’t make specific milestones.

But this is your life. It’s your career. You don’t want to only live on a stipend that’s about $1,400 a month. Not a penny put away for retirement.  Get a job, graduate and leave. 

Know that a mentor can’t kick a PhD student out. Stand firm. I can tell you from my situation, they have far less power than they’re making you believe. They are your mentors therefore they have an obligation to you. Your PI has to provide a safe environment for you to be trained in, and has to make sure that you can make progress. Instead they want to isolate you, maybe make you quit.

Don’t allow that to happen. You’ve produced new data. You’ve gone beyond mastering a field to pushing it forward. You have a story. A thesis is formed after years of dedicated research. That’s your leverage. And you’ve earned it.

Even if everything is going smoothly for you, you have to execute a job search. The most time intensive part of your job search is building up an industry network and industry credibility. You have to turn away from an academic mindset and the academic social norms. Rather turn towards an industry mindset, and industry, social norms. You have to start speaking the language of industry.

PhDs are highly valued in industry, highly valuable innately. 

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post How PhD Students Can Have A Job Lined Up With Their Graduation Date appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains how PhDs end up in desperate situations to get hired
• Next, Isaiah reveals why getting hired should be the top priority
• Finally, Isaiah describes the steps to get PhDs hired in top industry positions

Getting hired when it is urgent is considered a foremost necessity for a PhD. You work so hard, overcome uncertainties only to get hired in a position that values you. I had a conversation with a PhD recently. I asked them when do you need to get hired? Yesterday was their reply, I need to get hired quickly as I’m already out of a job. I’m seeing this more and more. You might know somebody who’s working in your department, your lab, somebody who graduated or lost their postdoc, who’s working for free. 

This is a pathetic situation to be in now. Especially if you’re one of those people working for free. Being trained at the highest level yet allowing yourself to work for free. That implies you’re not having an impact. You are not valued. You are not paid your worth. If you’re unemployed, you have to find a way out. Getting hired is up to you, it’s in your own hands. And I understand where you’ve been. I feel the need to talk about this openly, only because I’ve been in that situation myself.  We all know what it’s like to be in academia.

Options in academia are going away with every passing day. There’s been an upheaval in the economy, a global financial crisis. Focus on getting hired. 

Don’t wait until it’s urgent to get hired. Don’t wait until you defend your thesis. What a lot of PhDs do is focus on getting everything that is needed to be done in the labs. Then write a thesis or wrap up a paper. And that’s just so overwhelming. 

Know this! Even with the increasing inflation, academia faced decreasing wages and job cuts. This upheaval will have repercussions that are bound to affect the academic job market for several years to come. It is useless to wait for things to get better in academia. They’re never going back to the way they were. You have less options today in academia, and you will continue to have fewer options in the future. So you have to get in front of it.

PhDs want to please their PIs. They think making the PIs happy is some sort of key to our career progress. In reality, they have no power over our future if we’ve decided to go into industry. There’s no need for a letter of recommendation in industry, what they say doesn’t matter. And so we have to change the way that we’re going and start setting the correct priorities. You have to do something substantially different for getting hired in a position of value.

Many PhDs think they have a lot of time to plan and then pursue their job search. They become complacent and suddenly realize their job needs are urgent. The postdoc position might have ended or a prospective funding got rejected. The academic system is broken. Therefore don’t lean on that system to get you hired. You have to strategize. Don’t let desperation lead you in your job search. That burns bridges and makes it harder for you to get hired.  

Number one, let’s say you need a job. Identify two related job titles that interest you and commit to them for the next two weeks. So when it comes to a transition, PhDs get stuck before they even start, because they can’t make up their mind on which career tracks are right for them. Because they’ve refused to research their options. Go to any search engine and search for a Cheeky Scientist resource about the 43 career tracks and salaries, you will get an article. This article explains the five major career tracks. The article mentions the job titles in those career tracks and the salaries. Choose two of them and stick with them for two weeks.

You have to discard the academic mindset. The academic social norms are used to following the norm of never reaching out to the same person more than once. But you have to understand that networking is the currency of industry. And brevity is the key to effective communication in industry, especially on your resumes and your profiles. Following up, perseverance  is a much-sought after transferable skill.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Getting Hired When The Situation Is Urgent appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why fear-based behaviors make PhDs stagnant in their job search
• Next, Isaiah reveals what are the different types of fear
• Finally, Isaiah describes the strategies to overcome fear-based behaviors that get PhDs rejected 

Fear restricts potential. It creates a bubble that’s difficult to permeate. Unemployment is one of the biggest fears in the life of a PhD. PhDs end up unemployed for a variety of reasons. However, fear based behaviors are getting PhDs rejected in their job search even when there is a demand for them in the job market. Globally, there is a shortage of labor in the job markets. Higher level jobs such as data scientists, medical science, liaison, and beyond are facing a labor shortage. These are some of the highest paying careers for PhDs exclusively. So many PhDs are hesitating in their job search. What is the reason for this behavior? What is the underlying emotion for this behavior? 

As humans we all have emotions. But why PhDs would rather stay in academia than transition into a stable job? When I was in academia, I wanted to get a PhD to have an impact on humanity. I wanted to do something that mattered. You’re probably the same way. But when you get into the academic world, it becomes an ivory tower that is pretty isolated. You adjust yourself to academia. You change your language, nomenclature and even behavior. But remember that what is valued in the industry is a lot different from academia. 

As PhDs, we’re very logical. We have incredible comprehension. This is our key strength. Don’t let yourselves be exploited by the academic system. 

PhDs who have lived isolated in academia for long would freeze just thinking about their job search. Because emotionally we’ve been indoctrinated to think that an academic paper is all that matters. This is how small our mindset becomes in academia. We  fight for the order of the authorship. You should rather look at those that are five-10 years ahead of you- likely not in academia.

We have two types of fear to deal with. The two types of fears are: our fear of failure and fear of fatigue. When these fears are manifested they remarkably change your behavior. Fear will drive you towards hesitancy. You will become more hesitant when you’re uncertain about a course of action. When you’re afraid you’re going to fail on that course of action. You’re afraid of wasting your resources in that course of action.

For PhD’s self-awareness is important, a transferable skill. We call it professional awareness in the industry. If you are being interviewed by someone in the industry and you have no professional awareness it reflects badly. You don’t look the person in the eye while talking or acknowledge everybody on the panel interview. You talk to somebody when that person isn’t looking at you. Then you come across as arrogant even without realizing it. Professional awareness is important. But fear makes you take that for granted. 

Know yourself. Understand what’s driving your behavior. Understand how a job search works. PhDs have to know the risks. You have to learn how not to burn bridges. If you feel frustrated yet confused, that’s good. These emotions are better than fear. They will drive you to take action. But fear based emotions will drive you to take actions that are wrong. Fear-based behaviors are hesitancy at best, doing nothing at worst. Think of the volume of work you do in academia.

And we spend all of this energy doing this instead of taking our career into our own hands and aggressively going after an industry job. The solution is to de-prioritize your academic work and prioritize your job. It’s time to start putting your PIs career aside and put your career first, take more and more risks in your job. Search by going more and more in and pull back just a little bit in terms of your academic work. 

Once you allow it, you’ll gain more certainty in your job search. And as you prioritize your job search more, you’ll have a healthier level of certainty in your job search. So you need to start being certain that you’re leaving your academic career behind. Everybody has to be a student of their job search to start. Think of all the experiments, test projects, the findings that you’ve completed. You did those with a student mindset. You had a discovery attitude while approaching it. There were negative thoughts but you rationalized through it. 

Ravenously go after the job you want and cast aside any waste, you accumulate along the way. 

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Fear-Based Behaviors That Get PhDs Rejected appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why many PhDs face unemployment
• Next, Isaiah reveals why PhDs should not feel held back by a sense of duty
• Finally, Isaiah describes the professional values important for PhDs to avoid unemployment 

Unemployment is one of the biggest fears in the life of a PhD. Many PhDs end up unemployed for a variety of reasons. It is important to convey the reality to PhD students on what was in front of them, as well as to post-docs who had been chasing postdocs, lest they face unemployment. Many of them end up with stints of unemployment. For some their postdoc tenure ends after several years, for others it may be sooner. 

There are several reasons why PhDs end up unemployed. Many PhDs even pursue jobs that do not require a PhD degree, and stay complacent in their academic engagement. A lot of PhDs are realizing right now that there is no academic recovery, that post-pandemic academia was not the part of the recovery. In fact, things got worse. There is a lot of data from tenure professorships, full-time adjuncts trickling all the way down to the fellowships indicating that academia has not made it out of the fall since the pandemic. Tenure track positions are scanty. PhD stipends have seen a 5 to 8% decrease. The academic wages are going down and more PhDs continue to end up unemployed.

Academia has a modest number of career options left. It cannot support the increasing supply of PhDs added into the system through increased graduate enrollments.

While student enrollment into undergraduate programs has decreased since the pandemic; enrollment in graduate programs have increased. There are more PhDs than ever before in history. And none of them are being trained on how to do anything outside of academia. The career counselor departments in academia are led by lifetime academics, who have never had an industry job. This is the reality of the situation.

Although part of it can be attributed as a  failure of the system, there’s also another aspect to it. That’s a personal responsibility of the PhD themselves. As PhDs you have to have self-awareness and professional awareness. It’s noble of you to do extra work in academia, to finish the paper. But you have to be aware that in doing so you are advancing their career, not yours. If you’re one of the rare PhDs who has been able to overcome obscurity and invisibility to get hired in the industry, then do not be held back by some false sense of duty to your PI professor advisor. Rather you have to have professional awareness and  move forward with your career. If you do not want to face unemployment, especially a PhD coming out of a graduate program, have a job lined up when you defend your thesis. 

 Data suggests about 58 to 82% of PhDs will face unemployment. You don’t have much time. Stop working for free even after you have successfully defended your thesis. Your PI or your advisor should never allow that unless they’re giving you part of their salary. Do not ever let your PI, professor or advisor make you feel guilty or make you feel like it’s your responsibility to work for free.

Only 1.6% of the population has a PhD. PhDs are an elite population, highly sought after in the industry. Your values, your expertise are in the industry. And as a PhD, you have to understand yourself. You have to create self-awareness because it translates into professional awareness. Lack of awareness is the number one reason that PhDs face unemployment. A lack of professional awareness and lack of understanding yourself dictate your success rate. Values, social norms and the language are the three key things needed now for PhDs to transition into respectable positions in the industry. 

Your values get you to your goals. There’s a set of academic values. These values end up achieving the end goal of academia. It has placed a value on learning only. Academia has set little or no value on translational work. Academia has concepts, they don’t focus on development. Almost zero development work is done in academia. Some places are trying to change this, but that has led to a bunch of people getting stuck in a learning loop. Really good at talking theory, but unable to produce anything that will sustain academia. So when people stop donating money and when there’s no more room to increase tuition for undergrads to prop up higher education, you get the result of those academic values.

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post The Systemic PhD Unemployment Crisis appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.