PhD Transition Report On-Demand

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should remain motivated in their job search
• Next, Isaiah reveals the right rationale for PhDs to remain motivated
• Finally, Isaiah describes the strategies for PhDs to stay motivated for their industry transition

Being motivated defines the rate of success. The PhD job search process is arduous. When it comes to their job search process, many PhDs feel dejected. Like I want to get an industry job, but I’m not highly motivated. 

 This is not new, I have experienced it. We have so much else going on. We’ve wired our brains academically. We have this academic mindset. We want to get published, think, explore the theory, perform the experiments. But in a job search, it is different. You may find people who are more accomplished than you, and have more publications, projects or tenure. But you’re in the top 1.6% of the population when it comes to education.

For your PhD you had to stay motivated to climb to the peak of one mountain. However, the PhD job search process requires you to get off that mountain peak and go to the bottom of another mountain. You have to approach it with the same humility as a student. You have to inculcate a discovery mindset. Also, most importantly, you have to build rationale for doing that. Why would anybody want to do that? You spent your entire student life climbing this mountain peak. Unfortunately you never get to the summit of this peak. But now there’s a dead end. Tenure is dying. Tenured professorships are dwindling, they’re almost extinct. We’ll talk about numbers today. A variety of factors show that the situation in academia is worse than it’s ever been. 

We learn in terms of reference points. But building the right rationale is imperative to stay motivated. If you’re creating a rationale as to why things are better in academia, you are failing. Building rationale as to why you shouldn’t spend time on your job search, doesn’t even make sense. 

You don’t have much time. Don’t set unreal expectations. Don’t set yourself up for failure. I can wait until I defend my thesis or my postdoc doesn’t get over for another year. I’ve recovered my postdocs since the pandemic. With everything going on. I got a publication to finish, kids to take care of at home. I don’t have time. To me it sounds like-I don’t have enough time for my job search.

Let’s be clear, if you’re not spending at least two hours of focused effort, executing your job search every day, including weekends, then you’re definitely not taking your job search seriously. Not just thinking about your job search, but actually executing it. Typing your resume, typing LinkedIn, reaching out to somebody actively, without skipping any days. That’s the reference point I want to start with. Sometimes we casually think about our job search, during our experiments or while walking in the classroom or lab. We have an intense desire to transition. That’s not actually executing in the real world.

In terms of rationale, why would any PhD want to get off the mountain peak that they spent their whole academic life climbing ? All that hard work.  I’m going to tell you, I have a list of motivational quotes to make you feel great. But a rationale will keep you pumped forever. Having a strong rationale on both sides of the spectrum will remind you why the job search is essential. Why is it the worst decision ever to stay in academia? Why is it a career failure? Why will it damage your career?

Certainly any future career you want to have in an industry is damaged by every day that you stay in academia after getting your PhD. On top of this, a large-scale study reported that PhD salaries in academia are down five to 8% from last year, thanks to the pandemic. So, industry wages and international inflation have increased to levels not seen in decades, but PhD salaries in academia have decreased. Even though industry employers are trying desperately to find you, you’re fighting obscurity and they are fighting your invisibility. So how do you solve that?

The first quote is, industry PhDs are more successful than their academic counterparts because they’ve decided to take their careers into their own hands. Instead of passively waiting for academia to take care of them, they decided to be creative. Buck the status quo and define what success looks like for themselves

** 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 Get Motivated For Your Job Search appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should explore the industry roles available to them
• Next, Isaiah reveals the clinical and non-clinical R&D jobs available for PhDs 
• Finally, Isaiah describes the 6 high-paying clinical and non-clinical PhD job titles

You can’t hit a target that you never set. To build a transition plan you need to set a desired role. Therefore, approach the career plan with a discovery mindset. Look up the roles available to you, learn about the industry positions. If you are targeting clinical or non-clinical positions, compare them! Many PhDs never rigorously pursue information regarding their industry options until the last moment. Some PhDs wait till they defend their thesis. Others wait until they lose their postdoc, or run out of funding. Explore your options much earlier. 

 I’m comparing two career tracks that have been increasingly popular, especially in the last 12 to 14 months. The R&D career track and the clinical and medical affairs career track. I’m going to give you descriptions of the job titles and what they entail. Detailed knowledge about your options will help you figure out the right career track. Also, it will help you to zero in on one to three job titles. 

Most PhDs wait till the very end to explore their industry job options. Explore the options. Find the perfect fit for your career aspirations and your desired compensation.

The pandemic has highlighted your value as a PhD, not just in R&D, but in clinical and medical affairs roles as well. You had the biggest media organizations in the world, constantly talk about the value of research and science. Possibly more than any other time in history. PhDs are in high demand in the industry.

As researchers, PhDs are naturally attracted to R&D jobs. All PhDs have a research background. You have gathered information, analyzed data for a thesis. Therefore, you are familiar with all aspects of research. Hence, it makes you think that R&D bench roles are a continuation of your research.

The clinical and medical affairs career track is much in demand now. And you don’t need clinical experience to get into any of the roles. All you need is your PhD. PhDs are excited about working in these roles because they have always wanted to have a positive impact on humanity, specifically in the health and longevity of humanity. The betterment of humanity is really one of your core drivers. Why else, would you put in such long hours for such little pay? 

You have this drive to make a difference, a positive impact, to help humanity. 

These are the 6 high paying PhD jobs in the clinical and non-clinical R&D career tracks. And the highest-paying role in this umbrella is the MSL.

MSLs are the highest paid. PhDs in this role are asked to provide information about the products of their specific companies. However, these products may vary, it could be- medical devices, drugs, and treatments. MSLs typically represent pharmaceutical companies to decision makers in the medical community. They may be clinicians, or healthcare providers; commonly known as key opinion leaders or KOL. Beyond this MSLs have to communicate relevant information to investors and even government regulatory agencies. But the average salary for an MSL job is $145,498, there’s some variation here.

The first job title and description under the research and development career track is R&D scientist, clinical research scientist, R&D engineer or similar. This includes scientists, scientist I to scientist III positions, senior scientists, senior engineer, principle scientists, principal engineer, etc.. These roles are bench work based. For instance, PhDs use wet lab techniques, experimental techniques related to software development, programming, or engineering. Research, analysis and innovation is very important in these roles. Average salaries range between $75,717 to $109,114, according to salary.com, for these roles.

Typically, if you want to do research, you can be a research scientist. You’ll be paid a bit more in the R&D career track than under the clinical and medical affairs, just for that specific role. However, take all of the salaries for the six options on either side and evaluate. You can get into an industry position and do meaningful work. All you need is the right information and the right network.

** 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 Clinical Versus Non-Clinical R&D Jobs For PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should know how they compare to the average job candidate 
• Next, Isaiah reveals the major disconnect points between PhDs’ beliefs and the PhD job search process
• Finally, Isaiah discusses how PhDs compare against the average job candidate

You’re going to get a measuring stick today. You will be able to see if you measure up to what the average job candidate is doing in terms of their job search. 

It’s natural for us as PhDs to look to the top. How can we make ourselves the best job candidate possible? The problem is that the reality can be much different from our perception. There can be a disconnect. Whether you’ve worked in the industry or not, there’s always a disconnect. The question is what is the degree of the disconnect?

I am going to present data from surveys that we gave to 1,679 PhDs for you to compare. These would serve as a reference to establish what that disconnect is. PhDs may think that their resume is average, or maybe they are confident enough regarding their resume. As PhDs, we have a background in writing. You had to write articles, grants, study reports, protocols, you may feel you are a strong writer. You probably are. But you’re a strong academic writer. Is that going to help you with your industry resume? Likely not! 

The average PhD thinks that they have plenty of time to start their job search. Maybe after they defend their thesis, or their next postdoc, or even after their contract or adjunct professorship is terminated. This assumption is a big mistake. 

Are you uploading your resume and not getting the number of responses you thought you would? Are you getting phone screens for every resume you upload? If not, there’s probably a disconnect.

As PhDs we write a lot. So we think that writing is a huge part of our job search. Cause it’s what we know as job candidate. It’s actually one of the smallest parts of your job search. You upload your resume. You’re surprised at the lack of response that you get – your resume is not where it needs to be.

One of the biggest disconnects between reality and a PhD’s perceived reality is in resume writing. The majority of PhDs believe that their industry resume is average but industry professionals rate it as below average. 

We do several presentations during our PhD. A lot of meetings with our thesis committee to get our PhD. During presentations, we have to defend our findings orally. And we think as a job candidate that the job interview questions and answers that we’re going to go through during a phone screen or a site visit are the same thing. I thought my interview skills were superior.

The problem is I didn’t have domain knowledge and business acumen. I didn’t know what my audience wanted to hear. The audience here are trained industry professionals, not academics. Most of what you’ve learned in academia is not applicable to industry, not in terms of the social norms, not in terms of what the industry audience values. I can tell you nine years ago when Cheeky Scientist started, we did not have professors. Now, we have people that have been tenured professors for 13 years in our programs, because academia is broken.

The initial gatekeepers – hiring managers and recruiters – do not have PhDs. The perception of what industry values is different from academia.

There is a huge disconnect between the actual job search and our perception of it. A PhD job search takes months if not years, especially if you are working on your own. Don’t wait until you’re broke. Until you turn desperate.

About 24.3% PhDs voted that they are already out of a position. Most PhDs are already out of a position when they start their job search.  61.2% of PhDs polled needed a job in six months.

It’s a long process to get hired; not just uploading a resume. It’s 40 distinct PhD level, job search steps. We call this the cheeky scientist methodology, and it takes a long time to execute if you’re doing it without any sort of process, without a job referral network.

33.6% graduate students, 27% postdocs, 24.7%  are unemployed. We’ve tracked many of these PhDs longitudinally. We’ve done these surveys over and over. And we found that those who do not get training, those who don’t end up in Cheeky Scientist or any other programs end up in low paying postdocs or unemployed.

Academia can’t teach you which jobs are available because academia is full of lifetime academics. Even the career counselors in academia have no idea what they’re talking about because they’ve never worked in 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 Do You Compare To The Average Job Candidate? (1,679 PhDs Surveyed) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode on product management roles…

• First, Isaiah explains what is a product management role and how it is different from user experience researcher and other popular roles
• Next, Isaiah and Gunnar reveal why PhDs are preferred for product management roles 
• Finally, Isaiah discusses the strategies for PhDs to get hired in product management positions and the skills needed

Product management roles are ubiquitous in industry across all sectors. There is a huge  diversity in the range of products that you can manage as a product manager. When I started I saw this position as a subject matter expert. A subject matter expert knows the subject very well.  So, the first thing that you do as a product manager is to identify problems that are faced by your users.

When you make something in an industry, you do it for somebody else to use. The team of product managers ensures that the product you made is easy to use. PhDs in product management roles ensure that when customers are on Facebook they understand what to click, how to like. Product manager is to be able to explain science in the simplest possible words in a way that a layman can understand.

It is pretty exciting because you witness the terms like user journeys, market analysis, competitive analysis, and more about machine learning and AI. There are a lot of terms that you would learn on the job because every product is different and so is product management.  PhDs need to identify problems, think like a scientist,  where to go when you are in a different product.

A product can be really just anything at a company you can own. And the larger the company, the more the product is broken down into features or segments or parts, and each of those parts would be managed by a different product manager.

If you’re in life science or have another background, you as a PhD, are an expert at a certain field. I am into a digital product management role. For a scientist who was has been working in a laboratory for five years, publishing papers. This is not a completely new world. Products can be intangible things like an insurance policy or software. It’s not just STEM-related things or non STEM. It’s really anything.

PhDs get hired into product management roles at Home Depot even Hilton hotels. Every company hire product managers because they need people to make sure a product works. As a PhD, you have learnt skills that can be applied into the product management roles. You can identify errors, explain your science in layman terms.

I jumped into translating my research and strategies for artificial intelligence. It was another field that I knew nothing about. Then I just started building robots that were supposed to be little autonomous toys. To get there, I had to communicate my skill set of academia, into industry. Something that would explain that I could provide value on a product level. And that is a very challenging thing.

Companies are increasingly realizing that they would need to create an experience that people love.

In product management roles you need to know high level management skills. But day-to-day management skills to get things done at a certain timeline is also important. It depends on the type of position you get hired into. You might have to manage the entire life cycle of a product, or just manage part of it.

There might be a product that’s already out there and you may be newly tasked with its growth phase. As a product manager, you always have to think about what is being developed. What has been developed and, what the vision for the future is. You may need to work very closely with the R and D team, the scientific team. Maybe you even would have to work with the customers and the market researchers. To be able to see where your product is going to fit when it gets launched.

PhDs need both technical and transferable skills to get hired into product management roles. 

** 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 Get Hired Into A Product Management Position – The 12 PhD Skills You Need To Showcase appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs need to know which are the high paying PhD salaries
• Next, Isaiah reveal why PhDs shy away from these high paying roles 
• Finally, Isaiah discusses the average salaries of some popular industry PhD-level roles

Salary is not everything but it can help you in terms of a reference point. I’m going to talk about salaries across the categories of jobs that are available to you. Our research team compared salaries for different industry positions across currencies. They made sure that the reference point between any two salaries were as accurate as possible for as many countries as possible.

Sometimes, the roles are called something different. An MSL in one country might be called a super rep in another country. So, we looked at five major categories, 40+ different high-paying positions. We don’t want PhDs making less that what they made as a postdoc.

We want PhDs to be hired in high-paying PhD-level industry positions. These are great starting salaries; a range from around 70,000 to 140,000 at the high end. Salaries are not everything, but it can help you understand the value of that position in the marketplace. When it comes to value, the supply of good candidates for the jobs that are paying the most is going to be lower than the lower salaried positions. But the demand for them is higher. So, that ratio is going to change: lower supply, higher demand. The ratio will change as the salary increases.

The demand for PhDs as data scientists or MSLs is huge. These are some jobs with high salaries, there’s not as many PhDs who actually take the time to learn about what they need to do to get those jobs. None of those jobs requires industry or clinical experience. Several PhDs count themselves out for those jobs because they’re intimidated. So, there is a demand but these PhDs don’t apply for those jobs, which lowers the supply. 

You don’t need to become an expert in machine learning to get a data scientist job. MSLs don’t have to have a strong clinical or signaling background, or experience in clinical trials. You can learn this from other PhDs who have transitioned in the field. 

PhDs either have that imposter syndrome, or they’re just too lazy. They don’t want to learn. Some PhDs will even show a disdain for these higher salary positions as they don’t care about money. Others give the excuse that their background is so different. It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen PhDs with engineering, forestry, zoology backgrounds get into MSL jobs and data scientist jobs.

The job market will tell you how valuable you are, just like academia has told you. But if you are so valuable in academia, why is your salary  just $33,000 a year as a postdoc? Because there’s an over supply of academic PhDs, which affects that supply and demand ratio. So, your academic employers don’t have to pay a lot for you. They know they can probably just get you to work for them for free 

I want you to know exactly what you’re worth. Don’t work for free in academia because you are valuable in industry. We break down the positions in industry with high salaries into five categories.

Let’s start with information, aggregation patents. The three sub categories are intellectual property, writing and editing, and information and data management. Intellectual property has four positions. One of them is an IP lawyer. It pays $117,360 on average. There are incredible roles in this space that you can get into without an extra degree that pay nearly as much: a patent agent or scientific consultant. 

The average annual salary for a patent agent or scientific consultant is $98,080.  A technology transfer officer is paid $85,863 annually. It is an academic position where PhDs work for a university. Patent examiner or patent analysts earn $89,205 per year. You need information to be hired into jobs with high salaries.

You’re trying to figure out your job search on your own, after being in academia, your entire life. That’s not a great strategy. They don’t just hand out jobs that pay these salaries. 

A PhD level job search is very different from a non-PhD job search, recognize your worth as a PhD. 

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

The post Average Salaries Of 45-PhD-Level Careers Reviewed appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah interviews a panel of PhDs who successfully transitioned from academia into R&D careers
• Next, the expert panel discusses the challenges PhDs face during the R&D job search process
• Finally, Isaiah reveals the best strategies to navigate the R&D career tracks

A lot has changed since last year. There is a renewed interest in both the research and project management aspect of R&D jobs. Industry positions such as Quality control, quality assurance, and business development manager pay very well now. User experience, customer research, technical development, information technology based R&D jobs are in high demand. PhDs can transition into these high paying R&D roles, all you need is the right approach.

I had a hard time during my PhD but I would say one of the darkest points was when I was trying to send off an academic CV to different types of industrial job openings, not realizing the deep value of referrals. They can get your resume to the top of the list. Moving out of academia was difficult as I faced imposter syndrome.

I remember devaluing myself. But once I licked my wounds, there was an internal drive to establish myself. I revamped my resume based on the valuable insights from other PhDs. I learnt to present myself as the right candidate in the interviews. Once I did that, I got a lot more phone screens. You have to use your resume as a marketing tool to highlight why you are the best candidate for any specific job description. 

Things that look straightforward and simple, may not be so. You have to shift from the academic mindset. You really don’t need to be worried about having a 10 page list of publications anymore. Although that’s a difficult mindset to change, you have to acknowledge and push through that.

Having a panel of Cheeky models to point out where I was going wrong helped a great deal. I didn’t have to change who I was. But I could improvise, so it was a great turnaround for me and my R&D career.

A lot of times as PhDs, we get stuck into critiquing and evaluating. You want to have that mindset. That’s what is going to make you an incredible R&D professional, but you also have to realize that people have put together a process that has worked for thousands of PhDs for a reason. Sometimes that is an excuse not to do the actual work. Critiquing the process, thinking that you’re above it becomes the problem. 

Differentiating the industry positions, trying to find out which ones are best for me was a challenge. The hierarchy of industrial scientists are completely different from what you might be doing in an academic lab. I could not differentiate the industry positions. I did not know whether to apply for scientist one or scientist two, or what type of skill set should I put there? 

It’s important for you to know that your resume is a problem. It’s not going to get you hired the way you currently have it. Your LinkedIn profile has the same problem. You’re never going to showcase enough technical skills for a job to get hired without having your resume and LinkedIn done correctly.

The problem starts here, with your mindset. You think you’re above the process. You play these different scenarios, how to tweak or hack or critique a process or a system instead of following or executing it. You’re not getting hired just by sitting and uploading your resume behind your computer.

They want to hire you as a PhD for your mind, your ability to manage people and experiments, your ability to understand that commercialization has to happen. Your insight that can carry a project ahead and that if it goes onward, it’s great. It has to be able to make money for that company and help people at the same time. They’re going to test you on this. 

You have to understand what the market needs and prioritize, collaborate to achieve success.

** 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 Navigating The New World Of R&D Career Paths appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah reveals why PhDs in academia are alarmed 
• Next, he shares the cause of the current inflation 
• Finally, Isaiah reveals how PhD salaries are decreasing due to inflation and the strategies to stay ahead 

When the pandemic hit, several PhDs started panicking. Uncertainties set in, PhDs questioned their course of action. I think this paid off in many ways, a lot of PhDs instantly woke up from their slumber. PhDs realized academia does not guarantee  job security. The numbers emphasized that not even tenured professors are protected in academia. Academia has a way of luring you into a false sense of security, but even PhD students had their stipends at certain universities cut. Academia suffered furloughs, pay cuts, funding and tenure losses. The plight of postdocs was revealed.

The misconception that most of the funding came from grants was cleared up. That’s something that really came to light. Get a grant, get your own funding and things are secure, the myth was debunked. The lack of support for higher education exposed. It turns out that the university actually relies on tuition from undergrads – and not on grants – for funding.

Depending on the graduate school there was a 20%- 21% drop in the first year tuition, and this is why higher education is suffering. Once the pandemic hit, hundreds of thousands of losses not just in the U S but in other countries were tracked. So what’s going on now? While people are now scrambling out of fear but at the same time, PhDs are getting shoved into a false sense of security. 

These PhDs will eventually have to face unemployment, no career, future being completely dependent on your PI, working for free.

There’s something weird going on right now. The job market’s been kind of a mystery. 

We have noticed an alarming 81% drop in hiring since November 2020. I’ve been harping on that number but it hasn’t changed significantly. There is a lot of liquidity in the market right now. Several governments have provided assistance to people that has resulted in a lot of liquidity- a cash influx. 

PhDs received some extra money back from taxes, stimulus cheque etc. That has put a lot of PhDs into sleep. They have become complacent with temporary relief. And so there’s no urgency to get a job. But now, there is a simultaneous increase in unemployment as well. 

My concern is once this money runs out -the inflation subsides- there’s going to be a mass Exodus out of academia. It’s hard to tell people that are comfortable in moderate pain to take this seriously, because they think things are going to get better. The prices have doubled but not your PhD stipend and your postdoc salary.

Globally, the prices have doubled, the supply chains have been broken. There is surplus demand but not enough supply to meet it. You should get practical, if you’re a PhD, what are some of the prices you could see going up around you? You may not be a finance PhD but these things would affect you as well.

You might have some extra assistance right now but eventually that would run out. Don’t just hang out in academia, things are not going to get better. You can’t put off your job search for another year and wait until the moderate pain turns into massive pain. This is what most PhDs are doing, it’s too late.  Soon, you’ll run out of options and you’ll be in desperation mode.

You need to think, if inflation is occurring and prices are getting more expensive, what about our PhD salaries? PhD salaries are unfortunately not keeping the pace, they’re actually going down. You need to take your job search seriously because while you stay in academia, employers are redirecting their money from hiring into marketing their products, their services, their treatments. They face the dire need to promote their product line to save their companies. Now that means right now is a great time to reboot your job search. 

So, if the last couple of months you’ve just stabilized yourself—caught your breath—, then now is a great time to reboot. Get ahead of the tidal wave. People will eventually see the inflation when all of this liquidity runs out. Get ahead of the curve, cross the competition.

It is time to reboot your job search. As always, remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

** 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 Inflation Versus PhD Salaries In Academia. Cause For Alarm? appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah reveals how PhDs lose motivation
• Next, he shares why it is important for PhDs to stay motivated
• Finally, Isaiah  reveals the strategies to build rationale and stay motivated

Staying motivated in your job search is a challenge. PhD life has its fair share of struggles. There are days when you wake up uninspired. You don’t feel like doing anything for your job search. It’s easy for PhDs who have been unemployed for months to lose motivation. Besides, PhDs’ life has several other struggles. Maybe they had a bad day in the lab or the classroom. They saw the writing on the wall. They were about to graduate. Maybe they’re going to lose their postdoc, or they’ve been in a postdoc for years. They’re an adjunct or still working on a contract. Irrespective of the nature of setbacks, PhDs suddenly get motivated, update their resume. 

PhDs start their job search with excitement. Updating their resume then uploading it to a job site. This gives them a sense of accomplishment, a dopamine hit in their brain. A feeling that they worked towards their job search process. Then they don’t hear back in spite of working for an hour or two on their resume. They don’t even have the correct resume format to begin with just a few bullet points based on what they could recall from their memory. They don’t hear back and then lose motivation over time. You do this over and over again. You don’t hear anything back or don’t experience any sense of growth.

You’re not tracking any metrics. No visible results. And so you give up, you lose motivation.

Motivation is not the problem. As PhDs we know we can get motivated by watching a rousing speech in a movie, or turn to our PI and professors. Maybe they actually say something positive that makes us feel good for a little bit. But emotions are fleeting and so is motivation. You fail in your job search because you wait for motivation, or try to create one. Staying motivated is the problem, not the solution. Inconsistent motivation doesn’t last. The kind where PhDs feel like doing something challenging just two or three hours a week.

Searching for a job is challenging. A motivated PhD is someone who is consistent and determined to work hard even when they don’t feel like working. PhDs cross the latency threshold when they do the required even when they don’t feel like it. Over 90% of the time, we do not feel like working hard, especially on things like a job search.  Most PhDs don’t prefer to indulge in a new area, something they don’t understand. There’s a lot of things you don’t know about a job search.

So how do you stay motivated? How do you stay motivated as a PhD, ask yourself that, how do you keep collecting research for something as long and arduous as your thesis? You set a goal and restructured your life towards that goal. It wasn’t motivation that kept you going. It was a rationale. 

You had a very strong reason why you wanted to get a PhD. Maybe you wanted to have a bigger impact on humanity or be a doctor, for the recognition. In terms of  education, PhD is the most challenging degree to get. And that’s why you wanted it. You had rationale which kept you consistent. 

You have to create rationale. Rationale is something you understand, as a PhD. You had to embed rationale in every paper, every grant that you wrote. You have built a strong case up for you to get a PhD. And now you need to build a strong case in yourself for your job search. How do you build your rationale?

To create the rationale you need to look at the pain. Your driving force is usually not what you’re trying to be driven to rather what you’re driving away from. That drive inside of you keeps you going. That’s not the typical motivation. There can be power in the painful things that you want to avoid. It will drive you. It can be your rationale.

It was rationale that I leaned into, and created confirmation bias. I built a case for it purposefully to drive me so that my job search became easy. There’s three things that will help you in terms of building this rationale.

Always remember your value as a PhD

** 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 Stay Motivated In Your Job Search (3 Tips For PhDs) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah reveals how the job market is changing  
• Next, he shares the five mental areas where PhDs get stuck  
• Finally, Isaiah  reveals the revised fundamentals for PhD job search

The job market is dynamic. The last year has seen a lot of drastic changes, from the first wave of lockdowns to the 2020 hiring boom. Then came the contraction in the second wave of lockdowns as a response to the pandemic. We have also witnessed the vaccine rollout, followed by a period of stability. Although it is not going to be entirely different from what it was in 2019, the economy might be up or down. We have all been scrambling to keep up with these changes. There’s going to be more changes in the future. 

It’s important for us to now come back to the fundamentals of getting hired. Certainly we’ve already seen something we never saw before: at the end of the year 2020, we saw the highest month of PhD hiring ever in the history of cheeky scientists. 

Since we started recording this data way back in 2012 and subsequently we have seen an 81% drop in hiring. This trend has continued till March 2021. What does that mean? Well, with the vaccine rollout, we’ve seen a lot of the explosion of clinical trials for COVID have slowed. So R and D positions, medical affairs positions, clinical positions for PhDs; clinical data management, clinical research associate, and many others have slowed, but it does not mean that the fundamentals of getting hired have changed.

Although there are some changes, the fundamentals of job search are still the same.

So you might want to think of these as what’s in between the fundamentals. When I say revised here, I’m talking about how to approach the same fundamental differently, taking that fundamental and putting it into the context of where we are today. 

You may be looking for a job or may have lost your job. Maybe you are at the end of your rope in academia because funding has plummeted. Though the funding from the government is a little stable but the funding from undergraduates tuition has dropped. And you’re seeing tenured professors being pushed out. You’re not seeing any new PhDs being enrolled at your university. You think this might be good for you? No, this is not good for you. It means the PhD pipeline is being shut down. 

As you approach your job search, there’s only five mental areas that you can be stuck in. But using the revised fundamental job search info, you will be able to overcome those hurdles.

So the fundamental way to get a response from the resume or to have employers actually find you on LinkedIn is by leveraging key words. You have to read through numerous job postings. You got to copy and paste those job postings into a word cloud, so that you can quantitatively as well as qualitatively evaluate the job posting.  Start understanding the key words and the language of industry because those keywords will dictate how employers are searching for you. These are the same keywords that are in the ATS, the applicant tracking system software or in the LinkedIn recruiter.

The fundamental needs to be revised; instead of focusing, just on keywords, you need to focus on keyword connectedness. The job market is a lot more competitive now. Depending on which unemployment statistics you look at you might see numbers as low as six to ten percent. This percentage does not include people that have stopped trying to get hired altogether. Maybe they’re on some sort of assistance or have to take care of their kids since their kids aren’t in school. So they’re not even reporting that they’re trying to get hired but can’t. You will see numbers as high as 30% or 40% plus of people who are actually not employed right now, it is much more competitive than you might think. 

It’s not enough now just to have the right keywords, you have to connect the keywords in the right way. So you can’t just splash five to 10 keywords from a job posting. You have to get 30, 40, 50 different keywords. You’ve just never gone through a job posting with a fine tooth comb and looked at things like -initiative- that’s a keyword. Looked at things like —can work autonomously— can look at things like good leadership. You’re passing by those for the longer technical skills.  

As always remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

** 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 (Revised) PhD Job Search Fundamentals appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah reveals what prevents PhDs from transitioning out of academia 
• Next, he shares how tenure track positions are not an option anymore. 
• Finally, Isaiah  reveals the 5 curses of staying in academia beyond your PhD

Staying in academia beyond your PhD is a curse. You need to get your PhD. It is an incredible way to learn how not only to master a field, but to push a field forward.

A PhD is a training position where you need to learn how to do research, how to do analysis, how to deal with uncertainty, how to face failure, how to think creatively, how to innovate. These are all incredibly valuable in the industry. Most of us stay in academia after getting a PhD because we don’t have a plan. We focus intensely on a publication or reading papers or all the other things that we can do that make our PI happy, or is rather easy to do. If you are the type that likes to learn, then it is easy for you to be stuck in the learning loop and never transition out of it.

It is easy for you to learn about one subject that you have mastered and have gone beyond to push forward. That makes you complacent. But you have to learn how to get a job, how to apply your knowledge in the real world, how to go beyond the ivory tower to get off the mountain peak you are currently on. 

Most PhDs have to start at the bottom of a mountain and struggle all the way up. That is why there is a pile of post-docs. The crisis in academia is this pile up of PhD who stay in academia working for free. 

Well, you graduate but don’t have a job lined up. This leads to the decision to  work for free. PhDs can’t live with the existential crisis that they got their PhD but are broke. So, instead of taking responsibility for that, they try to feel good about themselves by staying busy, working for their PI. They are convinced that this is for a noble cause. 

Let’s face it, tenure professorships are gone. 

Lots of universities that didn’t have certain bylaws, have been cutting tenure professorships. Since the pandemic, there have been huge job cuts, funding losses, and pay cuts. So, in the US alone, the percentage has been matched in many other countries, 650,000 higher education jobs cut since the pandemic. These tenure positions are not coming back. They are not even taking PhDs into the academic system anymore. That is not good for you if you’re there because it means they are not going to support it. 

There’s no money to support it. The dying trend of tenure made it to a front-page article on Forbes, which is not a higher education or academic medium. It is a business journal and Forbes certified that tenure is dead. 

The article should get your attention because there is nowhere for you to go in academia anymore. So, if you stay there after your PhD, it is one of the biggest curses, because there is no use to your career. You are only advancing somebody else’s career. Rather if you stay, you actually become a worse candidate for industry. 

The longer you stay after getting your PhD, the less likely you are to get hired and the less you will be paid.

If you want to develop a treatment or a drug, you would need to translate your knowledge into a developmental process. Most translational work and nearly all development work is done in industry because they have the advanced robotics, the teams, the structure, and a strict project management methodology that academia lacks. 

When you get into industry, you will learn about the different types of project management from agile, to fall to six Sigma, etcetera. This is crucial because it is systemization, reproducibility. The ability to repeat something the exact same way over and over again is built into industry and only businesses that do that extremely well survive big enough to do anything big. 

No reproducibility in academia is of the most taxing curses. The numbers are staggering. Anywhere from 50% to 90% of experiments can not be reproduced in academia. And this is reported by scientists, engineers, PhDs. This was triggered in a lot of studies and surveys done in 2010 then in 2016, the poll was initiated by nature.

There are big things ahead for you, but you have to take the first step. As always, remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

** 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 5 Curses Of Staying In Academia (After Getting Your PhD) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.