PhD Transition Report On-Demand

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

• First, Isaiah reveals why PhDs get interviews but no job offers 
• Next, he shares why companies care about onboarding  
• Finally, Isaiah  reveals the strategies to create a persuasive 30-60-90 day plan

We have a lot of PhDs right now that are getting to the interview stage but they are not getting a job offer. While some are getting to the earlier stages—a phone screen or an initial video interview— others make it to the final video interview stages or a site visit but no job offer.  Just because you are being invited to a site visit does not mean that you are the only job candidate there is likely to be more depending on the size of the company. It certainly doesn’t mean that if you blow the site visit or the virtual interview, if you do not have questions to ask that are insightful, or if you do not come off appropriately educated as having done research on the company, you will get rejected. 

As a PhD there is such an immense cost to this rejection. Going through all of that effort and not getting a job offer at the finish line is devastating , but you have nobody to blame, except yourself. Hence the question you need to ask is… “what more can I do to separate myself, to differentiate myself from other job candidates? The ones that they are comparing me to.” 

If you have been following Cheeky Scientist, you have learned to communicate your transferable skills, not just your technical skills, like all of the other PhDs they are interviewing, but what else can you do to differentiate yourself?

How can you go above and beyond? How can you give the employers certainty? The number one reason that will inspire them to be certain and extend a job offer to you. One of the best ways to give them this much needed certainty is to provide a 30, 60, 90 day plan on paper. So when they are onboarding you will likely have to create a 30-60-90 day plan, or they will create one with you. You have to hit the ground running right away. And the reason onboarding is so important is because they need to help you understand how things work at the company. 

There are a lot of unspoken rules and guidelines that you can’t find on a company’s website, or even by reading through the company’s operations manual. Things you can only learn on the job. Hiring an employee is very expensive. In general, it can cost about $60,000 up to the salary you will get in your first year. I have heard numbers as high as 1.5 times more. The starting salary of an employee is how much it costs to hire that employee. The reason that companies care so much about onboarding is because they have invested so much in you already. And the numbers that employers see are as follows 22% of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days.

Companies know that they are going to lose a fifth of their team members in the first 45 days. But 91% of the first year workers are retained by companies with an efficient onboarding process. 

So they can dramatically increase their chances of retaining an employee that they have already just paid a lot for- by onboarding them correctly. 

Start getting comfortable with the company culture. The strategy of how things are done, how you feel, how other people feel generally, how they operate. You want to do well with that, you want to understand the product or service or treatment or whatever it is that you are supporting. You might take on one small project in part with someone guiding you during this time. The 30-60-90 day plan can even guide the questions that you ask the recruiters during the initial interviews. What if you were trying to fill out a chart at 30 days, what do you expect at 60 days at 90 days?

In the first 30 to 60 days, you will want to start working with your team to really understand how they work, what are the individual responsibilities, you want to communicate with your team, but it will take you a while to start getting things done; where they can start to rely on you instead of you just relying on them. You want to start being seen as an asset to the team. You will want to take on a bigger project at this time, but still require some mentorship. From a company’s perspective, this is the assimilation phase. 

They expect you to start understanding the unwritten rules of the company in more detail. The power structures will start to become visible to you.

** 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 When Interviewers Ask For Your 30-60-90 Day Plan, Give Them This appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

Engineering PhDs are very focused on their niche background. There are often arguments regarding the interdisciplinary nature of engineering backgrounds, especially with respect to hiring. Engineers argue that owing to this niche specialization, a chemical engineer cannot be hired as an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer and vice versa. The truth is that you can! Several companies have engineering teams where they prefer engineering PhDs of different backgrounds in the same team. 

Most engineering PhDs think they have a very specific niche background of engineering that makes their situation very unique and impossible. There is no access to career centers that can really help you; therefore, finding access to people who know what they are talking about is important. Identifying those transferable skills that the employers care about is challenging but necessary. Building your network and getting to know people is crucial to getting hired in the industry.

You have to be technically sound and also be able to speak in the industry language in order to convince the hiring managers and recruiters who may not have that engineering expertise that you are the best person for the job. The recruiters may know that you either have that technical skillset or you can learn it, but speaking the language of industry, the transferable skills, understanding the project management process, even in industry is a big gap. 

Working in academia makes us single-minded, never considering the outside world apart from that, you need to widen your mindset for the transition. If you don’t work on your vision, transferable skills and LinkedIn among others you will have nothing in hand that would be of interest to the hiring people. Networking and setting up informational interviews is crucial to learn the first hand information about the industry. These interviews provide insight into how things work in the industry and what is needed for the mid-level and top level jobs in industry. 

Yet another big challenge is to learn to market yourself, to move out of the invisibility. You have to shift things. The engineering PhD is a very specific process and path, very specific language, how you position yourself in the job market makes the difference.

Our goal is to move you from thinking about where you are now in academia, where the disciplines are sliced up into very small niches and PhDs get hyper-focused on, to an industry where you could have an engineer from almost any background. 

Several PhDs from all different types of engineering backgrounds emphasize these umbrella categories for engineering PhD careers: R and D information and data management, sales, and marketing positions. Engineering companies have innovation teams— a combination of information, data management, sales and marketing— that are directed towards improving the company’s overall efficiency operations. This includes both face-to-face work and technical work calculations. We are seeing a great deal of engineers that are feeding into these teams from diverse backgrounds. 

There are always opportunities to move around through the companies, from data analysis to marketing to small business development. Always keep your perspective open where you could fit in as an engineer or as a PhD. You shouldn’t just be stuck in one career path, keep it open. 

One of the rampant industry job titles is the business or business data analyst. This is in operations where you analyze and reform the internal data. If you want a higher level job that pays more like a data scientist or a higher level analyst job, or a senior analyst, you have to be able to translate technical data into business data. Your communication skills are extremely valuable. You get to speak engineer and normal person language too. You have to be able to pitch in front of a stakeholder, an investor or executive and explain it. So if you can differentiate yourself by training yourself on those communication skills, develop those communication skills, speak that language, and cater accordingly to your audiences. You will have the advantage. 

If you’re looked at differently, you have to position yourself differently for 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 Top Engineering Careers In Industry appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah demystifies the transition process 
• Next, he enlists the strategies to avoid getting rejected   
• Finally, Isaiah  reveals the one change needed to avoid being rejected

When it comes to your job search, having the right information matters the most. Cheeky transition stories provide valuable insights into the whole process. These stories have principles that apply to every PhD, no matter your background, or your situation, you have to do your part to follow those principles. You are not above the process. You are a sample size of one. There will be variations in the positions, locations, interview questions that you will face. Although it is not going to be exactly cut and paste from what the transitioned associates went through, they provide priceless comprehension of the entire process.

I am going to tell you the inside story of what a PhD transition looks like because many of you have never transitioned before. I want to demystify the process.

In the beginning of my job search, I was searching for posted ads on LinkedIn and company websites. I tried to network but was not successful. The problem was that I was not targeting any specific career, companies, or location. I was basically shooting everywhere that I thought would have some degree of match with my expertise. Needless to say this approach with inefficient job search is a long and frustrating process. Therefore, optimization and systematization of the process becomes very important. You are not above the process. I did around 20 applications, nine screening phone interviews, six long video interviews with members of different teams at the companies two onsite and got two offers.

Few months later, I got an offer from these big companies that I had been targeting since the beginning. The story of the offer I accepted started after I found a contact on LinkedIn.

The average application for any job posted online is 525. It doesn’t mean that you are going to have to write 525 applications. If you do your resume correctly, it should go from about 20 to 40 applications, to about 9 to 12 phone screens. That will get cut in half for video interviews, and then you will go down to one to three different site visits but multiple offers. 

If you do things correctly, you get a couple of different job offers. Multiple offers enable you to leverage it against each other and choose the best job. Don’t just take whatever offer you get.

It is imperative to conduct informational interviews. They give essential information at length about the transition process and the important aspects of working in the industry. More specifically, they give you insight into the organizational culture, hiring process, key personnel involved in hiring and hopefully referral to work at your dream company. 

Take some time, be strategic, and focus. The more narrow you are with your career path choice, geographic location companies; the smaller will be the number of opportunities.

What is the one thing you need to put on your resume as well as your cover letter that will make a huge difference in strengthening your job profile if you have not heard back 20 plus times. For a PhD level job, writing cover letters is indispensable as it individualizes your application. Tailoring the resume to an individual job, making it to two pages or less is obligatory. 

Your resume has to be so highly targeted, that it could be submitted for that job alone. That’s how targeted it has to be. You have to use words that the company understands in the resume. The resume must also have the company’s specific proprietary way of explaining the technical and transferable skills that are needed. It needs to have a rationale, the reason why you applied to the company. Hopefully you have somebody, you can talk to an informational interview with someone who works at that company that you can mention in the first paragraph, that’s the kind of rationale you need.

You need to have confirmation bias. Even though you spent all of academic life trying to avoid confirmation bias. You need to do it for your job search. You should be biased for yourself.

Every company has its pros and cons, choose the top pros of that company and build a case for that company, because you’re going to use that rationale for both yourself and for that company in your resume and in your cover letter.

** 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 Rejected 20+ Times? Make This One Change appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains what are User Experience Research roles and why they are available for PhDs
• Next, Isaiah and Erika reveal why PhDs are a getting hired for user experience roles 
• Finally, Isaiah and Erika discus the strategies for PhDs to get hired in user experience roles

User experience researcher roles is one of the most exciting and buzz worthy career tracks that is available for PhDs now. Employers want to hire PhDs into these roles because of their understanding of the difference between quantitative and qualitative data and their importance. Every company has a website, apps that generate metrics that can be analyzed quantitatively to understand user experiences, while qualitative data are obtained through one-on-one interactions with the users. These data are crucial for all industries may it be biotech companies, retail, hospitality, or the service industry.

The global demand for user experience researchers is on the surge and is expected to grow exponentially. From a reference point view, the growth rate is 10X higher than most industries that are growing. PhDs are preferred in user experience roles since they know how to compile data from various sources, analyze them, and convey it as a story. As PhDs, we have had to tell a story with data for article publications or grants. The importance of analyzing the data correctly and telling a story with it forms the backbone of user experience roles. 

User Experience Researcher roles let PhDs work with a team and witness the impact of their research. They create a product and also visualize the journey of the product as it goes into the market. Product retention is an important goal in the industry.

Companies are increasingly realizing that in order to get people to keep using their product, they need to create an experience that people love. Therefore, they need to shift their focus from the product itself, to the experience that a user has while interacting with the product. Industries need people who have expertise in conducting research, interpreting the data, and communicating the research results to a general audience. Hence, a lot of the companies look for PhDs for these roles.

PhDs also have experience in troubleshooting, often they have had to get on a call or chat with customer service to troubleshoot an instrument. So, they are adept to figure out the problem, solve it, and get their research done. Troubleshooting is an integral part for several companies. Therefore, they need PhDs in this role to make the user experience better because the user experience is the product. 

User Experience Research is multidisciplinary; your background as a PhD—STEM or non STEM—humanities, social sciences, life sciences, chemistry, does not matter. It is your ability to understand quantitative and qualitative research and your ability to analyze that will get you hired into this role. 

It is really exciting as a PhD because you get a lot of data that impact the real world and real people. You get to come in as the respected person who is able to figure out the rationale and supplement the design and programming team. As a UX researcher, you have this specialized knowledge because you understand data and can tell a story with it. 

A typical user experience project starts from collecting feedback from the stakeholders about their objectives, intentions, and aspirations with this research. While they have assumptions, they also have some research questions which PhDs can best answer. This is a collaborative process where you listen to your stakeholders to get their objectives, help them to frame the research questions, and select the most appropriate research method. PhDs compile these data into reports or present them in a slide in a way that the stakeholders can understand and appreciate.

Over 90% of PhDs that we’ve gotten hired into this role had no previous experience before their first job in that role. That doesn’t matter. You can still get hired by speaking the language of user experience, understanding the day-to-day metrics of success, product development, and having access to people working in that role for referrals. PhDs need both technical skills and the transferable skills to get hired into user experience roles. Skills as business acumen.

Your PhD experience has endowed you with the key to the kingdom, recognize your worth 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 Get Hired Into A User Experience Researcher-Analyst Role In 30 Days Or Less (PhDs Only) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should practice salary negotiation quite early in their job search process 
• Next, he reveals the strategies for salary negotiation in PhD-level positions
• Finally, Isaiah discusses 45 salary negotiation scripts for PhDs

PhDs in academia have been used to being paid almost nothing. However, it is an industry trend to negotiate your worth in terms of salary and incentives. There are some soft spots that PhDs can leverage for a big impact during negotiation. PhDs have to practice salary negotiation quite early in their job search process instead of waiting for a job offer to learn about it. From the moment that you upload your resume, the situation escalates too quickly to a negotiation.

When you upload your resume, you have to be prepared to answer the expected salary range. While hiring managers and recruiters negotiate seven to 10 times a day with seven to 10 different people typically, you will  do a salary negotiation only seven to 10 times in your professional life.

The difference is huge, you are not going to outsmart or out negotiate them. You are never going to accumulate enough behavioral practice to meet the expectations. Therefore, you need to memorize scripts so well that you internalize them and use them naturally in conversations. In the briefcase strategy, PhDs leverage their research, their data, and their skills for higher salaries than their non-PhD colleagues. 

When it comes to negotiating the first thing that PhDs need to know is how to converse about salary, not being your first concern. Although you are concerned with salary, you don’t exude it to the employer. You have to focus on things beyond the salary or else you will be perceived as someone who only cares about the money but not about the job, the team or the company’s culture. Since salary is predominantly in our minds, it is too easy to slip into this. The recruiters already know you want to make it big.

The situation is much like that of a waiter where you want the tips but you don’t make it obvious. Most hiring managers and recruiters ask about the expectations from the job quite early in the hiring process. They want to know what it would take to get you on board.

I want you to think about salary negotiation, practice and role play it, do mock negotiations so that you get used to hearing things in different, conversational ways. Most PhDs are too literal; they don’t practice things behaviorally. Recruiters do not always use the prompts that PhDs often wait for before negotiating salary. They might say: what would it take to get you on board with us? Or what range are you looking for? What are your salary expectations? How much do you want to be paid? That will throw you off if you have not practiced behaviorally. Hence, when you encounter those questions, you have to turn the situation around by asking for more information.

It is very important to be able to discuss salary without getting uncomfortable about it. PhDs must be able to deflect a conversation about salary when it is too early in the job search process since you have not discussed anything that you can leverage. But you have to plan early, you can start by gaining information that is going to help you later. 

Sometimes, you will be asked about salary expectations for a position that is set in a very expensive city. That is a good time to say something like, ‘I know I have to make a lot because it is San Francisco or London or New York or Sydney, I would like to make X, Y, Z amount. But of course that may not be possible. So, I’ll consider anything that is fair.’ XYZ here might be an amount that is at the level of what housing costs in that particular city. 

You have to think about eight different anchors for salary negotiation in a big city. You really have to know what the cost of living is going to be. You can even ask questions throughout this process about what housing prices are in different locations of the city, but only if you have done your research.

In all of your early expected salary responses  you are deflecting but staying positive. You need to do salary negotiations. That is the fastest way you will ever make money. Scripts done at the right time and the right way can make you tens of thousands of dollars. 

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 45 Salary Negotiation Scripts Word-For-Word For PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah explains why PhDs need a job search strategy
• Next, he reveals how PhDs settle for non-PhD careers out of desperation
• Finally, Isaiah discusses the 15 PhD careers dominating 2021

I want every PhD to be ready for 2021. A lot of career tracks contracted in 2020, but many expanded. Those that expanded fortunately were PhD-level positions. For the most part, I am going to go through all 15 of these career tracks. I am going to give you the description for these job titles and help you understand these descriptions from a PhD viewpoint.

You start to see PhDs at different levels of their job search. Unfortunately, most PhDs wait until they are in a very desperate situation to finally act on their job search because necessity is the mother of innovation. It is not until you move from moderate to massive pain that you finally take action. You start to see a lot of desperation there. At this point, PhDs take up any job they can find, which is a giant mistake as they have spent so much time and effort in academia. 

PhDs are so educated, they possess so many different skills and now they are reduced to begging for whatever job they can take. The last moment of desperation leads them to target entry level jobs and settle with less pay.

Under the pressure of desperation and fear of being unemployed, PhDs go from begging for any job to taking any job, especially the ones that someone with a bachelor’s or master’s can do. These PhDs have been in academia and paid so little for so long, and then they get paid less in that same role as somebody who has a bachelor’s or master’s.  Often, they have somebody with a bachelor’s or master’s managing them.

If you have a PhD, you have learned at the highest level, you can get into management level positions: you should be targeting top positions. You should not be in desperation mode, accepting any job offer just because you lost your post-doc or you have graduated. 

A simple example would be a data analyst versus a data scientist. A lot of PhDs unfortunately, will get hired as a data analyst because they see it as easier. Then, they work side by side with somebody with a bachelor’s or master’s in that same position, often getting paid less. Why not go for the higher level position as a data scientist? Learn a few skills that you can easily learn, whether it is programming or some other technical skill, and then why not learn how to actually talk to executives, investors, how to communicate, how to translate technical data into business data, into actionable business suggestions? You can do all of this, as a PhD. 

A few of these PhD career titles are buzzwords. They were just a very popular way of saying a position that is similar to a position that has been around for decades, but  has now been slightly tweaked, usually because of technology or because of the current state of the economy.

The PhD career track dominating on this list is the patent analyst. This is what I love about job titles is they shift over the years, sometimes in a matter of months based on what’s happening in the economy; or just because a word becomes a popular bubble word.

Although a patent analyst is similar to a patent examiner, it is more advanced as it mandates more research, innovation, and analysis skills.  PhDs are being hired into this role aggressively under the intellectual property umbrella. 

What do patent analysts do? They review potential patent applicants. They work for companies that are developing products. They may even assess proposed products which are not public yet.

So, they have to ensure a patent application will not fail legally and that it can be successful on the business side as well. This requires a lot of investigative work. It needs PhDs to leverage their research analysis skills and understanding of innovation. Reviewing a patent application is no less than reviewing a grant because it has to be analyzed based on novelty, merit, marketability, usefulness, and earning potential.

We see a lot of PhDs getting into patent analyst roles. 

PhDs are valued since they inherently possess all the skills necessary to succeed in these job titles.

** 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 15 PhD Careers Dominating 2021 appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah discuss the importance of investing in your resume 
• Next, he enlists the importance of resume structure 
• Finally, Isaiah reveals 12 mandatory resume updates every PhD must follow in order to get hired in industry.

Everybody wants to know what to do with their resume, why they cannot get hired by uploading their current resume. If you are a PhD looking for your first industry transition, you probably have found this by getting no response to uploading your current resume. Maybe it is even your academic CV with five to six pages and gets you no response. You thought it would be easier than this, but it is much harder. 

Job search for industry jobs unlike academia does not rely solely on the letter of recommendation from the professor, PI, or advisor. They are not looking for a detailed chronological description of your duties or work history in your resume.

It is not like a lengthy peer review journal article. Rather, they want to see a very short synopsis —a one to two page document— selling yourself. Emphasizing on why they should hire you. It is really a marketing document. You have to position yourself correctly for the position that you want. Always keep your resume up to date. Even though the resume is a one to two page document in industry, you need to keep it up to date. 

Your resume is going to stay with you so invest in it.

When I got into industry, I was able to get a promotion within six months. The only reason I was able to do that is because I documented my progress at that company and the results I was achieving. I leveraged that to get a promotion. 

I saw several resumes where education was the main section. Everything was really pointing to their education. Couple of them had an objective statement and contact information but the majority was education.  

When asked about their skills PhDs immediately talk about their technical skills. What they were doing in academia. STEM and non-STEM PhDs from Life sciences, chemistry, agricultural social sciences, humanities, all of them focused on their technical work. I have worked in industry and know what is out there. We know that while you might be pipetting or doing something that is leading edge in academia: very likely in an industry, advanced robotics are doing it or a slew of technicians, or it is being outsourced to a CRO.

If you are hired but have not updated your resume at all. You can be let go tomorrow and have to start from your job search from scratch again. You have had the experience of a job search before, you have the idea where to start, but you are forgetting all of the results that you achieved. You need to document those on a daily basis. You know that the resume gets pulled out with the hiring committee and they review it. When they come back to your candidacy, the higher the quality of the resume, the better off you will be. If you negotiate, your good resume will help your case. You’ll be paid more. 

Take the time to write your resume in the best possible way. Many PhDs sink into the comfort of what they are used to doing; they don’t like to sit there in the discomfort of writing their resume. It is painful to write a resume, like trying to write your first book; takes a lot of work. The reason it is painful is because you have to actually think about the results you have achieved. It is all about how you sell yourself as the most successful candidate to the recruiters.

Do you even know what results you have achieved? It is easy to just blank out and say, I have not achieved any results. Don’t blame imposter syndrome. You have achieved results. You just have not quantified them because it is difficult. You have to activate that deeper part of your brain where it is not just a snap judgment. You have to actually brainstorm the results that you achieved. 

It is said that even if a good resume is not enough to get you hired in a high paying industry job, a bad resume is enough to keep you from getting hired 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 Revive Your Resume For The Post-Vaccine Hiring Rush (12 Updates) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah discusses why PhDs need to set cash goals and commit to fulfill them
• Next, Isaiah reveals the strategies to navigate curve ball questions and get hired. Thus, contributing to the cash goals
• Finally, Isaiah explains 2 controversial cash goals to set as a driving force during your job search

We will discuss something that several others avoid: we will talk about  money. As a PhD, you should be aiming to make as much money as possible for doing meaningful work and not feeling guilty about it. You should be rewarded for your value. You can’t know your value or remember your value as a PhD if you are not being paid your value.

PhDs often think that they don’t have enough industry experience, skill sets, or business acumen. Therefore, they are not entitled to more money. But you have to learn to earn it. You can earn more money and you should always try to earn more money else you will get into the industry and then be taken for a ride. I want you to have a target of money and not accept less than what  you are worth, because money can get you a lot of things, most important of them is freedom; to focus your time and effort on projects. 

There are many people out there who would say that money doesn’t matter; just do what you love. Don’t let people dissuade you. I want you to know that money is not the root of all evil, rather it allows us to make a transaction—a value for value—earlier, transactions were done in terms of weapons or forced labor. Therefore, put aside any wrong thoughts about money and open up your mind into a state of discovery.

One of the most popular questions is, ”Can you work with  less qualified people?” Industry employers are hiring more PhDs than ever before. They know that you are highly qualified and respect other PhDs. But they want to know if you can talk to people that have less technical skills than you without making them feel like you are condescending. You can call upon your experience as a mentor to an undergrad, volunteer, lab assistants, that learned in a different way than you. That’s the best way to answer this. People learn at different paces and in a different way. So you would change your approach in terms of training the other person with patience and communication skills. 

Another question is, ”What do you perceive as some of the disadvantages to working in industry?”  Don’t answer that the disadvantage is that it is a business or a company. They don’t want to hear that you think that business in general is a disadvantage. Neither do they want to hear from you that the company’s corporate strategy or the commercial direction is a disadvantage. Don’t answer anything that would indicate that you are going to hesitate to pivot with the company if the market is not responding to a product or a research project. This question has to be answered tactfully.

I want you to set $10,000 a month as your first target. $10,000 a month amounts to  $120,000 a year. Base this as a driving force and take your job search very seriously, negotiate as aggressively as possible. But with a win-win approach, following all the methodologies to get into a position to attain that goal. Make a plan, a strategy to reach that goal even if it is not perfect. As a PhD in learning, you can always improvise. 

You already have the goal you have to get; $10,000 per month. This is just a start for those of you that haven’t transitioned into industry, yet the government is going to take away at least 40%. For some of you in other countries, it may be much higher. The government is going to take out taxes first before you blow the money. Then, there is social security, Medicare, federal taxes, state or province or local taxes, car insurance and others. You need to get to a point where you can save 40% of your gross income.

As a PhD, you have set goals, formulate hypotheses, design experiments and improvised to attain the goal. Setting cash goals will encourage you to work aggressively towards a secure future.

** 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 Why PhDs Should Be More Money Driven (& 2 Controversial Cash Goals) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah discusses the why PhDs need to accept and follow company culture
• Next, Isaiah reveals the strategies to balance capability and cultural fit 
• Finally, Isaiah explains 61 new career insights

We are going to talk about how PhDs need to understand the company culture and how you need to position yourself to fit in a company’s culture. PhDs need to understand the specific changes and the working trends of the company.

We have been seeing a lot more hybrid project management since the pandemic induced workforce decentralization. Everyone is on Slack and Zoom. PhDs need to update their skills from academia to stay abreast with these industry advancements. 

Academia had convinced me that I was an incredible project manager. I could balance so many different incubations and document them in my lab notebook every day. And then I got into industry and I realized in academia, there is no project management. In industry —however small or big— there is a strong organizational culture.

As PhDs, we often don’t think a lot about the culture, we just want to know the goal, and then figure out a way to hit it through data. But culture is how you get things done. Because how you get things done on a day-to-day basis dictates how you feel and how others feel. If you do not make an effort to fit into the culture, it does not matter how competent you are, you can eventually get squeezed out of an organization. 

One of the most frequently asked questions in the pandemic era is, How do you create culture in a remote environment? That is a tough interview question that gets asked all the time to evaluate the candidate’s cultural fit. If you understand what the employer wants to do in terms of culture, what they care about, you will have an easier time answering this. 

If you come in and you fit in the culture perfectly, but you can’t do the job, you are not going to get hired. You have to perform. So, capability and cultural fit are two very important aspects that affect hiring. As a PhD, you have been trained only to think about capability, which is why so many PhDs go to their first interview just talking about their technical skills with hiring managers; recruiters who don’t have PhDs don’t understand those technical skills. 

Dig into concepts like cultural IQ or the language of culture, so you can start understanding what employers are looking for. Every company has its own culture. Understanding the language of this culture will help you to get hired and stay hired.

Companies have been constantly changing and adapting to increase efficiency during the pandemic. They had to rely on hybrid project management, the combination of the waterfall project management methodology and the agile project management methodology, and agile project management, it’s almost like a religion.

We recommend PhDs to take a look at the AI, data analytics and software programs of the company prior to interview. Everything is cloud-based. Newer R&D positions as technology development officers, informatics specialists, cloud informatics specialists, are cloud skill dependent. They need to work with  the integration of data inflows from within the company and from external organizations. Project managers have had to embrace these cloud-based systems informatics and as a PhD, that is what makes you so valuable for these project management roles in industry right now. Project management is the connection between projects and strategy. It is IQ, but in the language of industry.

A sponsor is a leader in your professional circle who is going to advocate for your career advancement, both before you get hired at a company and after you get hired. This is somebody who is going to be at meetings, especially those where you will not be. You have to get one of these people who can be your sponsor in company meetings well ahead of time. Somebody who will speak well about you on the hiring committee. PhDs can do that by paying close attention to who during the informational interview process connects well, an accountability partner. When it comes to your job search, find people hold you accountable in your jobs.

As a PhD do what you are best at research all aspects of the job search process which will work in your favor.

** 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 Hacking Company Culture To Get Hired (& 61 New Career Insights) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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

• First, Isaiah discusses why staying in academia harms causes mental disorders in PhDs 
• Next, Isaiah reveals new strategies that will help you get through the job search process
• Finally, Isaiah explores the answers to some quirky interview questions that PhDs might face

Why staying in academia causes mental disorders? I am not talking about clinically diagnosed disorders. I am talking about the mental challenges, the struggles, the pain. PhDs in academia have an indescribable urge that they are not accomplishing anything or making any progress. How did that happen? This is a common disorder that happens to PhDs stuck in academia for long. That takes a toll on their mental health.

As a PhD, when you come across a depressed postdoc it makes you ponder that being a PhD, you are highly skilled and intelligent, what went wrong? Clearly at that time you don’t understand how dark it is and how it actually damages a PhD’s career and their mental health. However, at one point you realize that the system is broken. We become disillusioned and undergo a lot of pain.

The challenging time and the pain in academia deviates you from a productive target. So you look for something else because as PhDs, we have very active minds. We want to do something better, where we can make a difference. We can do higher level work, more volume of work than other people, and, gradually academia stops making sense to us as we are not given any direction. The university is a business at the end of the day, and they don’t know what they’re doing.

I realized that in academia, professors work hard for years on something. Then, just scrap it because they were just spinning out research to get the next grant. On the contrary, everybody in industry was discovering things so much faster and that acceleration and industry is incomparable. Don’t make someone else’s career your pie, put your career first. Try to find something positive and productive, like your job search to get obsessed over, the options, the possibilities for you in industry that will unlock your energy again.

Don’t get stuck in apathy, staying in academia will bring you more harm than help. Make your job search your priority. There are several new strategies to help you in the job search process.

Certain changes in the resume structure are needed for making a better impact on the recruiter. Education, job duties and technical skills should not be on the first page of the resume. Transferable skills in the work experience section must be highlighted. Resume structure is important because the recruiter needs to find the candidate relevant information from the resume in order to make the final decision. 

Academic job titles, though fancy, have less value on an industry resume. Use the job title that would make sense for what you did and use it across instead of a bunch of titles that do not convey your expertise. Highlight what you learned during the job, the transferable skills, add value to your job title.

For almost a decade. The first question that PhDs are going to be asked during an interview after “how are you”, is “tell me a little bit about yourself”. It is very easy to think that everybody you interview with is going to be a trained interviewer, a HR who knows the way the question should be answered. That is not true in many cases. 

We recommend PhDs in academia to make an impressive elevator pitch for this, where you say, who you are both professionally and personally. Add a personal aspect too because your answer is going to prompt their next line of questioning.

Besides, a personal note also helps to build rapport with them. Convey your hobbies. Something that shows that you’re more well-rounded than the majority of the PhD population. Show a team-oriented outdoor activity that somebody without a PhD can identify with, because they will ask you about that and in doing so, you have successfully disarmed them. You’re talking about something that’s more personable. They’re going to get back to the other questions, but this is a great way to start your answer. 

When you are questioned about why you would like to join the company, your answer should be aligned with why they are hiring you for this position and the goals of the position. Staying focussed on the company’s goal helps these answers. Answering questions in an interview is a skill but preparing ahead to answer these questions efficiently makes a huge difference.

** 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 Why Staying In Academia Causes Mental Disorders (& Some Quirky Interview Questions) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.