PhD Transition Report On-Demand

Skip ahead to:
00:13:10 Show Me The Data
00:33:43 Donna Serdula
01:01:13 Kristeena Wright, PhD

Are you utilizing your LinkedIn profile to its Full Potential?

We reached out to one of the world’s foremost LinkedIn profile pioneers…

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show, we are joined by Donna Serdula: author, LinkedIn expert, and founder of LinkedIn-Makeover.com.

Donna has created an optimization methodology specifically for LinkedIn and built an entire business around this concept. Donna will talk about how her organization works to help professionals stand out in the crowd and ultimately land their dream job.

We are also joined by Kristeena Wright, PhD, Application Scientist at Advanced Instruments. Kristeena will talk about her career transition as an application scientist and what she’s doing in her current role.

About Our Guests

Donna Serdula LOVES LinkedIn, and is one of the foremost experts on LinkedIn profile optimization. Her current mission: to help people create an impactful online professional brand that leads to amazing opportunities.

With over 40 writers on her team at LinkedIn-Makeover.com, Donna has helped thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, professionals, and companies from all over the world tell their unique story and successfully brand themselves on LinkedIn. Donna is also the author of LinkedIn Profile Optimization for Dummies and LinkedIn Makeover: Professional Secrets to a Powerful LinkedIn Profile, in which she shares her proven formula for LinkedIn success.

Donna has been featured in Business Insider, Time, Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, and many other news outlets.

Kristeena Wright, PhD, works as a scientist at Advanced Instruments, driving the development of scientific content to support the value of osmolality testing in Biopharma. Kristeena entered the world of academic science as an undergrad research assistant at Duke University. She went on to obtain her PhD in Biomedical Sciences before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is a motivated spokesperson for endometriosis research, as shown by multiple publications, international presentations, and in-person petitions to US legislators and a dedicated STEM mentor.

Key Takeaways

1. LinkedIn quizzes are becoming more populous – use them to your advantage!

2. Your LinkedIn profile should let people in on who you are, why you do what you do, and what you stand for.

3. Application scientists must be versatile collaborators who can work in exciting, fast-paced environments.

Unknown LinkedIn Features for PhDs: A Conversation With Donna Serdula

Isaiah: So, Donna, what’s new on LinkedIn?

Donna: There are so many changes, I’m really excited to talk to you about some of them! Formerly, on your profile, there were skills that you simply added. You just put them on your profile and that was it. All of a sudden, LinkedIn offered endorsements, which gave other people the ability to endorse you for those skill sets. And now, LinkedIn has this “take a skill quiz” option. So if you want to prove that you’re better than everyone else, that you truly have the right skills, this is the way to do it – you take a quiz. These are quizzes that the LinkedIn learning instructors put together, and they are graded on a curve. So it’s not that you have to get 100%, but you just have to do better than, you know, 95% or 80% of the other people who have taken that quiz. If you pass it, you get a nice little badge on your profile. This is something that I think recruiters and hiring managers are absolutely going to be on the lookout for.

Isaiah: I love this because one of the questions we get the most is, well, can’t anybody just put whatever skill they want on their skill list? I remember that when you first told me about this, there were only five quizzes on there, and now there are already a lot more, especially for those of you who are into programming or data. Even the basics – skills like Microsoft PowerPoint!

Donna: Now, what happens if you take the quiz and you fail? It could happen. But if it does happen, no one is alerted. You get 3 months to study and get yourself where you need to be in terms of skill and knowledge. Then you can take it a final time, and hopefully, this final time, you pass! So no one is at any point alerted that you didn’t pass. And if you only just barely bass, don’t worry – you still get the badge. No one’s badge says “61%” or something. It’s a pass or fail type of deal. And people are only alerted if you pass.

Isaiah: Just the fact that you’re taking the quizzes, sharpening your skills, and willing to put yourself out there will help with employers. But also it makes LinkedIn happy. And who knows? Maybe they give you a little extra boost in their algorithm.

Donna: You know, there are certain jobs that are actually asking you to take a quiz to prove that you really want to apply for the job. I think you’re going to see that more and more.

Isaiah: And it’s only a matter of time before they start implementing quizzes on business concepts like due diligence, or in specific arenas like medical affairs. It’s going to build out from here.

…

Donna: Years ago, I had this epiphany that your LinkedIn profile is not your resume. Your resume has to align with a specific job. But your LinkedIn profile, on the other hand, is more about your career future. It’s who you are – your digital introduction or first impression. It’s your calling card, your elevator pitch. And it really needs to let people in on who you are, why you do what you do, and what you stand for. Why do you have a PhD? Why are you looking to get into corporate America? What’s driving you? That’s what excites people. And that’s what this is all about. I really think of it as branding – we’re helping people tell their story and LinkedIn is the best vehicle to do it.

Application Scientist Career Track: A Conversation With Kristeena Wright, PhD

Isaiah: So Kristeena, I was just telling people about why I love the application scientist position. How long have you been on the job now?

Kristeena: It’s actually been just over a year now. I started October 15th of last year.

Isaiah: Well, happy work anniversary! That’s great. What did you enjoy most about the job right after you started?

Kristeena: Honestly, I would say that going from my postdoc straight into this position, I appreciate how quickly things have kept moving. I think there’s something to be said for taking your time and feeling comfortable, but for me, it was actually really beneficial to go slightly out of my comfort zone and into this industry position. So I kind of hit the ground running! I’m at a company of about 100 people, so I’m the only application scientist. They had a lot of stuff lined up for me to take care of, so there was plenty to do as soon as I started. That was really exciting, just having that fast pace.

Isaiah: What does your average workday look like?

Kristeena: What’s great about my position at Advanced Instruments is that it’s very cross-functional. Technically, I’m part of the marketing department, which was very new to me when I was hired. But then another large aspect of what I do is pre-and-post-sale support for the sales team. I also interact a lot with the R&D team in the lab. So typically, I work closely with the product manager on a specific device, and we are both very cross-departmental.

Isaiah: That defines the application scientist role very, very well: “cross-departmental.” You’re doing a lot of coordinating and communicating. But the nature of the role is helping people apply a company’s product or service. So you’re like this conduit between the company and its different departments: the sales team, the marketing team, maybe the executives, etc. And the clients! Are your clients scientists? Clinicians…?

Kristeena: So we make Osmo monitors, which are not common. They’re typically used in the clinical field, so Advanced Instruments started out more as a clinical company, but now we’re starting to see them become more and more relevant–critical, really–in biotech. We do have clinical technician clients, but I’m specifically working with the biotech division at our company. That means I work with a lot of process development scientists and manufacturing scientists – a lot of people who have similar backgrounds to me, really! It’s like being the liaison, if you will, between our company and all of those departments and the scientists within biotech. It’s a unique, very specific area, but there’s plenty to be done for sure…

** for the full interviews, check out the video 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 Unknown LinkedIn Features for PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
18:10 Show Me The Data
36:32 Peter Docker
1:10:04 Mariano Cardenas, Ph.D.

Are you a PhD struggling to find your motivation? Your driving purpose? 

Peter Docker calls this your “WHY,” and he is your guide to the contemplative journey in search of that latent career passion. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show, we are joined by Peter Docker, co-author of Find Your Why with Simon Sinek, and part of the latter’s “Igniter” team. Peter has worked with leaders all over the world, helping them find purpose and create teams where everyone thrives. He’ll be sharing both why and how successful PhDs connect with a sense of purpose for career satisfaction and success. We are also joined by Mariano Cardenas, Ph.D., who will discuss the exciting application specialist career track.

About Our Guests

Peter Docker is a trained leadership consultant and executive coach with a passion for enabling people to be extraordinary. Peter teaches leaders and organizations how to harness the power of “WHY” to do extraordinary things. He illustrates his insights by drawing on examples from his experience with industry, military, and even piloting to explain principles that can be applied in any business.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Simon Sinek since 2011, Peter is an Igniter and implementation specialist on the Start With Why team, helping organizations foster both extraordinary cultures and high, yet sustainable performance rates. Peter has drawn from his years of practical experience to co-author–along with Simon Sinek and David Mead–his career-energizing manifesto, Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team, a step-by-step guide on how to discover your WHY, published September 2017.

Mariano Cardenas, Ph.D., works as an application specialist at NanoTemper Technologies. After obtaining his PhD in Biochemistry in Buenos Aires, Mariano moved to the USA to conduct postdoctoral research in oncology and bioassay development. There he ultimately joined forces with NanoTemper, where he now helps scientists use microscale thermophoresis to characterize proteins with just a tiny amount of sample. This work advances research in drug discovery, oncology, targeted therapy, and more. 

Key Takeaways

1. Discovering your WHY (your primary cause or belief) can lead to extraordinary things.

2. Life is made up of content and context – content fills our lives, but without context, it is meaningless.

3. Discovering your WHY is a process of careful reflection on key memories and identifying the emotions that accompany them.

4. From these feelings you can derive a growing sense of purpose – your instinctive motivational philosophy.

How PhDs Can Find Their Why: A Conversation With Peter Docker

Isaiah: You have to have a really strong reason to keep moving forward. What was your WHY in that sense? Why did you want to write this book?

Peter: “WHY” is shorthand for “what’s your cause?” or “what’s your belief?” Why do you get out of bed each day? My WHY is to enable people to discover that they are extraordinary so that they can do extraordinary things. I believe that everybody, when they’re in “flow,” when they’re loving what they do – that can be pretty extraordinary. I get my fulfillment through helping people to discover that themselves. So it was quite a natural thing to write a book with Simon. And David’s all about finding your higher purpose. We all have one, it’s just that some of us haven’t discovered it yet. It’s a joy to know that our book is in 26 languages, so it’s reaching all corners of the world!

Isaiah: That’s fantastic. And you mentioned that you define WHY as both  a noun and a belief. We have a lot of PhDs here who might be looking at the dictionary right now for what WHY is, and I want to break it down more practically. How do you make it concrete for people so that they know exactly what WHY is and how to start finding their own?

Peter: There are only two things in this world: content and context. Content is the stuff that we do, the things we say, the work we’re engaged in, etc. But content has no meaning whatsoever without context. Context gives meaning to what it is we do. The whole thing is like a jigsaw puzzle – all those puzzle pieces on the table represent contents. But it’s only when you see the picture on the box that you get the context, and you can make sense of it all. This is what it’s like to discover your WHY –  having all the puzzle pieces on the table: your work, home life, whatever. But when you can paint the picture on the box, your WHY or reason for being just makes all those puzzle pieces come together. And also not to push the analogy too far, but sometimes it helps to realize that one piece of the jigsaw never felt quite right, and that you no longer need to focus on that piece. The WHY is the context in which you do everything; the WHY is the meaning that’s brought to the work you do or to your life.

Isaiah: I love that. So let me put this in the context of the PhDs here. Most of them feel like they’ve lost their WHY because they thought they were going to be a professor – things were going to go one way in academia, and now they’re realizing the jobs are outside academia. You’re saying that they’ve lost their WHY, but their WHAT is changing. How can they discover that WHY – whether it’s new or has always been there? 

Peter: Mark Twain said that the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why. We all have one WHY–and one WHY only–although we may have many different WHATs in our life! When I speak to mothers, they often say, “My WHY is clear: it’s my kids.” But that’s actually just a very important WHAT. You were a person before you had children, and you will be a person after your children have left home. And for those of us who have been very focused on one particular specialized area for many years, it’s difficult to figure out what else we can do –  all of our energy has been in that particular sphere. But when we hear people say, “I’ve lost my WHY,” they’ve probably just lost their way a little bit, and they need to be reminded of their WHY. This discovery is a retrospective process of reflection. 

Our book is a step by step guide because we wanted to share this. The book asks you to identify key moments in your life, going back perhaps to things in early memory – things that you’ll never forget because they changed the course of your life or were otherwise very meaningful. But they need to be specific memories. When we reconnect to a specific memory, it reignites the emotions that we felt at that time. Those emotions are there because the experience either resonated with us or challenged the values that we instinctively hold. And when we look at those memories, themes start to emerge. Those themes pointing toward what’s really important to us. The first amongst them becomes our Why, and the rest become what we call our HOWs – our guiding principles…

Application Specialist Career Track: A Conversation With Mariano Cardenas, Ph.D.

Isaiah: As an application scientist, your home office is often a Starbucks or anywhere else that has wifi, right? Let’s get your perspective!  What do you do on a day-to-day basis as an application scientist? 

Mariano: I do tons of things, but I didn’t know what those things were when I joined the company! Basically, it’s like I’m a scientific advisor for all the people that have the instruments. I’ll set up development and set up the assays. If prospective clients have doubts, then I meet with them and demonstrate our technology. I do webinars, seminars, and workshops too. So it’s a little bit of everything. One day, I’m teaching in California – the next, I need to go to Boston for an instrument demo. I’m not doing a single thing every day. I need to give presentations and meet people at a certain time, especially those from different pharma companies and universities. It’s amazing – I’m really happy with this job!

Isaiah: Yeah, I can tell you love it! It’s great if you enjoy a lot of variety – if you’re self-organized, a self-starter with a lot of autonomy. But on a broader scale, can you tell us in one sentence what you do? If there is one overarching thing that you do as an application scientist, what is it?

Mariano: I help researchers succeed with their research. I love it! That’s basically what I do. It’s a mix of everything because you want clients to succeed with your instruments and to use those instruments to do the best research possible.

Isaiah: So you’re taking information from the company and communicating it to the client. You’re also taking information and feedback from the client back to the company. What departments do you work with? How does that flow of communication work?

Mariano: I work with many departments, so it’s a very interactive job. Basically, it’s one team working toward the same purpose: improving science and human health. My team communicates with production teams, R&D, sales teams, and order management. We need to know what’s going on in the company and then gather the information. Let’s say an instrument has been purchased. The sales team will tell order management that an instrument that has been bought. Then order management tells production, and production tells them when the instrument will be ready. Then we need to organize a visit to the customer to install the system, and I usually deliver a seminar and conduct some training…

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Start With Your Why For PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
17:15 Show Me The Data
38:05 Jeff Kreisler
1:01 Addis Fuhr, Ph.D.

Is it hard to know how much of your personality to share when you are at a networking event, or in a job interview?

Humor has often been devalued in industry in favor of being stoically professional. But what if using your full personality was an advantage in your career transition? 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by Jeff Kreisler. He’s editor-in-chief of PeopleScience, bestselling author, behavioral science advocate. We are also joined by Addis Fuhr, PhD and Senior Modeling & Simulation Engineer/Analyst at MITRE. Addis will join us to talk about his career transition as an R&D Scientist into his current role.

About Our Guests

Jeff Kreisler is just a typical Princeton-educated-lawyer-turned-award-winning-comedian, author, speaker, TV pundit, speechwriter, and advocate for behavioral economics. He is co-author of “Dollars and Sense” – about the psychology of money, with Dan Ariely – Editor-In-Chief of PeopleScience.com and speaker with Leading Authorities. He uses humor & research to understand, explain and change the world. Jeff runs PeopleScience.com, writes for TV, politicians, and CEOs, shares witty insight on CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC & SiriusXM and tours most of this planet.

Addis Fuhr, PhD is the Senior Modeling & Simulation Engineer/Analyst at MITRE with an expertise in computational materials science, laser spectroscopy, X-Ray diffraction, electrochemistry, and materials characterization. Excellent communication skills as demonstrated by peer-reviewed publications, patents, conference presentations, and collaborative research awards. He is interested broadly in technology related to energy, communications, defense, and electronics/photonics. 

Key Takeaways

1. How humor can be an asset in your job search but why it’s important to not try to be funny.
2. How allowing your personality to come out in a natural way in networking and interviews can help you determine company culture and if it’s a fit for you.
3. In industry, how your skills from academia in research and love of problem solving can manifest into one career that feels custom designed for your strengths.

The Science (and Humor) of a Good PhD Job Search: A Conversation With Jeff Kreisler

Isaiah: Very excited to have on Jeff. Thank you Jeff for joining us. So, you’ve been involved in a lot and you’ve changed careers a lot, it sounds like. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey and why you’ve taken so many kind of left turns?

Jeff: Basically I was on a path for traditional success through Princeton and law school and offer those big firm jobs, to be, you know, at age 22 the next step was 45 alcoholic and divorced. And, it was not something I wanted. I admit I have some privilege in that I had some good degrees and I had a sort of a safety net built in, so I took some risks. And I was always that guy that wrote down little observations that are, that has the little funny sayings, actually as I was studying for the bar in California, I took a comedy workshop, and it just really resonated with me as being this incredible tool for communication potentially for behavior change, for education. The only rule in comedy is you have to be funny now. t’s a big role. It requires an emotional response, and connection and all these other elements. But you can sort of talk about anything. And more than that, what I found was really powerful was that, that anything you could talk about was, open to topics that others might find challenging or difficult or stressful. I spent most of my career talking about politics.  I talked about cheating in our culture. Now I do a lot of stuff about sort of behavioral science and psychology. And I’ve always taught about finance and money and economics and all of the topics. Different people find them to be intimidating or stressful or they might even disagree, particularly in politics. But I’ve found through the use of humor, that I’m able to engage in a conversation with folks and at least get them to listen, and hopefully retain and learn and, and have a conversation with me, educate me back. So, you know,  I would say the last sort of through line I’ve seen through it all is that, you know, comedian like a Jerry Seinfeld or there a David type, they say, Hey, ever notice people do the stupid thing. And then the behavioral scientists or the, the PhD says, yeah, this is why. And so they sort of fit together nicely on either, you know, begin yang sides of the coin.

Isaiah: I love that. I love that comparison. And, I want to ask you a little bit about, you know, the transition you had, especially from a, you know, how advanced degree law, you know, as a, as a lawyer to, to getting into these different fields. Cause we have a lot of people watching who are trying to do their own transition. But first on her humor, you’ve talked a lot about it and you know, let’s imagine we’re talking to people that have no idea what humor is, which we might be for some. How would you describe humor, especially on a practical day to day basis? Not so much standing up in front of people as a comedian, but daily. How does it help? What are some of the behavioral psychology insights you could give us on the importance of humor and how to be humorous?

Jeff: There are a lot of benefits to being to using humor. And I should put forward like a very important like caveat or, or warning that bad humor as I think you addressed in the previous segment. Like things that are aggressive or offensive or just misfire. Like there’s a big danger there. So when thinking about using humor, whether in the workplace or otherwise, like if you think it might not hit, I would say don’t do it because the risk is far too great. So that’s my general warning. But when humor is used effectively, it can, create more engagement. It can lower people’s, sort of defenses, and create a community feeling, right. There’s, there’s something powerful if you have, if your listeners and viewers haven’t been to a comedy show, a theater club, otherwise, like when a collective group of people all laugh together, it’s incredible. 

It’s this shared emotional experience that is so rare to any other setting and that creates a sense of community amongst strangers. And that then it creates a bond that helps listening. You know, obviously you said not just on stage, but, using humor, the self deprecating humor in particular is, is particularly powerful because, none of us are perfect and oftentimes I think in the quest to seem perfect, we can come across,  whether it’s abrasive or too full of ourselves. And,you know, I always think that, the word humor is the same as human and humanity. That’s kind of a silly comparison, but there is, you know, when you’re self deprecating, you sort of acknowledge your human humanity. I think of Jon Stuart as the perfect example when he’s on the daily show, like he was, you know, a very smart person had very in great insight and you know, w whether you agree with them politically or not, you see, it’s hard to argue that that’s not the case. 

But he also was very silly and self-deprecating and often made himself sort of the butt of the jokes. And that allowed the higher level commentary that he had to be accepted a little more easily because he didn’t come across and say, I’m super smart. You’re super dumb. Here’s what I have to say. He said, we’re all dumb and here’s something I noticed. And humor allows you to do that. But then comedians, whether they’re stand up or they’re people that write for political speeches or whatever it may be, I think harness the fact that that using humor can we reflect the absurdity of our life and our existence and sometimes reflecting that reality allows you to relate more easily to people…

Analyst/Medical Writing Career Track: A Conversation With Addis Fuhr, PhD

Isaiah: We will bring Anand on with us and we’ll talk to him about how he got into his medical writing role, what he does on a daily basis. And any other questions that you have. Great suit and headset. I can see you and I can hear you…how are you?

Addis: So I basically develop a modeling and simulation techniques to analyze different, physics space problems. And then I analyze them,  for my work.

Isaiah: Perfect. And how did you get into this? So maybe talk about all the way from, you know, the, I guess the conception of where you learned about this role and then what did the transition process look like for you? And be as specific as you can in terms of, you know, I, you uploaded a resume or I got a referral or, you know, then I did a phone screen, a video interview and a site visit. What did it look like? 

Addis: I’ll start with actually about midway through my PhD. So midway through my PhD I got a fellowship to work at Los Alamos national lab, which is part of what’s called the FF RDC system that stands for federally funded research center. Uh, they’re basically government labs or government funded labs that basically do research for defense related topics. And so when I did that fellowship, I realized that I really loved the working and the FFR DC system because it’s basically a lot like academia in the sense of you can do all this really cool research and development beginning fundamentals to applied, um, but not necessarily like academia. We have to teach or constantly do grant proposals. So it kind of seemed like the perfect kind of combination for me. Uh, however, I did not necessarily want to stay at Los Alamos, not because of any problems with Los Alamos, which just because I needed to sort of be by the coast. 

So I moved to Washington DC and, what I found is if I’m MITRE, uh, when I was looking for a job title,  had a lot of work related to, I did my PhD, which was basically competition material science. They do computational work more broadly than just material science, but, you know, basically physics-based computational work. And, it just seemed like, when I did the interview,  I found that application online put in my resume. I’ve talked to some people during the interview. It seems like the main thing that they were looking for is someone who just wanted to apply physics-based models to really just broad array of problems. Any sort of problem was kind of thrown at you, not necessarily just materials or optics or whatever. Just very, very broad. Perfect. For me. I just kind of like solving problems. And so a came in for my interview, uh, just really got along with everybody. Had some other interviews in the pipeline, cancel them all once I got the offer and just that this is a place for me,  then moved down.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Science (and Humor) Behind A Good PhD Job Search appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
6:53 Show Me The Data
26:05 Jacqueline Whitmore
51:24 Anand Devasthanam, Ph.D.

Are you unknowingly sabotaging your success by making common etiquette errors?

Fitting into corporate culture is an important part of your career success in your industry transition.  Avoiding some common errors will help you make strong first impressions in your first days at your industry job. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by Jacqueline Whitmore – international etiquette expert and author to  share her top etiquette tips for success in your industry transition. We are also joined by Anand Devasthanam, PhD, Medical Writer at Parexel.  Anand will join us to talk about his career transition into his current position as a medical writer and give advice to others interested in this field.

About Our Guests

Jacqueline Whitmore, is an international etiquette expert, a certified speaking professional, and the founder of The Protocol School of Palm Beach, a premier business etiquette and hospitality consulting firm. She is the author of BUSINESS CLASS: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work and POISED FOR SUCCESS: Mastering the Four Qualities That Distinguish Outstanding Professionals. Jacqueline ranks as one of the most widely quoted etiquette experts in the world. Her advice is sought by numerous publications including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. She has appeared as a guest on a variety of national radio and television shows including ABC’s 20/20, CNN, FOX News, Anderson Cooper’s AC360° and CNBC. Jacqueline has served as the cell phone etiquette spokesperson for Sprint and the holiday etiquette spokesperson for Office Depot, Sam’s Club and CLARISONIC skincare and the dating etiquette expert for EliteSingles.com.

Anand Devasthanam, PhD, moved into his role as a medical writer at Parexel by leveraging his experience in publications strategy, regulatory affairs guidelines and requirements, and specialized writing. His diverse background includes editorial and web content positions at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Toastmasters International, and he served as Scientific Editor for the AlterMed Research Foundation. Anand also spent 6 years at the Roswell Cancer Foundation in Immunology and Regulatory Affairs.  In his current role at Parexel, Anand’s role involves research, creating, and coordinating the development of independent review charters (IRC), reviewer manuals, imaging case report forms (CRFs), and other clinical documents intended for submission to the FDA or other regulatory authorities. Anand also serves as the main client contact for IRC development, including presenting and leading client discussions.

Key Takeaways

1. What etiquette is and why it’s so important for PhDs going into industry careers- at every stage of transition.
2. Common areas of etiquette mishaps to avoid, and what to do to make strong first impressions in meetings, at dinners, and in your use of technology.
3. In industry, how a diverse background as a PhD can create a career using all your transferable skills and how to highlight those.

Must-Know Industry Job Etiquette For PhDs: A Conversation With Jacqueline Whitmore

Isaiah: I really want you to go buy these two books. Trust me, all of you have no idea what business etiquette means. I know because I had no idea. I thought I did, but I didn’t. It is a whole world in itself. That’s why we’re so excited to talk to Jacqueline. Her website of course is etiquetteexpert.com and we’re all on Linkedin. Many of us still looking for a job to make sure you connect with Jacqueline when you get a chance and a show her how, how kind and how grateful we are as PhDs to have her on. Hi, Jacqueline. Thanks for being here.

Jacqueline: Hi, Isaiah. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Isaiah: I really appreciate it. You know, obviously our audience has, not a lot of experience with business etiquette. Most of us think it has to do with, you know, maybe what you dress or which fork you use during a business lunch. My first question is why does business etiquette fascinate you? Why did you write your books? Why have you made a career out of it?

Jacqueline: I didn’t intend to become an etiquette expert. Isaiah, I actually have a degree in broadcasting and journalism and I worked in the hospitality industry for more than a decade. And while I was working at the breakers in Palm Beach, I took an etiquette course for executives and I realized that it was something that I needed. I grew up with a southern mother and a southern grandmother, but I didn’t have business etiquette skills. And I was put in a position where I was meeting and mingling high society and VIP…you name it. Royalty. Yeah. And I needed to know how to conduct myself. And so part of it was curiosity. Part of that was I felt I needed it for my current job and it led into me deciding to become certified in business etiquette and then start my own business. So that was 21 years ago.

Isaiah: Wow. And, so since over that time, 21 years, how has the definite definition of business etiquette changed or how do you explain business etiquette to someone who has no idea what it means?

Jacqueline: Business Etiquette is really treating others the way you want to be treated. It’s that simple, but it also can become complicated when you’re put in situations. For example, email, you’re sending an email to a perspective employer and you might include an Emoji. A lot of our millennials out there and Gen X ys  Gen Z’s like to use these cutesy little emojis. They might like to use text speak. That doesn’t go over well with let’s say a baby boomer. So there’s error, there is room for miscommunication and that’s where I come in. So I teach everything from techno etiquette to dining etiquette to professional presence, image management, networking, anything having to do with putting your best foot forward and giving a good self first impression.

Isaiah: So maybe what are some of the consequences of poor business etiquette in the workplace?

Jacqueline: Well, it can lead to a lot of problems. You mentioned stress being one of them. It can also lead to mistakes and embarrassment. I had one employer tell me that he was walking by one of his employees offices and the employee had his shoes off. Now you wouldn’t think that would be a big deal, but people kick their shoes off all the time. Well, the problem was this employee oftentimes sees clients and so if a client walks around the corner into this person’s office, then you have a core first impression. So it’s a trickle down effect. It all starts at the top. If the management believes in good business advocate than the other employees will jump on board. But there are a lot of consequences to bore poor business etiquette. One in particular, um, I had a student come to me, a Phd student who said, I just can’t find a job. And he said, my resume is up to date. And I looked at it, it looked great. However, the way in which he dressed, the way in which he presented himself, he didn’t even know how to maneuver a knife and fork. He was stabbing his meat like a wild beast. He was talking with his mouth full of food. He didn’t even know how to tie a tie properly. All these things maybe you and I take for granted because we were taught the proper way, but not everyone grew up in, in a, in a household like mine where my mother insisted that we sit down every Sunday afternoon and have Sunday dinner together. So there’s a whole new generation out there that is inquisitive. They’re curious about this. And more importantly, they want to get ahead. They want to have some sort of competitive edge. And I believe business etiquette can give people that competitive advantage.

Medical Writer Career Track: A Conversation With Anand Devasthanam, PhD

Isaiah: We will bring Anand on with us and we’ll talk to him about how he got into his medical writing role, what he does on a daily basis. And any other questions that you have. Great suit and headset. I can see you and I can hear you…how are you?

Anand: Okay, well thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Isaiah: I want to jump right in and I want to ask you about your current role and what does it average day or maybe you know, an average week look like to you. How much time are you spending in meetings? What departments do you interact with? What can you give us some context?

Anand: Sure, absolutely. Uh, one of the things that surprised me about this role is how much communication that involves. I was making some quick notes when Jacqueline was speaking earlier about the importance of Medicaid specifically and having daily conversations as well as an emails and so on because that plays certainly a crucial role. Um, initially when I was thinking about medical writing, um, I thought it was going to be a lot of writing and communicating with others once in awhile. Uh, which is how typically writing was, uh, in, in academia where we, you know, pretty much write about our own projects. But in industry I think it’s mostly getting information from different sources, um, communicating with people with a background in medicine, regulatory affairs, quality, other scientists, other medical writers, to some extent business development and to some extent marketing, and writers from other business units as well. In order to get the information we need to develop different deliverables. The analogy that I like to use is that of a baker who needs to collect ingredients from different sources and then, you know, has to create the cake by letting it pick the right way. So it’s really about who you approach, how you collect those ingredients, how efficient you can be in communicating what you need, um, and how quickly you can get that information in order to, uh, put the document together and meet the, meet the necessary timeline.

Isaiah: Excellent. Yeah, no, I think there’s a, a large project management portion to a lot of medical writing roles. Um, and in many cases you’re not managing the people so much as the sources of the information you have to get in the deliverable. Right. Um, so in your case, what are some of the deliverables? You know, we talk about medical writing as this big umbrella term that can mean lots of different positions and you a really good way to understand the positions better is to understand what types of documents you have to deliver. So can you talk a little bit about the deliverables? We mentioned that you do and can you kind of compare and contrast the type of deliverables for, I guess medical writing as a whole? As much as possible?

Anand: Absolutely. As far as my role is concerned, it would be regulatory, medical writing, medical writing as a field. As you had mentioned is more of an umbrella term and medical writers. As a group we stratify ourselves into who we talk to in terms of who are we writing for. So regulatory medical writers for instance, we developed documents which, need to be submitted to the FDA or other notified bodies. So people who are involved in reading this document and making an assessment as to whether or not a drug should be approved or identifies must be cleared for use at who our audiences as regulatory and medical writers. We also have people who write to educate patients and patient advocates, people who write to educate other physicians and doctors such as continuing medical education type of medical writing and so on. We also have medical writers who communicate with other scientists and these medical writers put together documents such as abstracts, posters, manuscripts, slide decks, keynote addresses for major symposiums and so on.

And then you also have the medical marketing or the medical affairs type of medical writing, which is involved in the type of, writing, that liaises with medical science liaisons who go out and speak with these care providers. So clearly there’s a lot of writing that needs to go in, in order to prepare those types of materials and to prepare the types of marketing materials in order to educate people on the products and devices. So that’s another subset of medical writing as well. I’ve been in medical writing for two years and within this span alone in industry, there are so many new tones that I’m learning about and so many different types of niche medical writers that I’ve met. It’s just a fascinating field and it’s just a very exciting time to be in medical writing.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Must-Know Industry Etiquette For PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
6:50 Show Me The Data
23:50 James Gould, Ph.D
50:52 Sarah Rodrigues, Ph.D.

Are you making some of the biggest career mistakes PhDs make in their job transition?

You might not even know you’re making these common missteps that might be sabotaging your job search and career transition. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by James Gould who is director of the Office for Postdoctural Fellows at Harvard Medical School and works with postdocs for vocational and leadership training and guidance. James shares his experience of his own transition into using his PhD to help other PhDs avoid common, but not always well known, career missteps. We are also joined by Sarah Rodrigues, PhD, Customer Consultant at Elsevier, who discusses her transition into this role, the matrix hierarchy she works within, and how this is a perfect fit for her education and strengths. 

About Our Guests

James Gould is the director of the HMS/HSDM Office for Postdoctoral Fellows at Harvard Medical School where he’s implemented research, career, and professional development programs and policies for HMS trainees since 2011. Jim has spoken and published on career and professional development topics in a variety of forums, locally and nationally, including articles in Nature Immunology covering CV to resume conversion, interviewing strategies, and manuscript writing. He’s been a guest blogger and steering committee member for Naturejobs and its Career Expo, a mentor in the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), and a guest speaker on Cheeky Scientist and BioCareers webinars. Prior to HMS, Jim completed two postdoc fellowships at the National Cancer Institute of the NIH where he chaired the Fellows & Young Investigators Association, interned with the Office of Training and Education, and also found time to study cancer metabolism. He is a member of the National Postdoctoral Association, Graduate Career Consortium, and AAAS. Jim received his BS in Biotechnology/Molecular Biology at Clarion University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Louisville.

Sarah Rodrigues, Ph.D. in Hematology & Oncology, she first worked as business developer and now she works as a Customer Consultant in Europe. Sarah is a Medical laboratory scientist with experience in business development and consulting, driving customer engagement and market insights. Her driver is to support research and innovation to help bringing new applications to the market and patients. She has worked in clinical and fundamental research, in lab information data management, in scientific information analytics, scientific publishing and scientific/medical communication with the aim to support doctors and scientists.

Key Takeaways

1. How to avoid common career mistakes that PhDs make and how you can avoid those.
2. Ways for postdocs to transition into meaningful careers and the importance of creating endpoints for PhDs.
3. In industry, how your experience as a PhD can lead you into a career that plays to your strengths and a customized role to match your goals.

Biggest Career Missteps PhDs Make: A Conversation With James Gould

Isaiah: If you haven’t connected with Jim, I highly recommend that you do. He’s always posting great stuff, always speaking. Very, very active and our oldest in terms of going way back to 2003 person that we’ve ever interviewed and we’ve done a lot of collaborating with Jim, always learning from him. It’s great to have Jim with us.

Jim, how are you?

James: I’m doing well. How are you?

Isaiah: Good, let me hide the… Great to be on. Yeah, it was 2013, right?

James: I think so, yes.

Isaiah: That was the summer series of …?

James: I think it was a leadership series, maybe.

Isaiah: Did you start that at Harvard?

James: Yeah. It was something that we were trying to develop, understanding what gaps in programmings we had. One of the things that kept coming up from the postdocs was, “We need to know what leadership is and how to do it.”

Isaiah: Yeah, and I remember, so it was the very first talk that I gave under Cheeky Scientist was with Jim and he did a great job. He even mentored me.

He was like, “Well, let’s tone down this a little bit. Maybe change the topic here a bit,” but yeah, it’s interesting. I can’t believe it was almost six years ago. Pretty incredible.

James: Yeah, it’s been a while. I guess I am one of your oldest colleagues, though I’m not that old. I think you might be actually older than I am.

Isaiah: In terms of age, yeah. I was correcting myself. I was like, “Hey, wait a second, I’m aging myself,” because… I think what’s been interesting to me is to see your trajectory and everything you’ve been able to do and the clinics you put on.

Thinking about the first question, I was really excited to ask it because I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about it. What was your path? Why did you decide to get into helping develop PhDs to even go beyond that, to writing so much about it and to putting on these clinics? Why do you do what you do and how did you get into it?

James: Why do I do it? It’s always been something that I’ve done, even when I was a young kid, just helping others. I wasn’t perfect or a saint but I was always willing to say, “Hey, what about this?”

Because one of the things that I’ve found is I’ve made all of these mistakes that you were talking about on Cheeky Scientist, that you were talking about with that other previous speaker, I’ve made all of these mistakes. If I’m not learning from them, I’m helping other people learn before they make these same mistakes.

As an undergraduate, as a graduate student, and as a postdoc, I was helping my fellow students and postdocs figure out their larger issues, whether it was an interpersonal issue or conflict with their faculty mentor or it was maybe a personal issue but not so much. But how do I apply? What’s my approach? How do I reach out to people?

I’ve always been a people person. I mean, I’ve made all the mistakes and hopefully I’ve learned from most of them. It was very fulfilling knowing at the end of the day, I helped this person or I helped these three people and compared to my research, I would maybe do one successful experiment a week, maybe a month. It wasn’t enough to keep me going, keep me motivated but I knew I had to finish my PhD and I knew I had to do the next step as a postdoc and we can talk more about that.

But it was really the people aspect of my research and interacting with smart people and them helping me figure out my research issues as well as as career professional development.

But it was really fulfilling to do that. I found that I was actually, I had a nice natural tendency to be helpful rather than harmful and giving bad advice. I found it very useful and then I ultimately realized I could do this for a job.

The next step was actually convincing myself and then my wife that it was worth still getting my PhD and it was worth still doing a postdoc, that I would be getting my PhD, and if it’s worse, still doing a postdoc, but I would be transitioning into a research adjacent type of position, helping people do their research, because doing a PhD and a postdoc like, “Oh, yeah. I’m going to cure cancer.” And I quickly realized maybe it’s not going to be me, but maybe I can actually help someone realize their full potential, by removing some barriers, or at least raising their awareness of some barriers that might be harmful to their research. So again, it just comes back to … it was very fulfilling, then I realized I could actually do it for a job.

Isaiah Hankel: So in grad school, is when you first were like, “I want to help develop careers.”? 

James: Yes. 

Isaiah: Wow. 

James: It was mostly, “I need to develop my career, and if I had an issue, many others had the issue.” And began exploring how to do that, talking with faculty. Thankfully, there were very sympathetic faculty saying, “There’s more out there than just academic research.” And became involved in developing a biochemistry student group for my department, became involved in recruiting students, and just developing myself, to help develop them.

Customer Consultant Career Track: A Conversation With Sarah Rodrigues, PhD.

Isaiah: And we’re going to move right on in. Sarah’s one of the very first people to join the association, and get hired through the association. I think in our founding year, she came, and she was maybe the third person, third ever. And this is thousands, and thousands, and thousands of members later. Very excited to have her on. She is currently a consultant at Elsevier. She’s had multiple other jobs, she’s worked at AgileBio, CEA, in terms of her academic background. Very, very excited to bring her on, and talk about her career track, and how she got into it, and what she does. 

I know some of you have been considering working for different journals or publication companies, you’ve considered being consultants, and doing things that are off the bench. Sarah is a great person to talk to, and I’m going to bring her on. I know you’ve had a few careers now, a few different jobs in the industry, and I’m excited to hear about this one. Can you talk a little bit, just to help us understand what you do, and who you work with?

Sarah: Sure. So before joining my current company, I worked as a business developer at a small company, AgileBio, and data management, basically. And then I joined a company maybe you know of, Elsevier. So most people know about the publishing of Elsevier, but actually Elsevier, it’s more an analytics company, going through this transition from what content, and what we can do with the data-evidenced decisions.

Isaiah: So it’s a more data management, right? So you’re more on the analyst side, and you’re looking at consumer analytics, I’m guessing?

Sarah: So, yeah. So in my job I get insights that they are based on consumers, but also insights to the customers, to the return on investment. Also doing workshops, national trends, and analysis of a bunch of data, that is on the impact and publications of a country, or an institution, or department.

Isaiah: And this is fascinating. I love what’s happening just in the last couple of years. Like if you see jobs that end in analyst or consultant, you can be sure that you can get it. Or researcher, like we hear a lot about user experience researcher, customer consultant, business analyst, or consumer analyst. You’re looking at data. It’s data analysts, management. You have to have experience collecting it, etc., but it’s on the market, or how customers are responding to stuff. It’s to help guide decisions, in terms of like Sarah said, product development, business development. It’s an exploding field. It’s like data scientist is splitting, and there’s the data scientist positions where you need programming languages, but then there’s data scientist positions where it’s more about data analysts, like analyzing data. 

And those are going into these other job titles and types, which is good news for most of you, who don’t know programming languages. You can get into these. So what do you love about your current job? I mean, what do you do on a day-to-day basis?

Sarah: So maybe it’s very much cliché, but we don’t have a routine. But what I actually like about it is we have a range of programs, tasks that we do. So sometimes I am over my Excel, doing a presentation on how the return on investment and opportunities, maybe gaps, etc. And the other day, I may … and a customer face-to-face, or doing a workshop, or doing big events, bigger events to institution. So I guess, it’s a like a perfect fit for me that likes that data analysis, but also likes to have, not just coded analysis, and delivering it, but also have this face-to-face with the customer, and public speaking side as well.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Biggest Career Missteps PhDs Make appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
12:20 Show Me The Data
25:09 Dan Schwabel
45:02 Michael Morabito, Ph.D.

Has technology replaced your face-to-face interactions?

Technology can extend your reach for your  job search with ease, but it can also work against you when it comes to sharpening the interpersonal skills you need to succeed in your industry career trajectory. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by Dan Schawbel bestselling author of Back to Human and Me 2.0, Partner and Research Director at Future Workplace, and the Founder of both Millennial Branding and WorkplaceTrends.com. Dan will talk about how technology can be a crutch and increases the risk of isolation, and the interpersonal skills needed in corporate culture today. We are also joined by Michael Morabito, PhD, Senior Analyst – VP Biotech Equity Research at Credit Suisse, who will discuss his transition into a senior analyst role in biotech and how other PhDs can pursue this career.

About Our Guests

Dan Schawbel is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, Fortune 500 consultant, millennial TV personality, global keynote speaker, career and workplace expert and startup advisor. He is the Partner and Research Director at Future Workplace, and the Founder of both Millennial Branding and WorkplaceTrends.com. He has written the career bestsellers: Me 2.0, Promote Yourself and his new book, Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation. Through his companies, he’s conducted dozens of research studies and worked with major brands including American Express, GE, Microsoft, Virgin, IBM, Coca Cola and Oracle. Dan has interviewed over 2,000 of the world’s most successful people, including Warren Buffett, Anthony Bourdain, Jessica Alba, will.i.am, Michael Bloomberg, Chelsea Handler, Colin Powell, Sheryl Sandberg, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Michael Morabito is currently a Vice President of Equity Research at Credit Suisse in New York City, where he is the lead analyst on four SMid-Cap Biotechnology companies. Previously Michael was the Senior Associate on the US Large Cap Pharma team.  Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Michael was a Scientific Administrator for the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University, where he studied neural control of feeding behavior. Michael received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt 

Key Takeaways

1. How reliance on technology can become a crutch and work against you in your job search.
2. What interpersonal skills PhDs need for career success, and how to develop those during your transition and in your industry career.
3. In industry, how biotech is presenting new opportunities for PhDs.

How Isolated PhDs Get Jobs: A Conversation With Dan Schwabel

Isaiah:  If you had to drill down to the two or three things that happened to you … There’s always a triggering, right? As an author, there’s always a triggering moment for writing this book. So, for your newest book, why did you write it?

Dan: There’s a combination. Number one is every book I write helps people to get to the next phase of their career. So, Me 2.0 was college to first job. Promote Yourself was first job to management, and this is a leadership book. The second thing is I was interviewed for a documentary that’s coming out next year called The Revolution Generation. In the documentary, it paints the portrait of my generation of millennials. During the interview, I was asked what’s the biggest issue that we’re facing as a generation. You know, I talked about the student loan debt crisis, which is over $1.53 trillion dollars outstanding now. I talked about income inequality. I talked about global warming. All these huge issues. World war.

Then, in my head, I’m like, okay, but what’s really affecting people on a daily basis? And, to me, the biggest thing that’s affecting people is this feeling of isolation, the feeling that even though we have access to so many people … We can use these technologies to reach across geographies. You could connect with someone in the Philippines right now, and maybe you couldn’t have before unless you traveled there. But, at the same time, all of this technology has just made us feel more isolated because we’re dependent on it.

Technology companies like Google and Apple and Facebook … They are purposely creating devices and apps in order to get us addicted, because that’s their business model. They profit off our attention, and therefore we are the product. So, just knowing that is kind of liberating. It’s like, okay, now you’re aware of what game is actually being played. And it can be at our expense, because every time we look at a device, we’re not looking at a person, and we’re made … We’re tribal. We’re made to be in packs, to be with other people, and if we constantly rely on the technology devices and use them as a crutch at work and even at home, it can make us feel more lonely. Then, that’s really bad for our health.

Isaiah:  No, I really appreciate that, and I’m glad you brought up the attention, whether it’s called the attention economy, etc. For a lot of our listeners here, you’ve probably heard of Beckman Coulter medical instruments. It was bought by Danier for like 6 billion, and then Facebook a few years ago bought WhatsApp for like 13 billion, like a messaging app, just because it’s where people’s attention were going, right? So, it is the most valuable commodity on Earth right now. What I’m curious to know from you is how are businesses failing in this area? How are businesses making their team members more isolated with technology?

Dan: Well, the reason why companies are promoting collaborative apps and the use of technology is because they basically, in a sense, take advantage of workers. We’re always kind of working. There’s a reason why the World Health Organization said that burnout is now an occupational phenomenon. It’s something that I’ve actually studied a few years ago with Kronos. When I wrote an article about the burnout epidemic, Bernie Sanders shared it to over a million people.

It’s important because people are working more hours because of work creep. So, technology … It’s a double-edged sword, technology. Technology gives us the freedom and flexibility to work when, where, and how we want, so there would be no such thing as remote work without technology. So, that’s a great thing. People are excited about it. They’re emotional about it. It’s good. I’m working from … I mean, this is my apartment right here, if you can’t tell.

But no one talks about the dark side. So, through my book, through my work, I’m revealing the dark side of, okay, because we have all of these abilities to work wherever we want, at the same time not being in the office, not being around other people can make us feel more isolated and lonely and actually make us less productive.

You know, in a sense, companies are like, okay, we have this technology. It is a cheap, cost effective way to scale communication within the company. That’s really what they’re trying to do, increase efficiencies and all that. So, they have their business case for it. But the big drawback is that we’re always kind of on. We’re on 24/7. Not having your phone is the new vacation. After work hours … What are work hours anymore? On weekends and on vacation, people are using their phone and responding to business texts.

We did a study with Randstad, the largest staffing firm in the world, and it’s like … I’ve done three or four studies with them. And the one this year what we found is that about half of managers expect their employees to respond to business email on vacation. So, there’s an expectation. If you’re on vacation, you’re not really on vacation if vacation is time spent away from work if you’re doing work. That has all led to burnout, unhappiness, and it actually hurts companies.

In the other study, we found that half of all attrition is due to burnout. So, companies might think that they’re benefiting from having workers always doing work and responding to business emails and being engaged, but in a sense, every time you have to replace a worker, the cost is even more. And you can’t fully maximize an employee if they’re burned out, if they’re just exhausted. They’re just not going to be as focused and engaged in their work. So, it actually backfires.

Biotech Analyst Career Track: A Conversation With Michael Morabito, Ph.D.

Isaiah:  So, this is Michael. He is a senior analyst at VP Biotech Equity Research. He is in New York City. He is the lead analyst on four mid-cap biotechnology companies. Previously, Michael was a senior associate on the US large-cap pharma team. Prior to joining Credit Suisse … I think I’m saying that somewhat right. He was a scientific administrator for the department of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a post-doctoral research scientist at Columbia University. So, for those of you who don’t know, Michael came into the Cheeky Scientist Association. He’s transitioned since then. His career has really taken off. One of the things I’m interested in talking to about is … Of course, I want to know how you found out about this analyst career path. But I think it’s one of those career paths that PhDs just don’t realize that they’re perfect for.

Michael: Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Isaiah:  Analyst by definition is exactly … You learn how to analyze data in whatever PhD you get. So, how did you find out about the analyst career path, and how did you know that it was the right path for you?

Michael: Really, it was just doing some research through the association, through or post-doctoral association at Columbia. They had a little bit of information on it. But there really wasn’t much known about it, and it was only after talking to certain people and actually realizing that there were PhDs doing this job that I could actually do it. And I never thought of that, because my job … What I do is … If you watch CNBC, and they have a guest analyst on and says like, “I am a buy on Facebook,” or something like that. I’m one of those guys now. I’m not on CNBC or anything, but that’s what I do. So, I used to invest back when I was in graduate school. Sorry. When I was an undergrad. When I went to graduate school, I didn’t have any money or time, so I stopped doing it.

Isaiah: I was going to say, what?

Michael: But, basically, I learned is … I was like, wait, so I can take something that used to be a hobby of mine and then I can pair that with my degree and my experience, and that actually makes me a good fit to do this and make a career out of it? I was like, all right. Sign me up.

Isaiah: Yeah. I think, you know, expanding beyond the type of analyst that you are … I want to talk a little bit about that, but there’s lots of types of analysts.

Michael: Yes. Yes. I have heard … You mentioned competitive intelligence before, something like that is definitely something. I mean, it’s really anything … Like you said, it’s analysis. That’s why the job’s called analyst, and that’s what you learn to do with the degree. It’s how to take certain forms of data, whatever they are, and make sense out of them and come to a conclusion.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Isolated PhDs Get Hired appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
6:20 Show Me The Data
19:00 Safi Bahcall
44:28 Heather Brown Harding, Ph.D.

Does leaving academia seem like a crazy idea?

It’s the ideas others deem “crazy” that often leads to your greatest success if you can stay focused, motivated, and learn how to nurture those ideas.

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by Safi Bahcall, physicist, biotech entrepreneur, and author of the national bestseller Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. Safi will talk about the new systems and principles for success, and how the dynamics of group behavior can help support new ideas for growth and change. Safi will share how to find success as you challenge norms, be innovative, and find support ideas that others might deem “crazy”. We are also joined by Heather Heather Brown-Harding, PhD, Assistant Director of Wake Forest Microscopy, who will discuss her transition into a microscopy career and how other PhDs can pursue this career.

About Our Guests

Safi Bahcall is a physicist, biotech entrepreneur. He is the author of the National Bestseller: Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries where he writes about nurturing radical breakthroughs through revealing some surprising mysteries of group behavior.

He received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard and his PhD in physics from Stanford, where he worked with Lenny Susskind in particle physics (the science of the small) and the Nobel laureate Bob Laughlin in condensed matter physics (the science of the many). He was a Miller Fellow in physics at UC Berkeley (the school of the many). After working for three years as a consultant for McKinsey, Safi co-founded a biotechnology company developing new drugs for cancer. He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years.

Heather Brown-Harding, PhD is currently the assistant director of Wake Forest Microscopy and graduate teaching faculty. Dr. Heather Brown-Harding received her Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Microbiology & Immunology. In graduate school, she spent most of her time on a home-built spinning disc confocal microscope. Heather realized a professorship was not for her and joined Zeiss Microscopy as Account Manager for MIT and surrounding institutions. When transitioning back into academia for core management at Wake Forest University she began working extensively to bring Expert Microscopy to market. ExScope launched in March 2019 and she is now in both academia and industry.

Key Takeaways

1. Why you need to know how academia and industry each view time and resources and the mindset shift that will help you cross over.
2. How to reframe failure and criticism in your job transition to gather information through both with curiosity rather than contempt (and how to stay motivated in spite of both!)
3. In industry, how the field of microscopy is presenting new opportunities for PhDs.

How Crazy Ideas Can Help PhDs Get Jobs: A Conversation With Safi Bahcall

Isaiah: We have a lot of people here who are considering that transition and I’m sure when you were in academia that it was a kind of a big decision too. What led to you making the decision to transition out of academia and wanting to start your business and write?

Safi: That’s a great question. I’m actually really excited to be here because when I went into business for the first time, after a couple of years I was put in charge of a program of helping PhDs and MDs and advanced degrees transition from the academic world to the business world. So this is what I did for a living for a while.

And one of the things that I would start by saying … A couple of things I would start by saying but one is that the way I would describe it to folks, the transition … I don’t think I set foot off a university until I was about 30 years old. My parents were both scientists. I grew up on the campus of Princeton University. All I knew was scientists and I just got very curious like what happens in the rest of the world outside of university? And I remember I was dating this woman at the time and she was working in an office and I was like, “Wow, that sounds interesting. What’s an office? What exactly is a job? I don’t understand.” … and I was literally 28 years old.

So she took me into her … she was a paralegal at the time and she was working in a law firm and she took me in on a Friday afternoon. I remember going around and asking folks, “So could you tell me what you do?” And they’re like, “I really can’t describe it.” I’m like, “Are you happy? No. Are you happy? No.” Literally I went around and asked 15 people like, “Are you happy?” And they were like, “No.” And I was like, that sent me back.

That kept me in academia for another couple of years.

The way I describe it to folks who are scientists right now, or considering the transition is being an academia is like going to the gym and exercising your left bicep for years, like a decade or 20 years. You may have the best left bicep in the world, and one of the top five left biceps in the world, but the rest of your body is kind of flabby. And the transition to the business world in a lot of jobs, you really are problem solving in a similar kind of creative problem solving way. But you need to exercise much more broadly, all of your muscles. You may not have the best left bicep in the world, you may not be specialists in multivariate differential equations.

You certainly won’t be needing that in the business world. But you will learn all sorts of kind of fascinating skills. How to motivate people, how to work within teams, how to influence folks ups down left, right, how to solve problems quickly and effectively and efficiently, how to structure problem solving in very new ways. So it’s like the difference between going to the gym and just exercising one muscle and being a much more broad athletes. So that’s one thing I like to say.

Second thing is that you are playing a very different kind of game in the business world than the academic world. And the way to think about it is this, it’s speed chess versus regular chess. And in the academic world-

In the academic world, you have in some sense, infinite time and limited resources, especially if you’re into PhD, it will seem like infinite time, but very limited resources. In the business world, it’s flipped 180. I have relatively speaking infinite resources, but limited time. It’s the same kind of problem solving and creativity and trying to figure stuff out. Similar rules of the game, but because of those constraints, it’s a very different game. You have to learn how to solve problems quickly, solve them at the good enough level, not the perfect level. Because the third thing that I tell people that they need to understand when they make this transition is what is valued is different.

The rules of the game is different and how you win the game is different. In academia, the goal is originality. Your track record, your career, your publication list, for example. In the business world, the goal is results. The goal is results and it’s not at all about you. It’s about your team.

People care about your team and you and how you’re able to motivate people. Why? Because you want to create new things. Let’s say you want to innovate or be an entrepreneur, you want to create new products. It’s never about an individual. Someone can have an idea in a shower, but that’s about 0.1% of it. The 99.9% of it is getting other people excited about your idea, developing market strategy, all sorts of things, product strategy, manufacturing strategy, sourcing strategy, customer strategy, revenue strategy, and implementing all those things. So that’s 99% and that requires a team.

So wherein as in academia the focus is on your original ideas, in business, the focus is, it doesn’t really matter where the idea comes from. So that’s in a nutshell how I think about that differences between the two worlds.

Isaiah: In the book you talk about a lot of exciting things in turns of phrases and you have this one that’s called a listen to the suck with curiosity. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and how it might be relevant to PhDs?

Safi: Sure. And in fact it was a PhD … well actually was an MD who I got that from who was an incredible scientist and researcher who would have won the Nobel prize had he lived a little bit longer, but it was a guy named Judah Folkman who was a Chief of Surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston. And as a young guy, he came up with a new way to treat cancer, block the blood supply feeding tumors.

And at the time he was not only not taken seriously because the only way to treat cancer at the time was chemotherapy, which poisoned tumors or radiation, which burned them. People suggested ideas, nodes, blood supply, what are you talking about? Mysterious substance. It causes tissues to create new blood vessels. That’s crazy. And eventually there were ups and downs, like all sorts of research ups and downs and ups and downs.

And at some point the Wall Street Journal published that headline after some people came out and were attacking him saying, “Noted cancer researcher stumbles as other labs failed to reproduce his results.” And that can be a career ending kind of thing. Non reproducible data, especially a national headline. The way most people would react to adversity like this or people rejecting your idea. Whatever you’re working on, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re working on a new project. If you’re a scientist, you’re working on a new idea. When an investor rejects your pitch or someone rejects your idea or a partner walks away, your initial reaction if you poured your heart and soul into it as to dismiss.

Oh, these people are idiots. They don’t understand. They don’t know. What are they talking about? And you seek reassurance from, let’s say your friends, your mentors, your mother that you’re on the right track. And what Judah would do, and I found this so typically in so many successful scientists as well as entrepreneurs, is they would take off that defensiveness hat. I mean, they might wear it for a few minutes and Judah would rant privately to me. But then take it off and put on something more like a Sherlock Holmes hat.

What you did in that particular instance, unlike others that might publish something or write an angry letter is he called up the guy who did his experiment, we tried to reproduce this experiment, said, “Hey, could you walk me through with your postdoc and your students step-by-step what you did. I just want to understand.” So he sat down with his students and the other guy’s student step by step until they saw where something was going wrong and they uncovered that in shipping and freezing down this protein and shipping it across the country, there was some leakage from the package just in the freezing process that was contaminating the protein and kind of an interesting way.

Uncovered the problem, solved it, began working, got a lot of credibility and learned a bunch of new things. So LSC, listen to the suck with curiosity. And here’s why I add that curiosity, especially because if you’re in the business world, you’ll often hear stuff about blah, blah, blah, active listening, blah, blah, blah which basically means repeat what you’ve heard. Well that’s not good enough. Like if someone is telling you your stuff sucks, this doesn’t work, this doesn’t make sense. I’m not really going to buy your product. I’m going to walk away. If you just say, “I hear you, thank you.” And move on, you’ve lost. Why? Because there’s a little … There may very well be if you pull on that thread, and that’s not easy because people don’t want to really give you that information. But if you can put on that Sherlock hat and say, “Could you help me understand?”

I know that’s not easy and it’s asking a lot for you to take your time and something, you know, it can be a difficult conversation and people don’t want to do it, but it’d be an enormous favor and gift if you could just walk me through your thinking. And sometimes when you pull on that thread, you’ll find a nugget of gold. You’ll learn something like, “Hey, well there was this competitor from Belgium who has this other product and it has this feature.” And be like, “Wait, what? Really feature?” And you’re like, it takes you two hours to reprogram or do something or meet that need and you have a win. Or this guy said, “You know, I was following all along here, and then I got lost right there and then I just gave up.” And you’re like, “Oh my God, that’s so easy to fix.”

So LSC means listen to the suck with curiosity. Get rid of the defensiveness, forget all that active listening. Just try to uncover why. Once you do that, if you ever get very good at doing that, you can identify those little gold nuggets that can make either your idea in science or your product or your service. If you’re an entrepreneur, you can turn it around. And so I actually think of the great … the scientists that I’ve worked with, the Nobel laureates, the greatest inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs. Their skill was less about coming up with new ideas. Their skill was in investigating failure.

Everybody can have ideas. Most of the time they fail. The truly great ones keep investigating those failures, and that’s where they learn something useful.

Microscopy Career Track: A Conversation With Heather Brown-Harding, Ph.D.

Isaiah: I wanted to bring on Heather briefly here to talk about why did you get into this? Because like Safi, you had this bug inside of you where you wanted to do something more, right? You wanted to create something. Kind of like what drives a lot of people that start their own business or write a book. You kind of did that together in this course. What drove you to want to take on creating a program?

Heather: While I was still at Zeiss, I attended a Women In Science and Technology mixer to meet other people, and I was surprised that … just out in Worcester … that there were so many people that didn’t know how to use their microscope. That’s less than an hour to Boston, one of the biggest places to be able to get into science in the world. Their university didn’t have someone that was their microscopy director. They didn’t have classes to take. They had these perfectly good microscopes, but no one knew how to take a picture, let alone get actual quantitative data out of this. And so with that, that’s when I reached out to Isaiah and was like, “How do you start this Cheeky Scientist thing?” That’s when we decided that maybe a collaboration would be our best move forward.

I was just very motivated to be able to get access to people throughout the world to be able to do quality microscopy, to not be afraid of getting on your microscope, and to have confidence in your images, as well as just being able to get through your projects faster. Obviously I have an extreme love for microscopes, but not everyone does. Some people just want to be able to know what they’re doing, get through it, and move on to their next thing. Especially when you’re in industry, when you have such a small amount of time to get things done, you don’t want to spend all your time troubleshooting an experiment that if you had just a little knowledge, you’d be done.

So with that, that’s why I really put in a lot of effort to take all the ideas of microscopy. There’s a lot of physics and chemistry in microscopy, but you don’t need to know every detail. But bringing it down to a level that someone that’s, say, an upper level undergraduate would be able to understand was my goal, so that we could get as many people as possible using their microscopes right, and we could have more pretty pictures, as well as good data, in papers that we were seeing going out. I’m sure that you’ve read a paper that you just wonder, “How did this get past the reviewer? This is terrible.”

Isaiah: And I think what’s amazing about your career and your experience in microscopy is you have that industry experience and the academic experience. So like everybody here, you transitioned, or people here that have either transitioned or want to transition. So what was that like? What did you learn in industry? What were some of the differences you saw? I just thought to ask this, because after our conversation with Safi … Why did you transition and then what were the differences you saw?

Heather: Before I joined Cheeky Scientist, I didn’t know about the program yet, and I was desperate to get out of my postdoc. It was just not a good match. It was paying terribly, outside of Boston. As everyone here that hasn’t transitioned knows, things are so desperate. I was able to … I took a class on how to improve my … or change … it was called CV To Resume, that my school had put on. And within a week of updating my Linkedin profile, I had a recruiter from Zeiss call. My first response when they wanted me to be an account manager was, “Well, but I’m a scientist.” Because I had imagined all along I was going to work on a bench at a company. You know, I’m not really going to change things, it was just going to be at a company and make some money.

But then, with my love of microscopy, I was like, “Well if I’m going to do this, why don’t I do it for one of the best companies in the world?” Actually, I had a lot of fun, but the lifestyle ended up not being for me, traveling so much. But I just remember when it … this might sound crazy, but one of the things was, our company car was this big SUV, and going to Cambridge and parallel park that thing into a small thing and just feeling accomplished, like, “I am more than just a scientist.” Then the scientist part of you, you do more consultative sales, so you try to figure out what their actual problem is and solve it for them. So you’re still using all that knowledge that you’ve gotten over the time in your PhD to just solve different problems, as well as things that may not be remotely related to science.

Just figuring out, “Okay, well, this demo machine needs to be here and I need to do this because of this timeline.” So doing the job actually made me much more confident and just feeling like I am more than just a bench scientist. And so, when I was leaving, I still wanted to be intensely in microscopy, and so that’s why I took the position at Wake Forest. I wanted to get up my experience so that I could start my own business. And so right now we have the Expert Microscopy that will be opening up again shortly, and we’ll see where it goes from there. But yeah, it was a lot of hustle outside of normal work time.

I mean, I was actually quite shocked at first when I first transitioned. I mean, there was almost no no overlap in what I was experiencing. Collaboration is huge in Industry. As academics where we are used to a different style of collaboration where it’s okay, we’re collaborating now, but really it’s, you are going into your corner and you’re doing a part of a study independently by herself and then eventually you’ll share an authorship with somebody else. And that’s, that’s what kind of collaboration you see and academia but in industry, it’s quite different. You are many times interdependent on other people to drive projects forward. So really what you bring to the table and what others bring to the table need to be complementary. That’s how you end up moving projects forward and getting anywhere in industry. So it’s, it’s a much different version, a much more intense version of collaboration.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Nurture Crazy Ideas appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
9:35 Show Me The Data
23:30 Vanessa Van Edwards
45:13 Gabriel Villar, Ph.D.

Are you making employers uncomfortable with your awkwardness? 

You can learn how to be less awkward and win over your interviewers. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show we are joined by Vanessa Van Edwards, Lead Behavioral Investigator at Science of People and Author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding With People. As a behavioral scientist and researcher, Vanessa will share science-driven tactics for how to improve your likeability quotient and decode human behavior in interview and networking scenarios to feel more in control, more authentic, and less awkward. We are also joined by Gabriel Villar, PhD, R&D Scientist at Becton Dickinson, who will discuss his R&D Scientist transition (and his second upcoming transition) and how other PhDs can pursue this career.

About Our Guests

Vanessa Van Edwards is Lead Investigator at Science of People. She is the bestselling author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. Vanessa shares tangible skills to improve interpersonal communication and leadership, including her insights on how people work. She’s developed a science-based framework for understanding different personalities to improve our EQ and help you communicate with colleagues, clients and customers.

Vanessa works with entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and trillion dollar companies; and has been featured on CNN, BBC, CBS, Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, the Today Show and many more. She regularly speaks to innovative companies including Google, Facebook, Comcast, Microsoft, and Penguin Random-House. Millions visit her website, scienceofpeople.com, every month for her methods of turning “soft skills” into actionable, masterable frameworks that can be applied in daily life.

Gabriel Villar, Ph.D. is an engaging, entrepreneurial, and innovative mechanistic scientist with over 13 years of experience investigating the molecular and physiological basis of complex traits and behaviors across both traditional and non-traditional model systems (i.e. mice, honey bees). His work is highly interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of genetics, sensory biology, chemical ecology, conservation, animal behavior, infectious diseases, and public health. Much of his research has aimed to address one of the foremost conservation challenges of modern times, the decline of pollinators. He transitioned into his first industry role in March, 2019, where he works as an R&D Scientist at Becton Dickinson, an industry leader in health tech. In a few weeks he will make his second industry transition as he joins Koppert Biological Systems (Ag Tech Company) in a director capacity, to conceive of and drive new R&D and process improvement initiatives.

Key Takeaways

1. The ‘fake it ’till you make it’ idea is causing you to be overlooked and forgotten. 

2. During an interview keep a look out for the contempt microexpression, one-sided mouth raise, to know when you need to refocus on building rapport.

3. In industry, R&D is highly collaborative and interdependent where you are working alongside others toward a common tangible and time-bound goal.

Be Likeable, Not Weird, To Get Hired In Industry: A Conversation With Vanessa Van Edwards

Isaiah: So let’s say you identify that you’re being overlooked for jobs or not being able to close on interviews something. Where do you start to change things?

Vanessa: Yeah. In our research we found that one of the biggest problems is that most people learn people skills from extroverts. So if you look at all the resources out there on charisma or extroversion, you know, the quintessential how to win friends influence people. Dale Carnegie’s book, amazing. They were, most of those people are natural people, people. They’re naturally magnetic. They’re very charismatic, they’re extroverts. So they give advice very well meaning advice, like: just be yourself, be more authentic. But if you’re a recovering awkward person like me, I’m absolutely recovering awkward person, I am not a natural people person. So I would read these books and felt like, yes, I love these ideas, but how do I use this?

So what I found is that the worst thing we can do is pretend to be an extrovert. And that is the biggest problem for people who are getting interrupted or overlooked. They feel like they have to fake it till they make it and fake being extrovert to be heard. That’s actually the worst thing to do. And the reason for this is, the studies are very clear, is that our emotions are contagious. So if you’re faking it til you make it, all you’re putting out there is faking it, faking it, faking it. In fact, there was one study, it’s one of my favorite studies. It’s done by Dr. Barbara Wild and she she took people who were smiling and the first set of pictures were people who are genuinely smiling they we’re thinking about a happy moment and then the second set of pictures were people who are just fake smiling, they were told to smile.

Now the pictures look the same. If you were to say, which is the real smile, which the fake smile participants could not tell, which was the real and fake smile. However, when they looked at the real smile, they themselves felt happier. When they look fake smile, they felt nothing. Well, when we talk about being forgotten, when we talk about being overlooked, we’re like, why? Why are people not remembering me? It’s often because we are faking it till we make it. We don’t catch that emotion. We can’t catch that fake. We don’t, we don’t feel that, it doesn’t grip. So what I would say is the very first thing to do is self diagnosed. Are you really an extrovert? What’s your real brand of charisma?

Isaiah: Let’s say you’re going to an interview or other high stakes situation, and you’ve read the body language stuff, the face stuff. You know the working knowledge, but it’s really hard for you to call it up when you need it. So, what do you do to trigger yourself to actually call it up when you need?

Vanessa: Yeah, you ask a really, really good question because it’s usually I get asked how do you read faces? And that’s only part of it, right? The second part is how do you practically remember all the different facial expressions? So there are seven universal facial expressions. They’re called micro expressions. They’re actually 10,000 different facial expressions, but there are seven universal expressions of emotion. They were discovered by Dr. Paul Ekman and they’re great. You can memorize those seven. The second piece is what you mentioned is more important and that’s how do you practically use them?

Sample. Let’s say I’m in an interview as the interviewer, I’m usually very attuned to fear. I really want to see, because every interview everyone says they’re good with everything. Yeah, I can do that. I’m confident with that. I’ve had experience with that. So the emotion that I’m actually really looking for is fear. So that way I have one goal. I’m really looking for one emotion that I really think is going to tell me the most. Now fear, it’s a very easy emotion. So if you want to try this with me, I want you to raise your eyebrows as far up your forehead as they can go and then widen your eyes. That’s a micro expression of fear. Yep. By the way, if you do it for too long, you will begin to feel anxious.

If you actually hold that expression, you begin to feel anxious. The telltale sign of fear is the vertical lines on the forehead, right? So you can see them, those vertical lines that tie in. I got fear and the whites of the eyes. Wow. That’s it I don’t need to remember everything about the face. All I’m looking for is the whites of the eyes with those lines. If I see the whites of the eyes of those lines, I know I got fear. That’s all I’m looking for. So I tuck it away in the back of my head.

So, on the other hand, if I was being interviewed, I would actually probably be looking for contempt. So contempt is the simplest of the micro expressions. It’s a one sided mouth raise. Either side. I would just sit in that for a second. So everyone watching it, you can just sit in contempt.

You kind of begin to feel  kind of like smug, like snarky. Yeah, little snarky. It’s a very, very dangerous expression. It’s most often we have a huge body language quiz on our website where we’ve had 25,000 people take this quiz. Contempt is the one that people most often get wrong. Most people think it’s boredom or apathy. So at an interviewer I would be looking for contempt because most people think it’s boredom. But actually you’re seeing a little bit of “I’m better than” a little bit of scorn, a little bit of superiority. And that’s when I would make sure if I saw it in my interviewer’s face, I would make sure I go right back into rapport building, get them back, figure out what is the issue here that’s making them feel like, Nah, I’m better than them.

R&D Scientist Career Track: A Conversation With Gabriel Villar, Ph.D.

Isaiah: Coming from a research background, what are some of the differences that you noticed right away after transitioning the differences in doing research in industry versus academia?

Gabriel: A great question. I mean, I was actually quite shocked, at first when I first transitioned. I mean, there was almost no no overlap in what I was experiencing. Collaboration is huge in Industry. As academics where we are used to a different style of collaboration where it’s okay, we’re collaborating now, but really it’s, you are going into your corner and you’re doing a part of a study independently by herself and then eventually you’ll share an authorship with somebody else. And that’s, that’s what the kind of a collaboration you see and academia but in industry, it’s quite different. You are many times interdependent on other people to drive projects forward. So really what you bring to the table and what others bring to the table need to be complementary. That’s how you end up moving projects forward and getting anywhere in industry. So it’s, it’s a much different version, a much more intense version of collaboration. 

Isaiah: In terms of the interview and what did they ask to see on the presentation they wanted to see?

Gabriel: Yeah, a lot of my competencies, not necessarily technical. I mean they wanted me to be able to demonstrate that I had technical competency, but they wanted to see basically how I functioned as an innovator, as a leader. How I dealt with complex problems and issues and process them. You know, what mechanisms still are employed to drive projects forward. How do I deal with a failure? And also, of course, interpersonal skills. I mean, I cannot stress enough, how much that is a part of my day to day job right now. Just working with people, learning to collaborate, influencing people that I don’t have direct authority over all that is critically important. The day to day analysis. I think all those things were tested during that interview process.

** for the full interviews check out the video 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 Be Likeable, Not Weird, To Get Hired In Industry appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.