Hosted By

Isaiah Hankel
Isaiah Hankel
Chief Executive Officer Cheeky Scientist

Wouldn’t it be great to control every aspect of the job search, to have complete certainty in your career path? The truth is we can’t control everything no matter how hard we try.

Join Isaiah as he shares with you 7 things you can’t control in your job search and gives you 9 aspects you can to focus your job search efforts. 

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

  • First, Isaiah shares two stories on how mindset can drastically change the outcome of your career.
  • Next, Isaiah discusses 7 things you don’t have power over in your job search and you need to stop obsessing over.
  • Finally, Isaiah gives you 9 areas you can control and should focus your energies on for a better job search.

From This Week’s Show…

Why Are You Obsessing Over Something You Can’t Control?

Today, we’re talking about what you can and can’t control in your job search. 

What you’ve learned to do is research, no matter your domain, whether you’re STEM or non STEM, whatever your background is. This is what analysis is all about. And those are those two key transferable skills you have as a PhD that make you so valuable in industry right now. 

Our goal is to help all individuals get hired into the jobs that they want to get hired into, all PhDs, no matter what your PhD background is, no matter what country you are from. 

When it comes to your job search, it can be a complete waste of time trying to control the things that are outside of your control. There are a lot of employers that you do not want to work for, and if they have certain biases against you, you do not want to work for them. 

We have people on our platform from 150 different countries, and there are challenges and biases and difficulties in all of these countries. And I wish that I could just level the playing field across the board, but I can’t do that. 

So just like everything else in life, you have to figure out quickly what you can control and what you can’t control if you want to progress in your job search. 

Very often it’s easier to focus on what’s not working. It’s easier to blame the things that you can’t control when it comes to your job search than to turn your attention on what you can control. Because once you admit that you can control it, you’re taking responsibility for your job search.

7 Things You Have No Power Over In Your Job Search and 9 You Do

We know that questions determine our focus as PhD’s. Questions, hypotheses are powerful. Focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t control.

Despite your lack of experience, you are a PhD after all, a doctor of philosophy, philosophy is knowledge and the ability to ascertain knowledge. You’re a doctor of learning. 

This is why we said every bullet point on your resume has to start with a transferable skill. 

You have complete control over your priorities. You actually do. You can say, no, you can’t, or you can find out where that line is. You can push back. 

Number three, your networking efforts and the volume of your networking efforts. We call this the power of next. If somebody doesn’t respond to you or rejects you go to somebody else, get another introduction. 

Number five, which positions you’re excited about, or just enthusiasm in general, enthusiasm is important. You should have enthusiasm come through in your job search. 

Sure, you may not be the best fit for this job now, but you can learn it. So are you talking about your ability to learn quickly? Are you talking about the value of a PhD about being a doctor of learning about research and analysis, innovation, these transferable skills that I’ve been mentioning over and over again. 

You can control your sense of certainty and communicating your sense of certainty as well as your self efficacy. You can believe in yourself. That you can get things done or learn how to get things done the way they need you to. 

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

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