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Why are you a good scientist? Are you an ethical scientist? What could you bring to other companies? Imagine getting these questions in rapid fire succession at the very beginning on an industry interview. How would you answer them? By challenging yourself to think about how you would respond to these and other tough interview questions, you will put yourself ahead of the majority of PhD job candidates who are just winging it and hoping for the best. Here are 6 tough interview questions you should know.

As a PhD who has spent many years in academia, it is possible to lose sight of your value. But, when you are transitioning from academia to industry, you must reconnect with your value in order to get the pay you deserve. The only way your future employer is going to see your value is if you communicate it to them. Once you know what your skills are worth, negotiate to get the salary to match. Sending the right type of email will help you secure a higher starting salary. Negotiation emails should be polite but direct. Here are 5 email templates, addressing various stages in the negotiation process, to help you reach your salary negotiation goal.

In the middle of your industry interview, you may be asked to disclose your current salary. Not only is it an uncomfortable question, it’s an inappropriate one — and if you answer, you may reduce your value and your salary offer before you even get a chance to negotiate for what you deserve. The bottom line is, you don’t have to, and shouldn’t, disclose your current salary. Doing so will only work against you. Managing the question should revolve around focusing on the value you can provide the company. This will increase your odds of a fair salary negotiation for your industry job. Here are three strategies to use to avoid discussing your current salary during your industry interview.

No one said your PhD would be easy. But no one said it could pose such a significant risk to your emotional and mental health, either. With growing rates of depression globally, PhDs are not immune to the impacts of academic stress. If academic stress has started a downward spiral into depression, you need to be able to recognize the symptoms early and ask for help. The right treatment plan can build the resilience you need for your successful PhD completion and industry transition.

Getting hired into a successful industry team means recognizing the importance of the systems that operate within the industry company you will be working for. You must develop your business acumen so that you have a strong understanding of teamwork and a keen awareness of how each industry department works together to bring products to market. Being able to highlight your business acumen during networking events, informational interviews, and site visits is crucial to getting hired. Here are 5 more key industry departments PhD job candidates must understand.

International PhDs do not have an easy ride to full-time employment if they want to stay in the U.S. You are competing with a growing number of foreign students for the same capped visas or hoping for a visa lottery win. To work in the U.S., you need to know your facts and be prepared so that when you leverage the value you bring to the company, the immigration piece seems less significant. In addition to networking and strategizing, give yourself ample time to learn about the visa options available to you and start the process before you graduate. Here are 5 visa options you need to know about.

Whether or not you understand how negotiating works, it is being used against you. This is especially true when you’re applying for an industry job, interviewing, or vying for a promotion. The problem is that most people, especially PhDs, don’t know how to negotiate salary. These people don’t understand how negotiation works or why it’s important so they refuse to do it. The problem is that refusing to negotiate can severely limit your career success. Being willing to negotiate, on the other hand, can push your career forward. This is, in part, because your starting salary and career trajectory are tightly linked. Here are 12 tips to help you negotiate a higher salary contract.

When choosing the next step in your career, be sure to consider not only the title and salary you want to have, but the lifestyle you want to live. PhDs should gain a thorough understanding of their non-academic career options. Otherwise, they will be forced by circumstances to take positions that are not in alignment with their long-term career goals. To help you avoid this fate, we’ve collated a list of the 10 hottest non-academic jobs today. Understanding which industry positions are on the rise will help you see what’s available to you outside of a traditional postdoc or professorship. This will help you get off and stay off the dead end career track you're currently on. Here are 10 of the hottest industry jobs for science PhDs.

I thought about quitting graduate school in the beginning of my 6th year. I was almost certain that there was no way that I could graduate that year, or ever for that matter. I started several dead-end projects, and most of my data was inconsistent and did not support any of my hypotheses. I felt stuck and trapped in my own life. The irony was that I actually created this life for myself because I thought that getting a PhD degree was the road to a better life and a career that I would be passionate about. I finally summoned…

Most PhDs are taught that more is always better. Triplicates are better than duplicates. An N of 200 is better than an N of 2. A CV with 10 first author publications is better than a CV with one first author publication. On and on. But, when it comes to creating a strong industry résumé for a PhD job, less is more. Adding the wrong things or too many things to your résumé will keep you from getting the industry job you want. A better strategy is to simplify your industry résumé down to only the things that industry hiring managers and recruiters actually want to see. Here are 7 things smart PhDs like you should remove from your industry résumé.

Having a PhD is a significant advantage. PhDs get paid higher than non-PhDs and are in high demand. Trained professionals who know how to create information, not just repackage it, are desperately needed. Entrepreneurship and innovation are at an all time high. These trends will continue as the economy continues to favor innovation. If you have a PhD or are on your way to having one and you’re reading this, the future is yours. The only thing that can hold you back is yourself—by choosing to be one dimensional and choosing to ignore the less objective soft skills that will complement your PhD and make you a magnet for industry success. A PhD offers you great advantages over other job candidates and over the population in general.

The number of PhDs who will have a business job at or soon after graduation is below 40%. And the number of Life Sciences PhDs who will have a business job at graduation is below 20%. The truth is most PhDs will never get a job in business even though they’re doing all the right things. The problem is they’re doing the wrong things too. The key to starting a great career in business learning what not to do. Here are 5 things to avoid.

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

I haven’t even graduated yet and my career is already being phased out by AI. Am I going to need a separate degree in machine learning to stand out from the competition?  How can I compete in a data-focused industry when software can do most of my job faster and for far less? Messages like these come to me every day. ChatGPT sent shockwaves through every industry when developer OpenAI unveiled the software to the general public in 2022. Within 5 days of launch, it had already seen 1 million users. I work closely with PhDs on a daily basis.…

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

Sometimes you’re too close to a situation to really understand it. That was definitely the case for me when it came to my industry resume.  As a PhD leaving academia, it took me a long time to understand that I was wasting my time submitting an academic CV to industry employers. It wasn’t until I was hired in an industry role that I understood there was a specific resume format for people like me. When I had a chance to shadow an industry recruiter, that’s when I really understood the goal of a resume – the zoomed-out view that I…

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

It was by chance that I even considered a career in biopharma.  As far as I was concerned, academia was all there was. The world of industry was a big question mark to me, and that was fine. I found myself working on a postdoc, waiting for a tenure-track position to open up.  At first, it was exciting: a real, paying job as a PhD-level scientist. I showed up early, stayed late, and was happy to do it.  But a change happened, gradually. There was so much repetition in my day, and so much emphasis on performing tasks that required…

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

What does your job search strategy look like?  If you had to describe it in 2 or 3 sentences, what would you say?  I ask because, if you’re reading this, you’re in the market for a job. Working with PhDs for more than 10 years, I’ve learned one thing is true above all others: The right job strategy is what’s going to get you hired. That’s right: I’m saying that a concrete job search methodology is more important than anything else in your job search.  It’s more important than your skills, your degree, your personality – more important than you,…

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

From the time I started graduate school, there was only one point in the future that I could focus on: the finish line. I was swept up in my own expectations and also caught up in what I thought was expected of me. But something I hadn’t given much thought to was what I actually wanted to do. I was about six months away from defending my thesis. That’s when I started to give some serious thought to what would happen after I added the “Dr.” to my name. It’s when I began to admit to myself that academia was…

Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week – if it’s a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.…

I know many PhDs who moved from one lab to another or one adjunct ship to another and never really had to interview. Because academia is such an isolated environment most PhDs already know most of what they need to know about the culture, pay, and what’s expected of them. This familiarity gets them in the habit of not asking questions during industry interviews and blowing it spectacularly.  I kept bombing my early industry interviews and I couldn’t figure out why – I knew I was the most qualified candidate they’d interviewed. Many of the interviewers told me so. I…