Farzana Alam, PhD

The postdoc position I was at didn't really provide the kind of professional support and resources that I needed. CSA provided concrete guidance. It definitely provided me with a network, it provided me with a way to forge my own path.

Having a strategy that helps motivate you and takes you through these steps and also helps you realize how much help you can get, it's really overwhelming at first. There's so much positive help. Just the private group by itself is worth the investment and worth the time.

The biggest struggles I had were just finding resources and people to talk to. I thought the private group was one of the best things about joining the Association. It's a place where people are lifting each other up and helping each other and that was great.

I started following Cheeky Scientist on Facebook and was receiving a lot of really useful information like the CV Guide, the Transferable Skills Guide. One of the people on the team was very responsive to my emails, very interested in my personal situation, and she then sent me the Industry Guide, which was extremely helpful. I had no idea what positions were out there or where to start.

I wanted to change my current job and I had been trying for at least the last six to seven months. I had applied, applied, applied, gone through all the people I know, contacted them, forwarded my resume. I had done every possible thing, applied for 90 or 100 jobs and had not heard back from a single position. I really learned a lot from Cheeky Scientist--how to prevent yourself in an interview situation, what to answer and what not to answer. The most helpful part for me was the salary negotiation guidance, which was phenomenal.

[Joining the Cheeky Scientist Association] helped me a lot to meet people. It was really good to meet people, to speak about our challenges. We had a meetup in Munich recently, five of us who had all already transitioned, so it was really interesting. I think it helps to get other points of views, to get the perspectives of others.

I was very stuck in academia. My mental health was at its lowest point - I had a hopeless mindset. CSA gave me hope that there was more outside of academia. The Association provided a great road map to career success.

I knew that I needed to have aa well-developed strategy in order to be successful. When I joined the Association, I was very far off from a real job search. But having access to CSA's network was huge.

I just went for it. I said, if I'm not going to invest in myself, no one else is going to. I'm going to take a chance and see what this is all about. Maybe I'll learn a little bit, maybe I'll learn a lot, who knows. And within a couple of days I knew I made the right decision.

Cheeky Scientist and Isaiah really helped me to see that I did have value, and I did have value for companies outside of doing just bench research. Because I'd really come to the conclusion that that was not something I wanted to do, but I struggled that I didn't have the skills to do anything else. In academia I had no work/life balance, and in joining Cheeky Scientist I gained that work/life balance back.

I'm very, very happy with my overall experience with the Cheeky Scientist Association. For me, joining the Association was the perfect timing when I was trying to get into industry. It was the perfect place at the perfect time to start learning how to effectively transition into the private sector.

I got an offer about two weeks ago and I’m transitioning to a Medical Science Liaison role. It was a good break for me, but I couldn't have done it without Cheeky Science Association and all the guidance and the blueprint they provided for me.

I've always been a lifelong academic, and I was just ready to break out of the ivory tower and do more meaningful and more impactful work. Having access to all the Cheeky Scientist resources enabled me to immediately take the actions that would lead to my eventual job offer.

First, what I really liked about Cheeky Scientist was how supportive everybody is. All the materials were great, but I think the one thing that really stuck with me was the transition plan. It really lets you look at yourself where you are now, and look at where you want to go, and then develop a strategic plan to get to that point.

I was finishing a training grant and had started looking for industry jobs, and was getting absolutely nowhere. So I started looking around for recruiters or anybody I could talk to to get training on how to make that transition. [Cheeky Scientist's] focus on how to make an industry resume instead of an academic resume, seeing the before and after of my resume, there was a big divide between what I was putting out and what I should've been putting out.

The first thing that struck me was that I'm not the only one who has been in this situation. You really feel connected right away. There were so many people already in the Cheeky Scientist Association with experience I could learn from.

Before joining the Cheeky Scientist Association and after joining the Association, there were two Anandas. Things changed very fast when I joined Cheeky, and the networking platform Cheeky has is excellent. I got really inspired, because you see so many people like you who are coming together and trying to help each other. Also the entire support staff is excellent.

I was confident in my networking and my ability to speak with people outside of academia, but I had a lot of work to do to get my academic skill sets and my research translated into a very non-academic, non-research role. The other part was LinkedIn. I hadn't put a lot of thought into how important it was, and it turned out to be probably the most important tool.

Cheeky Scientist was instrumental for me. I got a lot of guidelines for how to get started, and the biggest decision for me was to make it my priority. Having a very specific set of goals made it easier to focus and put my entire energy into it.

First of all, the resume template that we get from Cheeky Scientist is absolutely amazing. The moment I did that change, I started getting results. I started getting calls from interviewers. Every third or fourth day, I had an interview.

I joined Cheeky Scientist a few months before I actually left my position, and a lot of things that did come out from Cheeky did help me bear the impact of leaving a very good job, and help tie me over to what I'm doing now. You just have to learn to trust yourself that this isn't the right place to be, so get out as soon as you can.

I've gone to so many great meetups where I've gotten great pieces of advice that I've been able to implement, they've introduced me to people who have been crucial in keeping me motivated and focused during my job search. It's really encouraging, when it's a difficult time in your career and you're not sure how to move forward, to have all these people cheering you on.

I want to thank the CSA team since I never would have made it to this point without you! I have been a member since Jan 2018 and began seriously applying to positions in June, so it took me about 3 months and 3 interviews before finding the right fit.

My biggest challenge was my mindset. My mindset was basically that I was garbage outside of academia, frankly. I didn't think I could do anything else, I didn't think I had transferable skills. I had an extremely limiting set of beliefs before I joined. It's not about your little tiny thing that you research, it's about all those transferable skills that any Ph.D. acquires as they go through their program.

My main challenges were my CV, networking, and having confidence in your PhD when looking for industry positions. I gained a lot of confidence from reading the materials from the Cheeky Scientist Association and talking with the support team.

For me the Association was helpful because I was able to see all the different paths available, other than just working in the lab. The private group was great because of all the information there, as well as the support from all the other people facing the same challenges you are.

The primary difficulty I faced was not being able to get my resume through to HR. I would post my resume on a careers website or on the company's website itself, and I would never hear back. The Cheeky Scientist materials were incredibly helpful, especially in making my resume and LinkedIn profile.

After doing postdocs for many years I realized that I am more inclined toward industry positions, but I really didn't know how to find a job. After joining the Association I was surprised to find a lot of people like me. I gained a lot of confidence and felt like I was not the only postdoc having these problems.

Here I am with an offer for an MSL position. Words can not describe the rewarding feeling you have when you finally land the job that you have always wanted. This has been quite a journey, with many challenges and rejections, but being persistent and focusing on my goal has led me here. Special thanks to my MSLA comrades [in CSA].

Before joining Cheeky Scientist I didn't know how I was going to do this. Where do I even begin? So I saw Cheeky Scientist on Facebook and on LinkedIn and I thought, maybe I should give it a shot. It was a leap of faith but I did it anyway, and I'm so grateful I did.

My biggest reservation was the misconception that I'd be turning my back on what I'd been doing for almost a decade, but that really hasn't been the case. A lot of the skills that I picked up during my studies have definitely helped me during this transition. I haven't been lacking in intellectual challenge in my new role, which was another thing I was quite afraid of.

The private group was the biggest plus that Cheeky Scientist offered. It was so supportive, so dynamic, and willing to help at a moment's notice. You can get 24/7 feedback on any material that you want feedback on, you can contribute and help other people, so it's such an amazing network.