Hear Jo Ramos-VonRitchie’s Story

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.

CSA helped me realize all the transferable skills I had, like writing, mentoring, leadership, and administration. Until it was presented to me in the Association, I didn't realize what skillsets I had that maybe other people didn't have. That was huge.

As many of you PhDs have experienced, there's really not much guidance as to how to structure your resume for industry. That was one challenge for sure, because after uploading my resume in its previous form I usually didn't get any kind of response. Knowing how to tailor a resume to a specific position was a big challenge, but...after taking care of that it becomes a lot easier.

My situation was a little bit different in the sense that I was already in industry but I wanted to transition into a different industrial sector. The main challenge I had was marketing myself in terms of transferable skills to the new industry that I was targeting. That was a huge challenge for me. I had interviews, went for on-site visits, and most of the interviews I felt like I did quite well and was hoping for a job offer, but it never materialized. I started asking myself, what was it I wasn't doing right. That's when I joined the Association. The Association provided a lot of valuable resources, from webinars to resume resources, information on negotiating salary, and the private group.