Industry Careers

Every graduate student and technician knows that postdocs are the keepers of the lab. Postdocs know the most current technologies and methodologies, they know the literature, they know where everything is in the lab, and they know how to get reagents from other labs. Altogether, postdocs know how to get things and how to things done. These are the same skills that make postdocs great industry employees.

More than anything else, big companies want to hire confident people who understand the system. The problem is that the system in question is different than what most graduate students and postdocs are used to. But this system, like any other, can be mastered. Here are 15 things PhDs can do to make themselves better job candidates for big corporations.

The first step of transitioning out of academia is deciding if you want to stay in research or if you want out. If you want to stay in research, then you’ll seek and apply for R&D or other bench positions. But, if you want to move into sales, marketing, or upper management, your best course of action is to move into an applications-based position. The main job of an application scientist is to teach a company’s customers how to use their products. This often involves teaching customers about the broader fields of science related to the product. The following 15…