Industry Careers

Like many PhDs, you may think that Research and Development is the only department in industry that hires PhDs. But the reality is, your skills are needed in every area of industry. That means that every single department within a company is seeking PhD-level candidates. In fact, there are five core industry career tracks that can provide PhDs with meaningful and rewarding work: Information and Data Management (this is a broad category that includes everything from Patent Analyst and Informatics Specialist roles to Medical Writing and Data Scientist roles), Research and Development, Clinical and Regulatory Affairs, Classical Business (e.g., Management…

What industry position can I apply to? That’s one of the most common questions PhDs ask once they decide to leave academia. What you probably don’t realize is that you have many options when it comes to choosing a career. So, the real question is not what industry position you can apply to, but what industry position is the right fit for you. Which position better matches your professional lifestyle and career goals?  In previous blogs we’ve discussed how to establish your desired professional lifestyle and how to use it to evaluate your target career track and companies. In the…

If you recently started your job search, you probably feel the pressure of proving that you’re a good fit for the industry roles you’re applying to.  You have to carefully craft your cover letter, resume, and LinkedIn profile, and prepare for countless interviews just to prove you’re  qualified for a position.  This pressure can make you feel that employers hold all the power, and the only thing that matters is convincing them that you’re the best candidate for the role. Don’t let this pressure make you neglect other key components of a successful career, like company fit.  You’ll likely accept…

If you have a PhD, you’re among the 2% of the population who has committed to push a field of knowledge forward.  That makes you one of the most innovative people in the world. This is something special. As such, you deserve to work in a position where your tenacity and ability to solve problems are out of good use. Where you feel satisfied and are rewarded for your job. That’s why I encourage all PhDs to look for an industry position, because academia is a dead end where dreams go to die. However, you have to be strategic when…

If you’ve recently decided you want to leave academia, chances are you don’t know what is the first step you have to take in your job search. You’ve probably heard of other PhDs leaving academia. You’ve heard that they now work as user experience researchers, business development managers, management consultants, medical science liaisons (MSL), or data scientists and think you could fit into those positions as well. But have you stopped to consider what it actually means to work at any of these positions day after day? Not considering how those fancy job titles match their desired professional lifestyle is…

Looking for a PhD-level industry job is a job in itself. It requires you to start with the right expectations and to be prepared to deal with failure. No matter how prepared you are, you will hit sticking points and will have to deal with rejection. I have seen thousands of PhDs successfully transition into industry, none of them was successful all the time. They had to pause and readjust their job search strategy at some point. They key to know is how to deal with pitfalls and keep moving forward instead of quitting. I was recently talking to a…

Transferable skills are your biggest asset in industry, no matter what position you are applying for. If you’re still obsessing about finding an industry position that is looking for the technical skills you developed in academia, you are wasting your time and narrowing your opportunities. You can apply and transition into a wide variety of roles by focusing on your desired lifestyle and leveraging your Transferable skills. I have seen PhDs transition into all kinds of industry jobs, and they always highlight how they were hired because of their transferable skills, not their technical skills.  Take for example the following…

I wasted the first three years of my graduate school career networking the old fashioned way.  I would go to internal seminars with the same people over and over again, arriving just in time and leaving right after it was over.  Once or twice a year, I would go to a conference and stand in front of some poster I had made at the last minute, expecting that people would care. I would also go to job fairs held at my university, collect business cards from industry employees and think “I’m networking! I’m networking! It’s happening! I’ve been discovered!”  Only…

Understanding how things work in industry is an ongoing process. Even after being hired in one of my first industry jobs in Research and Development, I didn’t fully understand the value I brought to the table. Still, I was obsessed with adding value to my team. So, I kept talking about things like “statistical significance,” “reproducibility,” and other academically-minded concepts that didn’t relate much to my job or my team’s job.  I’m pretty sure I sounded awkward and irrelevant to the people I was working with. I can imagine them thinking things like “What is this kid talking about? Is…

For many PhDs, science and business seem to be opposites. Throughout grad school, we get fed the idea that good research is done in academia and that industry companies are villains that only care about the money and those that look for an industry career are sellouts. This is not only a lie, it is a dangerous concept. All research, even academic research, is done in a market setting and has to achieve results and be profitable. The reason why many academic labs struggle is because they are badly managed businesses. Unfortunately, many PhDs buy into these myths and either…

Interdisciplinary PhDs – those who have research backgrounds in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts – are less likely to seek career opportunities outside of academia than their basic sciences and engineering counterparts. The academic landscape in interdisciplinary departments is just as bad, if not worse, than that in STEM departments, yet these PhDs feel that they can’t leave. That there is no demand for them in industry, This is simply not true, interdisciplinary PhDs are highly valuable in a variety of industry positions, but because they don’t know what tier options are and lack an industry network, they…

PhDs think that they are not cut out for business, that academia didn’t teach them any business acumen, and that they can only access business-related positions once they have gained industry experience. This misconception comes from the academic idea that our most valuable assets are our technical or speciality skills. In reality, our tranferable skills are our biggest assets, and if you think about it in industry terms, you will notice that as PhDs, we have a lot of business skills. So, you shouldn’t limit yourself to positions that value your technical skills when planning your transition. PhDs can get…