Industry Careers

Graduate …then get a job? Why must it be sequential? How can I do both at the same time?  When should I start my job search? If I’m a PhD student, what should I be doing? How can I avoid the most common fate of ending up unemployed after I defend? Should I start my job search before or after I defend? We have come across several PhD students who had the same questions. And the answer is: you can have both. You can graduate from your PhD with a job lined-up and avoid unemployment. But to achieve that, you…

Whether you’re a recent PhD or have been pursuing a career in academia, you’ve spent several years, your hard-earned money, and valuable resources working for your advanced degree. It’s paid off. You have a PhD! …Now what? Like the 187,000 Americans expected to earn a PhD in the 2020-2021 school year calendar alone, you’re not just broadening your horizons and expanding your knowledge. You’re also solidifying a wider range of future job opportunities with higher pay. In most university programs, a PhD is the highest possible degree one can achieve. That means you’re viewed as having reached the height of…

“When do you need to get hired?” I asked.  “Yesterday.” Sarah replied quickly.  “Got it …What have you done so far?”  That’s when Sarah got quiet. Why? Like most PhDs, Sarah had done very little in terms of her job search.  Sure, Sarah thought about her job search a lot. She played out different scenarios in her head. But when it came to taking action …she was empty handed.  Now, she was working for free for her PI and scrambling to find a job that would pay her. You see, Sarah had just defended her thesis but spent not time…

When I started the long road toward my doctorate, I never would have put “PhD” and “unemployed” in the same sentence.  Nevertheless, that’s the reality 60% of all PhDs will face at some point in their career. You might even be living (or soon facing) that reality right now. With more universities scaling back in-person classes in favor of virtual learning, you can expect those secure full-time professorship jobs to grow fewer by the day, too. Why offer a tenured position when you can just hire low-paid adjuncts – especially with online courses becoming the norm? Fortunately, PhDs in data…

Fears destroy your poetntial. I don’t understand why anyone would get their PhD and stay in academia anymore. Logically, that is.  Logically, any PhD can see how postdocs and PhD students are exploited by the system as cheap labor.  Many of them go as far as working for free once they get their PhD, or they get into postdocs that don’t allow overtime, don’t contribute to their retirement, and pay them peanuts.  That’s when self-justification occurs … “I’m doing noble work”  “I’m doing important work”  “I can still be a professor”  “An adjunct professorship is a real professorship”  “Everyone is…

“Networking?” For PhDs? The whole idea of networking always seemed strange…. Kissing up to strangers with small talk all for personal gain? No thanks. Wouldn’t people know I’m just trying to use them?  Well, if the industry hiring manager can’t see my value through a resume and CV, then I don’t need them anyway. I’ll always have academia! …Except I know those secure academia jobs are getting slimmer by the year (and never pay what we deserve to begin with). Okay, fine, I’ll network—but only at a few conferences where I know I’ll run into people who can help me. …

“I have plenty of time to look for a job before I defend my thesis.”What’s the rationale? “I’m struggling to find time for my industry job search with everything I have to do in the lab and at home with my kids.” “My postdoc doesn’t get over for another year so I’ll start my job search later.” Famous last words.  I’ve heard thousands of PhDs from all around the world tell me many reasons why they haven’t taken their job search seriously.  If you’re not spending at least 2 hours of focused effort executing on your job search every day…

How can you hit your career goals when you’ve never defined your target? R&D career or Clinical, business and finance, marketing or information aggregation roles? Every PhD, regardless of where they are in their job search, eventually admits one thing …they all admitted that they had waited way too long to take their job search seriously. One of the biggest time sucking mistakes that PhDs continue to say they make is that they failed to correctly consider which job titles were right for them. Many never thoroughly reviewed their industry options until they were about to defend their thesis, lose…

In the beginning, you only bothered with applications for your dream industry postings.  They had openings. You have a PhD and the skills.  It seemed like an open-and-shut case. Days turned into weeks. Your phone never rang, and your inbox stayed empty. “They probably already filled the position before seeing my application. They can’t exactly backtrack after hiring someone.” You moved on to your second-tier choices, then third, and then whoever else had a relevant opening with a salary you could live with. Sadly, this is usually the point where most PhDs give up and sentence themselves to a resentful…

My resume is above average. Certainly it’s at the mean. That was my belief when I started my job search. I’m way ahead of where I should be when it comes to transitioning into industry. I mean …I haven’t even graduated and I was already looking at options. That was another belief I had when I started my industry job search. Looking back, I’m amazed at how unscientific my approach was when it came to the most important thing in my life at the time – my career. In retrospect, I had no idea what I was doing. I was…

PhDs are increasingly being hired in the top-paying jobs across industries. So, there is no reason for you to stay stuck in academia where PhD salaries are stagnant or plummeting. The U.S. National Institute of Health reports a starting annual salary of US $37,740 for academic postdocs and a study published in Nature reported a starting salary of US $23,660 — the minimum wage set by the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act.  Even with the current inflation, the average salaries for postdocs are below $49,999 per year. This means that rent and prices of other day to day products and…

I thought I was doing what PhDs were “supposed” to do. After 10 years of hard work, I was reaching a major milestone: my thesis.  But, in the back of my mind, I knew I was treating my thesis like a means to an end. How could I not? I was a 32-year-old student, who had never actually worked a day in the field, turning over stones for a groundbreaking discovery.  Sure, I knew my stuff and had confidence (I was a PhD after all). But there’s a certain type of confidence that you can only earn through the mundane…