Interviewing

I ran into an old colleague a few days ago – literally. We actually collided going into the same coffee shop.  As luck would have it, we both had some time to kill, so we took a seat and started visiting. I told him all about the work I do, connecting PhDs with the strategies to get hired in industry.  He’d since gone on to work in human resources as a manager at one of the Global 500. We talked about things we wish we’d known after graduation – the importance of things like networking and creating a powerful resume…

The first time I was asked to give a presentation as part of an onsite interview, I thought, ‘Well this should be a cake walk – I’ll just redo my defense presentation.’ I didn’t get the job. And I knew that mid-way through my presentation. To start, they had only scheduled 30 minutes for my presentation, yet the one I had prepared was an hour. I ended up speed talking my way through the entire thing. Mistake number one. Mistake number two was not appealing to my audience. My presentation was highly technical, but my audience included people from R&D,…

When I was offered my first onsite interview, I was elated. But that elation quickly turned into panic. I had no idea what to expect. I had heard about other colleague’s interviewing experiences, but they all seemed so different. Some were in panel interviews, some had back-to-back one-on-one interviews, others had presentations, while others had a combination of all the above. I didn’t even know where to start in my preparation. So, I did what many PhDs do. I memorized verbatim answers to a handful of interview questions. I even reread my thesis to make sure I remembered every last…

I went through three rounds of interviews and now the company is ghosting me! What did I do wrong?! I’ve heard so many PhDs utter these words. If you can relate, chances are, you’re not going into your later stage interviews fully prepared. You may think that you’re in the clear or that late-stage interviews don’t matter as much. No matter the reason, just know that now is not the time to put your guard down.   The key to nailing later stage interviews is anticipation and preparation.   You must anticipate what types of questions you’ll get during an…

During my first industry job search, I was doing everything I could to prepare for in-person interviews. I got together with friends and colleagues, asked them to act as the interviewer and give me the tough questions. I asked them to critique my body language, my speech, and even how I planned to dress.   I really thought I was ready. So, after my first successful phone screen, I was completely sidelined when they told me the next steps included a video interview. A video interview? I wasn’t ready for this! At first, I prepared for it as I would…

I don’t think I’m alone when I say I dread phone calls. I’m willing to spend hours online trying to fix a problem just to avoid the 5-to-10-minute phone conversation it would require to solve it.    If this sounds familiar, I have some bad news: phone calls are unavoidable during your industry job search. In fact, its common for the first interaction between a job candidate and an employer to take place over the phone. This is called the phone screen. When I started my industry job search, I had no idea that phone screens were part of the…

When I started my industry job search, I thought interviews were merely a formality. Walking in the door, I was sure I already had the job. But so many times, I walked into an interview full of confidence and walked out feeling hopeless and confused. I was clearly botching my interviews, but I had no way of knowing where I was going wrong. When I aired my frustration to a friend of mine in talent acquisition, she told me what hiring managers really care about. It was then that I realized my blunders. It wasn’t that I was unqualified or…

By the time I started my industry job search, I was desperate. I was nearing the end of my PhD and I was consumed with what seemed like a million last-minute tasks – final experiments, last drafts, and defense presentations. I felt like I didn’t have the time to dedicate to my job search. And what little effort and time I did put into it was haphazard. My attempts involved repeatedly clicking the LinkedIn “Connect” button and uploading the same resume to any online job posting I could find. To make matters worse, I wasn’t even sure what job I…

Feeling discouraged with your job search strategy? Have you uploaded hundreds of resumes without hearing back from employers? Are you starting to think you are not cut out for an industry position? This happens to many PhDs at some point in their transition journey.  They don’t know how to execute a correct job search strategy. So they waste lots of time doing things that don’t yield any result. Then get discouraged. An industry job search is maddening. As PhDs we are never trained rigorously on how to do it in academia. Most PhDs are never trained on how to execute…

Today, I want to talk about the number one reason you are not being hired. You might think it’s because you are overqualified or underqualified for your target position. Or that you just can’t get hired because you lack industry experience. But the number one reason you are not getting hired is because you are invisible to industry hiring managers and recruiters. They simply don’t know who you are or the value you bring to the table. Understanding and accepting this should encourage you to change the way that you approach your job search.  Only then will you increase your…

Feeling purposeless and stuck? Every PhD will reach a point in their academic career where they have to reconnect with their purpose. Maybe you realize that you are not doing what you are doing for the right reasons. That you are working towards some else’s goal. Maybe you feel that achievements like a new publication or the title of “Doctor” are some sort of carrot that you have to chase without having a clear end in sight. This is especially true at the end of your academic career, where you have spent years working towards your PhD, or chasing endless…

What’s the biggest gap that you have when it comes to transitioning into industry? How do you communicate your value? This is a common question I like to ask PhDs. And, very often, I get the following answer:  Well, I’m not sure how to position myself for industry. What this actually means is that you don’t know how to communicate your value to potential employers.  You probably only know how to talk about your skills in academic terms. You only know how to talk to other academics, but industry employees don’t really care for that type of language. This leaves…