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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…

Robust LinkedIn network is necessary for hiring. PhDs often think that they have plenty of time to work on the next step in their career and that they can postpone setting up a job search strategy.  Sadly, many of them wait so long that they end up in a desperate position, where they need a job yesterday. They start fixating on things like “I gotta get hired. I gotta get somebody to help me get hired. I gotta really pitch myself. I gotta talk about all my skills, I gotta ask for help on my resume.” So, they start bombarding…

If you are in academia and want to transition into industry, you need to take the LinkedIn SSI score seriously. It doesn’t matter if you are a PhD student, a postdoc, or are unemployed. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you need to take actions to make it impactful now. You might think that you can put this off until you’re actually ready to transition, but your profile is visible right now. Hiring managers can come to your profile now and make decisions based on it. Decisions that can impact your job search down the line. One of our associates…

Referrals are extremely powerful. They can give your resume directly to a hiring manager, help you skip steps of the hiring process, and even have a hiring committee reverse a rejection. One of our transitioned members recently shared the following story about a candidate they referred for a position at their company. Someone connected with me and sent me a message on LinkedIn. As they were polite, I agreed to have a voice chat. I attended a few meetings in my company and found out they were looking for someone with a profile that fits this person’s. So, I invited…

I am working on my job search strategy.  Just last week, I sent over 10 CVs through job portals. I hear this from PhDs all the time. They don’t know what a PhD-level job search actually looks like, so they send a bunch of resumes or LinkedIn requests and expect to see results. The thing is, that strategy will take them nowhere.  It isn’t even a strategy. Recently one of our members noticed why uploading resumes online, not only is not a strategy, but is a waste of time.  “I have been following CSA strategies a lot, but today I…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

There is a crisis in academia. PhD salaries are stagnant. The economy is facing inflation, yet PhD salaries are dropping. One of the worst mistakes you can make in your professional career is staying in academia beyond your PhD. The sooner you realize this, the better it is for your career and your overall future. PhDs are exceedingly valuable in industry. During your time in graduate school, you acquired mastery over a field of study. You learned how to research, analyze, innovate, and present data. Furthermore, you  learned to innovate and push the boundaries of knowledge.   You amassed skills such…

I thought I had it all figured out when I started my industry job search from academia. I had several excuses. Before I even started, I told myself “There’s no rush Isaiah, you have plenty of time to get hired” and “You have a PhD and on top of this it’s a STEM PhD, you will be able to get a job in no time.” Then, of course, when I didn’t get any responses from the resumes that I uploaded online, I continued to tell myself lies like “There’s not jobs out there right now so I should just wait to…