Resumes

I had heard of PhDs transitioning rapidly into management roles, but I never thought I would meet one. I assumed that opportunities to fast track one’s career into the top levels of a company were reserved exclusively for elite PhDs.  The chosen minority who always have brilliant ideas and produce 10 first-author publications in top journals by the time they defend.  The ones who have been aiming for senior management all along. The ones for whom negotiation for a high salary seems to come naturally. Can you imagine being one of them? I can’t.  Do you even know one of…

The biggest obstacle that PhDs must overcome when they decide to leave academia is being invisible.  Without an industry network, you are invisible. It doesn’t matter if you are the best fit for your dream industry position if recruiters and hiring managers looking to fill that position don’t even know that you exist.  This is something that I know very well, not just from working with thousands of PhDs, but from my personal story.  When I first started looking for industry positions, I thought I would be easily found.  I quickly learned how wrong I was. I was invisible. No…

Most PhDs who join the Cheeky Scientist Association want to become R&D professionals or industry research scientists. There is nothing wrong about that.  After all, the best science and the best research is done in industry. So it’s only normal that PhDs who want to stay close to science are at least considering this career path.  However, after working with PhDs for years, I realized that most PhDs want to become research scientists because they think that they will get to do the same thing they do in academia, so they are more valuable in these positions. If this is…

Resume is your marketing document. PhDs often think that their academic credentials and technical skills should be enough to get them hired in a top industry job.  They underestimate the importance of learning industry etiquette and focus on uploading resumes filled with scientific jargon and technical skills to every job posting that comes their way. As a consequence, they end up in a vicious circle of uploading resumes and never hearing back from employers. Most of these PhDs don’t even know that their resumes are getting rejected by Applicant Tracking System Software before they even reach the hands of a…

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…

“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…

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…