Special Interest

How many PhDs miss their calling as leaders because of academic failure?  I remember my own academic education well. Like other PhDs, no one taught me how to develop my leadership skills. Leadership is a core part of real life, of industry. But it’s not a focal point for academia, which is why so many students get their PhDs only to face a harsh reality… Instead of success and recognition, PhDs feel used. They’ve been used by a university system that chewed them up and spit them out. There is no clear path to success or fulfillment, only unanswered questions.…

I’ve lost a job. I was offered a contract, and they pulled it back. Everybody is ignoring me on LinkedIn now.  I was communicating with somebody about an upcoming interview, and now they’re not replying to my emails. My postdoc is not going to be renewed.  This is the kind of message I’ve been getting from countless PhDs all over the world. The recession has made things challenging for everyone. A lot of PhDs thought academia was going to take care of them, but they’ve found out the hard way that it isn’t true. For weeks now, I’ve been warning…

The current crisis reminds me of something that happened to me years ago. I had an interview with a big company, and it was scheduled to take place on an upper floor of a tall building. I took the elevator, which turned out to be the wrong choice. Normally, I’d have chosen the stairs, but I was feeling nervous and didn’t want to make my heart rate increase – it was already beating fast. The elevator got about halfway up to my floor and abruptly stopped. The doors didn’t open. There were several other people in there with me, and…

You should have seen my academic CV. It was a total disaster. By academia’s standards, it was fine. But I had a real monster of a CV, over 5 pages long and full of academic jargon. And there was no cover letter either. Can you guess what industry employers did after taking a glimpse at my CV? They probably threw it away – that’s assuming it even reached employers. More likely, it was filtered out of candidacy by application tracking software. You might think that, given the current situation, you should be focusing your time on other things, not career…

Isaiah Hankel has your guide to navigating the world of PhD jobs during the coronavirus crisis and using this temporary downtime to your advantage. The financial markets have crashed worldwide.  I can tell you from experience what’s going to happen next. I was a PhD student in 2008 during the financial crisis, and history tells us the hiring market is next to crash. After 2008, I felt like there were no jobs, and I had no industry network to connect with. My PI couldn’t help me – he didn’t know anybody either.  He was in the academic bubble with me. …

Visa Processes for PhDs can be complicated – luckily, contributing author Arunundoy Sur, PhD, can break it down for you. I started applying for jobs early. I was preparing to graduate, and I felt lucky to receive some positive responses right away. In a very short period of time, I had interviews lined up with 4 different companies. I went through multiple rounds of interviews and even reached the stage of salary negotiation in 3 of these cases. It all seemed to be going well. Being proactive was paying off, and now I had a new job lined up before…

Isaiah Hankel, PhD, discusses the global reaction to the coronavirus and how it demonstrates that industry needs PhDs more than ever. The need for scientists is rising, and it’s rising fast. With the recent outbreak of the “coronavirus,” media have reported all kinds of information, not all of it true and accurate. News and other media outlets thrive on timely reportage, and unfortunately, panicked viewers will pay more attention than relaxed ones. The effects of this panic are already observable. Who is in the best possible position to work against this alarmist racket?  Scientists holed up in academia? No. In…

As with most long-term projects, consistent accountability requires motivation. Research done at the University of Rochester identified two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is the kind of curiosity that drives you to pursue knowledge all the way to mastery. PhDs almost always have a lot of this motivation. Loving your field of study and wanting to advance it is what made you push your way through a doctoral program. Intrinsic motivation derives from natural satisfaction – when the task is its own reward. The problem is that intrinsic motivation rarely drives a job search. What PhDs need…

Are you a PhD with your heart set on becoming a CEO? Pause for a moment and recognize how rare you are. The majority of PhDs will never cross the gap between working for other people and working for themselves. Entrepreneurship in general is rare, but becoming an entrepreneur after completing a PhD is exceptional. Study EU examined the largest companies on each continent, and they reported that among these companies’ CEOs, a mere 10% can boast a doctoral degree. But the question is this: Why don’t more PhDs go this route? After all, as a PhD, you have a…

Academic abuse is no joke. The University of California’s Mental Health Committee reviewed a variety of examined trends in mental health, and some of what it uncovered is disturbing. For example, a UC Berkeley study of 3,100 graduate students indicated that nearly half of respondents had suffered an “emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected their well-being and/or academic performance.” Worse yet, almost 10% reported that they had considered suicide sometime within the last year. Are these reports deeply saddening? Of course. But they are not surprising. Too many graduate and professional students are at risk of isolation from campus…

To put it mildly, the road to a PhD can be rough. The Berkeley Science Review once reported that over half of grad school students claimed to feel “frequently overwhelmed, exhausted, sad, hopeless, or depressed.” And sadly, the American College Health Association has announced that 15% of college students were depressed. They added that suicide was a major issue within this demographic. Is it starting to look like academia has a problem? It should look that way — it’s true. Not to mention post—grad problems in finding careers. For all the value in a PhD’s education (and there is tremendous…

The Pew Research Center found that in nearly half of all two-parent families, both the mother and father work full-time. Within this same set of two-parent families, 26% consist of dads employed full-time and unemployed moms. Ready for the most revealing data? In a mere 2% of families, this is reversed: full-time moms and unemployed dads are 92% less common than the more traditional family models. The takeaway is that, statistically, women run a much higher risk than men when it comes to two-body compromise. Supporting this is research by Wolfinger et al, which found that a massive 89% of…