Reframe Your PhD Experience & Skills To Avoid Unemployment

In this episode, Isaiah covers the 3 major skills you need to emphasize to get employer attention in this recession. Things don’t work like they did before the recession, and there are a few things PhDs MUST emphasize in order to get hired…

Things have changed dramatically across the world, no matter what country you’re in.

Isaiah is going to unpack the changing job landscape and tell you exactly what you can do to avoid unemployment.

The Cheeky Scientist Radio Show will give you all of the information that you need  – this will be the place where you can get the most up-to-date information on how to protect your PhD career. We will help you create a safety net for your career. Isaiah will show you the data and lay out everything that’s going to happen over the next few weeks, months, and even years. This is so that you are prepared, armed with all the right information. 

This week on the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show, Isaiah talks about the skills you need to emphasize to get employer attention in this recession. He breaks them down into 3 different categories to use on your resume, LinkedIn profile, phone screen, and all the way to the job offer itself. 

Check out the text excerpts below or listen to this episode of the Cheeky Scientist Radio Show above via the SoundCloud player.

Show Excerpt #1: Isaiah discusses one of the biggest things employers are looking for right now.

Employers are trying to play it safe. How do they do that? By managing and mitigating risk –  by making sure that if they pursue a job candidate, they’re going after the safest one. They want the candidate who can do whatever they need whenever they need them to do it. They want the candidate who’s going to accept the job offer and who’s not unsure whether they want an industry job. Employers will be asking questions—very specific questions—to sniff out whether you’re the safest choice. They want to see if you’re 100% certain that you want this exact job at this exact company, and that you’re never going to go back to academia.

So how do you present that kind of certainty? How do you have to change your language? How can you change what you put on your resume and LinkedIn profile? That’s what we are going to discuss today, and we’re going to start by talking about the three different categories of transferable skills that most PhDs do not know about. We’re going to specifically focus on the ones that frame your candidacy in terms of skills. The first category is transferable skills, and just to back up for a second, a transferable skill is a non-technical skill. It’s a skill that might sound simple to you as a PhD. It might be as simple as time management, and therefore as a PhD, you think it isn’t complex  – it doesn’t sound intelligent enough to put on a resume But the initial gatekeepers between your resume and an employer are not PhDs, and they don’t think like you do…

Show Excerpt #2: Isaiah discusses how to get your mind out of academia for a job interview.

So let’s say you update your resume and LinkedIn profile, and you target jobs that are surging right now for PhDs (which we will cover in a future radio show podcast). You get a call back from an employer, and you have a phone screen set up – maybe they jump right to a video interview. Either way, what can you say to reduce risk in the employer’s mind? How can you give them the certainty that they’re craving right now? Unfortunately, many PhDs are horrible at this. Why? Because academia teaches us to never show certainty. Certainty can be a weakness, right? It shows confirmation bias. 

Not only that, but we’re taught not to show enthusiasm or emotion because it shows that you are emotional and you’re not evaluating things logically. Unfortunately, these two things are crucial to getting hired in industry. If you can’t be enthusiastic about a job on a phone screen, what does the employer think is going to happen to you one year into the job? You can’t even be enthusiastic before you start, so what are they gonna think? Here is that the employer will think:

“I feel like they need to take a nap right now. I can’t even get this person excited about the role. What’s going to happen in a year? They won’t even stay with us for a year. They’re going to be so bored.”

That’s what they’re thinking. And what does that do to the employer’s mind? Alarm bells. Risk. Too much uncertainty –  they’re dealing with enough uncertainty right now, just like the rest of the world. Give the employer the certainty that they’re craving by using specific language. I’m going to give you some specific examples here… 

** for the full podcast, check out the audio player above.

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