What Career Are You Chasing?

Join Isaiah as he explains why PhDs must know what career they are chasing and follow strategy to get hired in high-paying industry roles

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah discusses why it is important for PhDs to know what they are chasing
• Next, Isaiah reveals why PhDs must ask the right questions
• Finally, Isaiah explains why professional lifestyle of choice is important for PhDs

From This Week’s Show… 

Why Is It Important For PhDs To Know What Career They Are Chasing

Chasing a career?Ask yourself. What is important to you in life? What are you chasing? And why? Can’t answer these questions? You’re in trouble because without these answers you have no idea what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. Everyone is chasing happiness of some kind. 

The problem is it’s not defined. Define what happiness means for you. Or what will bring happiness in your life. Happiness is just a feeling. That makes figuring out what will make you happy right now incredibly simple. Figure out which actions will give you the feeling you’re chasing the most frequently. Put this in the context of your career. Which activities do you want to spend most of your time doing throughout the day? 

Not the overly simplistic, hedonistic happiness like overeating pizza, drinking too much wine, or binge watching shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Rather the deeper, more complex fulfillment. 

Questions To Know What Is Important In Life

Lasting happiness comes with meaningful achievement. Think what daily professional actions can lead you to the most meaningful achievement? Which characteristics of your career could lead to this fulfillment? Ask the right questions to find out what is important to you. Simple questions that probably you’ve never asked yourself.  

Questions like, Do you want to work with a large team or in a small team daily? Or, perhaps no team? Want to work with numbers or large data sets? Or do you prefer smaller data sets? Do you collect and analyze quantitative data like the user metrics or qualitative data like survey responses sent in from a company funded focus group? Or, both? Does reading and writing appeal to you? Are writing intensive positions ambient for you?

Would you prefer to work at the company’s headquarters or at one of their smaller, remote satellite locations? Does field work excite you? Or, do you want to work at a home office entirely? Are you willing to travel and, if so, how frequently? Most importantly, when it comes to a company’s operations, where on the spectrum of innovation and commercialization do you want to be? 

These questions can help you understand the situation better.

Why Professional Lifestyle Of Choice Is Important For PhDs

Everyone has a unique set of professional lifestyle characteristics they consider most important to them. Define these characteristics. Then consider them before starting a job search. Those who did have got hired more quickly. They got paid higher salaries and enjoyed their work more. Then, create your own list of characteristics. 

These are the top 12 most popular characteristics. These 12 are listed below in random order. Write these 12 characteristics down and then rank them in order of importance to you. The ranking is highly individualistic. Hence, you must rank them in terms of order of priority for you and your ideal professional lifestyle, not someone else’s ideal. The characteristics are: High salary position, Remote position, In-house position, Innovation position, Commercialization position, Management position, Entry-level position, Writing-intensive position, Numbers-heavy position, Travel time >30% position, Customer-facing position, Highly technical position.

Once you have your characteristics ranked, you can chase your target job. 

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.