What’s next?

In my last blog post, I talked about the time when I decided to leave academia. This time was truly an emotional rollercoaster ride for me and I feel like this comic (by theAwkwardYeti.com) represents very accurately how I felt. When finishing my PhD, I really had no idea how my future was going to look. I thought “What kind of job do I even want? What kind of job can I do?” …

About 1 month after my final exam and some time off, I started to look for jobs. However, I still had issues figuring out what kind of job I would like to apply for. During my time in research, the jobs that were talked about the most (as options when leaving academia) were in data science. I did enjoy programming, so I started to look for jobs from this field. I also applied for teaching, consulting, finance, and project management jobs. I have to admit that I was not fully aware of all the different industry jobs that were out there.

One thing that caused me headaches during the application process was writing proper resumes for all these different jobs. I was only used to write resumes for academic jobs, so it took me some time to figure out what to do. In fall 2017, a friend and former colleague of mine suggested the book “The Professor is in – The essential guide to turning your PhD into a Job” by Karen Kelsky. I ordered the book when preparing my PostDoc applications and it was super helpful. In May 2018, I thankfully remembered that the book also includes a chapter about leaving academia (called “Leaving the Cult”😉). This chapter (and generally the whole book) really had some great suggestions which helped me to get started. Besides that, I also connected with people who already went through a transition from academia to industry and I asked them about their experiences.

Honestly though, I still feel a bit insecure about writing industry resumes and especially cover letters (oh my!). I guess taking part in a training of this kind during my student times would have been helpful … I would definitely like to catch up on that in the future.

Another issue I came across was dealing with the salary question in job applications. Most of the job ads requested that you provide a figure of your expected yearly gross salary in the cover letter. I found that very hard, because I applied for jobs in a new country and I only had an idea about salaries in academia. I felt a bit lost. I googled lots about average salaries for specific jobs and used that information, but I still don’t understand why companies don’t at least provide the minimum yearly gross salary that they would pay (like it is done, for example, in Austria).

After dealing with these issues, I submitted my job applications in various ways: I sent out applications via email, online platforms and through LinkedIn. I noticed that on online platforms, companies liked to ask you the same questions in about a hundred different versions  – “give yourself hashtags”, “choose from the following sentences which best match… “, “describe your personality by selecting from the keywords below”, “upload videos and tell us about yourself”… at some point, I felt like I was applying for jobs at the secret service or so. Being used to applying for academia jobs, this kind of applications were quite overwhelming.

From all the applications which I submitted (I don’t even remember anymore how many there were), I received even less feedback when compared to the Postdoc applications from the year before. That was super “motivating” and actually, I would still like to know why most of my applications did not get considered. However, the applications that worked out best were those for which I had previously established direct contact to people working for the companies I was interested in. My husband calls that approach “knowing somebody who knows somebody” and it was really helpful.

This is also how I found out about a data science job close to my new hometown. I really thought that this one is going to work out. I was hoping to start with a job like that and then get some insights into different areas of the company (e.g., product management,..). Well, I made it to the final round, but in the end, they hired somebody else. I found out about this in mid-August and after spending about 4 months on trying to find a new job, I felt like I had to start from scratch again. However, this also helped me to realize that I actually could not see myself working in data science.

At this point, my husband reminded me of a message I received on LinkedIn about a week before getting the feedback from the data science job. The message was from a recruiter in the UK and the job he promoted sounded fantastic. However, I was very sceptical… I was never contacted by a recruiter before and I thought the message he sent was something like a LinkedIn Premium ad :-D. It sounded too good to be true, alongside the fact that I was not aware that jobs like this existed… I thank my husband so much for making me follow-up on that message because… well, this is the job that I have today 😉. In my next blog post, I will tell you more about my new job and I will also summarize my suggestions for industry job applications.

-Ines

As an aside – One of my objectives for this blog is to offer a platform where people can share their experiences related to transitioning from academia to industry and the processes, which go along with it. I am curious to hear any suggestions that may help those reading this post in the future. I hope that by sharing my third blog post, some of you might feel comfortable enough to share your thoughts and experiences… 😉