Answers for your anonymously asked questions, alt-ac career advice edition

PLUS for post-PhD community members, real-life resumes that got PhDs jobs incorporate.

In this post: I talk about career transitions from academia to beyond and having to realign your identity, values, and process.
Next week: Activist pragmatism, the undercommons, and the task of the subversive intellectual today. I talk about scholars featured in the upcoming "resources for the resistance" post.
Last week: I am posing the most common concerns this month to an impressive cast of alt-academics, current professors, post-docs, and graduate students to join Post-PhD in a live fireside chat.

happy Friday my beleaguered compatriots,

I don't know about y'all, but this January has me feeling like I'm still in academia. I've been focused on working efficiently so that I can keep writing (most of the time), and that hustle is real. A career transition, especially from academia to beyond, is necessarily also a radical re-aligning of who you are, what your values are, and how you work. Through this, you realize how shitty the field you're leaving is, and with your newfound boundaries, you can re-imagine your career trajectory altogether.

In the academic year of 2018/19, about 85,769 male and 101,799 female students earned a doctoral degree in the United States (source). Recently, I tweeted about how 70% of those graduates sought to remain in academia.

follow me on da twitters: @postphdtheblog

Here's the gut punch: the number of tenure track positions in the US is in the hundreds. The odds are not ever in your favor. In fact, this blog recently estimated that only 10-30% of academics remain in academia with a full-time job (source).

In this way, a post-PhD project of reimagining the university must start with reimagining yourself.

you anonymously asked about switching into a corporate position from academia, and here are your answers:

“I want to hear someone get into the weeds of what a research position in corporate looks like. I want to know specific words they used or changed or substituted to present themselves as suitable or even strong candidates for nonacademic jobs."

“Advice ongoing corporate: I hear about sociologists making the switch. How do how does a sociologist make money off of doing methodology, how do I talk about my doctorate work?”

“How do we get someone to recognize that I am right for the job, even if I've never done that particular job?”

As a rebellious art historian who keeps making up unpaid writing projects for herself, naturally, I'm not your ex-academic to answer these. This is why I sought counsel amongst my post-PhD co-conspirators.

Last week, I interviewed sociologist Dr. Jillian Powers to tell us what even is corporate life, why do they use such stupid jargon, and like damn your starting salary is what. Dr. Powers’ area of study is American identity, belonging, ethnicity and heritage. She is now a responsible AI lead at a consulting company. In this conversation,  we talk about the professional transition that comes with leaving academia including areas of focus for cover letters and resumes and adjusting the way you present your skills and experiences. 

Alt-ac question one re: academia to corporate:

“I want to hear someone get into the weeds of it. I want to know specific words they used or changed or substituted to present themselves as suitable or even strong candidates for nonacademic jobs.”

A CV provides a full history of academic credentials and scholarly engagement including research and publications, while resumes highlight work experience, transferrable skills, and relevant accomplishments. 

Here are the main points from Dr. Powers' response concerning the transition from academia to corporate.

Dr. Jillian Powers: I've noticed is that the difference between a CV or a cover letter in academia and a cover letter is like getting a job outside of it is how you position yourself within the information.

The three main differences between a resume and a CV include length, emphasis, and audience. While CV’s are often lengthy and provide a full history of credentials, resumes focus more on what is relevant, usually being under two pages. Dr. Powers brings up this point, saying,

Dr. Jillian Powers: Your job is not to shine yourself but show your capabilities.

Allison Harbin: Mm-Hmm. I think that academics can forget.

Resumes revolve around relevant skills and knowledge and emphasize work experience, transferable skills, and accomplishments that apply that that particular job. This means finding ways to connect your skills and experiences to your target job.

Dr. Jillian Powers: You look at the things that you've done and you have to like, look at them closely and be like, Okay, what? What did I learn at this moment? Who did I help at this moment? What was the outcome? How much work did I go through to get there?

And in transferring these skills, remember that you are coming from another field. Make sure to go step by step whilst explaining your process.

Dr. Jillian Powers: It's like your research methodology, but try to make it make sense to people who don't understand that world at all.

Alt-ac question two re: academia to corporate:

“Advice on going corporate: I hear about sociologists making the switch. How do how does a sociologist make money off of doing methodology, how do I talk about my doctorate work?”

Dr. Powers defines methodology as research for an outcome, an understanding of things. I took this question a step further, asking:

Dr. Allison Harbin:  Do you have any advice for my fellow humanities PhDs? because we don't we're not we don't have that methodology, that sociological social science methodology background? So how do we think that we have that? 

Dr. Powers uses the example of a friend who worked in property management applying for a corporate job. He did not know how he could apply the skills he learned to the corporate world, so this was Dr. Powers’ idea. 

Dr. Jillian Powers: He figured out a way to do it. And then he implemented it. And something happens, right? Like, like the same thing about your work in your research. You've identified a problem in X. You figured out a way to find the answer. 

She is looking for ways to identify valuable skills and methodology. The main idea is knowing how to present yourself on your resume. Identify a thought process that led to a solution, and mold it. Think about how you collaborated with others in peer settings or leadership roles and build a narrative arc.

Donate

Dr. Jillian Powers:  There's always a way to turn something into. Outcomes from the narrative. The question for students is not what you studied/understood, it is about how you study those topics. Build your resume around “action words.”

It doesn't matter what you know, so it's not like a CV in that sense, it's about what you can do for that company. That's why your resume should be more outcome-oriented– any time that you were able to work with yourself and or other people to find to get money or to get something done and then change something like, that's what you want to keep your resume around. Think about a time when you worked either alone or with other people, and decide how it applies to your end goal.

alt-ac question three re: academia to corporate:

“How do we get someone to recognize that I am right for the job, even if I've never done that particular job?”

This question is referring to transferring skills from one field to another without EX-experience. This includes research, instruction, presentation, speaking, and writing. 

Dr. Jillian Powers: So I found this helpful for the accuracy of the academic answer: There's a difference between an intellectual and leader. If you would like to write in a business or corporate setting, you have to think about writing like a thought leader, not an intellectual. This means looking at your experiences and accomplishments from a corporate perspective. Organize the information to highlight the relevant skills.

Post-PhD community bonus resource (for paying members): actual, real-life resumes from academics who successfully transitioned into corporate and got those sweet six-figure "golden handcuffs" (which are better than regular metal ones IMO).

Here's a resume for a social scientist Ph.D. applying for corporate research strategist positions. Steal it and use it for your purposes.

AND because Dr. Jillian Powers is a boss, she even threw in her current resume, which has gotten her to some pretty fascinating job interviews. Note how neither resume is perfect. And that's ok.

The reason why we both think this is an amazing cv to resume is that it is action and results-oriented, it shows the person's project management and research skills while tying it to real-world applications and outcomes.

Note the section titles, and how the first half of this person's resume is all results-oriented, and what they wrote their dissertation about is nowhere:

Note how they re-framed the job titles of what they did in academia so that it would make sense to a business person-- it's not lying, it's translation work: