It is quite normal to feel doubts about your career choice at some point during your academic training process. Did you notice a change in your engagement during lab meetings, or did your latest set of promising data not make you as happy as it would have last year? If so, you may have entered your academic midlife crisis, the time when you reevaluate your plans and dreams for your own future. Don’t worry, you are not alone! This phase is a part of the “coming of age” process for scientists. Most scientists you know have gone through this process (sometimes even more than once), but we tend to not talk about it much because of the stigma tied to questioning the “ideal path” of pursuing your own lab. In my last blog post, I told you how to deal with these doubts and how to go about identifying what you are good at, what you like to do, and what is important to you. Now, I will tell you what to do with that knowledge and how to find the job descriptions that best match your idea of the perfect job for you. In part three of this mini-series, I will tell you how to develop the skills you need to become a competitive applicant for the career path that best aligns with you.
Do your research
The first step is to explore what types of jobs exist for PhDs. This step is quite similar to the research process you’ve trained your entire (academic) life for: gather data, analyze it, and come to a conclusion. However, in contrast to the lab, the tools and resources that are available to you are slightly different.
You should first check whether your institution has a career development center. Their workshops, seminars, and conferences will give you a primer on the various career paths PhDs pursue and will teach you the skills required for this transition. These events are also great opportunities to expand your network because they often feature graduates from your institution who somewhat recently transitioned into a particular career and can give you an idea of what that process was like. The center may also have a career coach who can guide you through this process, so make sure to schedule an appointment with them to talk about your interests and questions.
A second option is to listen to podcasts that discuss the transition process and interview people who have lived through it. In my opinion, podcasts are the perfect tool to get more out of the lab’s repetitive or routine tasks, like picking larvae or sectioning samples for histology. I first started listening to Hello PhD around 2015 and it gave me a great overview of the jobs that PhDs stream into, but it also showed me that I was far from alone in my struggles. By now, many others exist (Papa PhD, PhD Career Stories, The Cheeky Scientist, and others), so you can really pick and choose the podcast and style that best suits you.
The next tool on your exploratory belt are blog posts, like this one. You will be surprised to find how much has been written on ways to break into various career paths. Reading through these articles and blog posts can show you how to develop the necessary skills to become a competitive applicant once you start applying. Here are a few examples of scientists whose own transition process inspired them to start a blog: Natalya Bielczyk, Jennifer Polk, Rebecca Tadokera, but there are many others out there.
These resources will help you reduce the plethora of possible career paths for PhDs to a handful that best align with your strengths and values. Next, it is time to take a closer look at the actual jobs that exist within these career paths. Keep in mind that most job titles have distinct role descriptions, depending on the company. Think for example of a science editor. At a scientific journal, this is someone who handles incoming manuscripts, guides them through the peer review process, and decides whether a manuscript will get published or not. In contrast, at a scientific magazine, science editors write the content that is featured in the magazine or its website. The best place to discover these different role descriptions for various job titles is LinkedIn. Take some time to screen through job ads on this platform, because they will show you the various types of roles, skills, and requirements that exist within certain career paths.
Find your inner social butterfly
By now, you have likely identified a handful of job titles that align well with your idea of the perfect job. Your next step is to make sure that your idea of this job matches its actual day-to-day life. How do you do that? The answer is the same as above (research!), but with a social twist. While you can find a lot of information about various career paths through blog posts, podcasts, and other types of content, the best way to learn whether a career path is really right for you is by asking people who are on that path about their experience.
So, try to connect with your inner social butterfly, browse LinkedIn for people who have the job title you are interested in and ask for an informational interview. Don’t feel intimidated, I never had anyone reject a request for an informational interview. This is because almost everyone knows the struggle of figuring out what you want to do with your life, and they are happy to talk to you about what they do. That said, keep in mind that an informational interview is not the place for you to ask for a job, they are meant for you to learn more about the job itself and the transition process. Also, make sure to be respectful of the person’s time and come prepared. Do your research to learn more about what they do before you talk to them. For more tips on how to prepare for such an interview and what to ask, check out these articles (1, 2, and 3). Are you not sure how to identify the right people to contact? If your institution has a career coach, you could also ask them to connect you with someone in their networks. Finally, if you don’t feel ready to reach out to people, you can check out some of the many resources that exist online. For example, at Jobtalk, a team of PhD students tackle the informational interviews for you: they reach out to scientists who transitioned into various career paths, ask them about their experience, and turn it into articles you can browse through.
The last resource that I would like to mention here is a less obvious one: career-focused LinkedIn groups. Networking groups like the Grad Grid are large communities of people who study or work in higher ed and want to share judgement-free career advice, questions, and job ads with each other. These groups are great to participate in or to even just browse through, regardless of which soul / career searching stage you are in.
In the end, it is important to remember that figuring out “the right job for you” takes time and can be a pretty frustrating process. More than once, I thought that I finally figured it out, only to change my mind a few weeks later. One of the most important things I learned throughout this process is to keep an open mind; explore paths that excite you but also look into those that you initially rejected because you may yourself have been biased about what the job really entails. I hope the resources and tips I shared with you here will help you figure it out!
