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**PhD Transition Report On-Demand**

Podcast by Cheeky Scientist

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Inflation Versus PhD Salaries In Academia. Cause For Alarm? Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals how PhD salaries in academia remain stagnant in spite of inflation

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

First, Isaiah reveals why PhDs in academia are alarmed
Next, he shares the cause of the current inflation
Finally, Isaiah reveals how PhD salaries are decreasing due to inflation and the strategies to stay ahead

From This Week’s Show…

Why PhDs Are Alarmed

When the pandemic hit, several PhDs started panicking. Uncertainties set in, PhDs questioned their course of action. I think this paid off in many ways, a lot of PhDs instantly woke up from their slumber. PhDs realized academia does not guarantee job security. The numbers emphasized that not even tenured professors are protected in academia. Academia has a way of luring you into a false sense of security, but even PhD students had their stipends at certain universities cut. Academia suffered furloughs, pay cuts, funding and tenure losses. The plight of postdocs was revealed.

The misconception that most of the funding came from grants was cleared up. That’s something that really came to light. Get a grant, get your own funding and things are secure, the myth was debunked. The lack of support for higher education exposed. It turns out that the university actually relies on tuition from undergrads – and not on grants – for funding.

Depending on the graduate school there was a 20%- 21% drop in the first year tuition, and this is why higher education is suffering. Once the pandemic hit, hundreds of thousands of losses not just in the U S but in other countries were tracked. So what’s going on now? While people are now scrambling out of fear but at the same time, PhDs are getting shoved into a false sense of security.

These PhDs will eventually have to face unemployment, no career, future being completely dependent on your PI, working for free.

What Is The Cause Of The Inflation

There’s something weird going on right now. The job market’s been kind of a mystery.

We have noticed an alarming 81% drop in hiring since November 2020. I’ve been harping on that number but it hasn’t changed significantly. There is a lot of liquidity in the market right now. Several governments have provided assistance to people that has resulted in a lot of liquidity- a cash influx.

PhDs received some extra money back from taxes, stimulus cheque etc. That has put a lot of PhDs into sleep. They have become complacent with temporary relief. And so there’s no urgency to get a job. But now, there is a simultaneous increase in unemployment as well.

My concern is once this money runs out -the inflation subsides- there’s going to be a mass Exodus out of academia. It’s hard to tell people that are comfortable in moderate pain to take this seriously, because they think things are going to get better. The prices have doubled but not your PhD stipend and your postdoc salary.

Inflation Versus PhD Salaries In Academia

Globally, the prices have doubled, the supply chains have been broken. There is surplus demand but not enough supply to meet it. You should get practical, if you’re a PhD, what are some of the prices you could see going up around you? You may not be a finance PhD but these things would affect you as well.

You might have some extra assistance right now but eventually that would run out. Don’t just hang out in academia, things are not going to get better. You can’t put off your job search for another year and wait until the moderate pain turns into massive pain. This is what most PhDs are doing, it’s too late. Soon, you’ll run out of options and you’ll be in desperation mode.

You need to think, if inflation is occurring and prices are getting more expensive, what about our PhD salaries? PhD salaries are unfortunately not keeping the pace, they’re actually going down. You need to take your job search seriously because while you stay in academia, employers are redirecting their money from hiring into marketing their products, their services, their treatments. They face the dire need to promote their product line to save their companies. Now that means right now is a great time to reboot your job search.

So, if the last couple of months you’ve just stabilized yourself—caught your breath—, then now is a great time to reboot. Get ahead of the tidal wave. People will eventually see the inflation when all of this liquidity runs out. Get ahead of the curve, cross the competition.

It is time to reboot your job search. As always, remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

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

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The post Inflation Versus PhD Salaries In Academia. Cause For Alarm? appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

How To Stay Motivated In Your Job Search (3 Tips For PhDs) Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the strategies for PhDs to stay motivated in the job search process

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

First, Isaiah reveals how PhDs lose motivation
Next, he shares why it is important for PhDs to stay motivated
Finally, Isaiah reveals the strategies to build rationale and stay motivated

From This Week’s Show…

How PhDs Lose Motivation

Staying motivated in your job search is a challenge. PhD life has its fair share of struggles. There are days when you wake up uninspired. You don’t feel like doing anything for your job search. It’s easy for PhDs who have been unemployed for months to lose motivation. Besides, PhDs’ life has several other struggles. Maybe they had a bad day in the lab or the classroom. They saw the writing on the wall. They were about to graduate. Maybe they’re going to lose their postdoc, or they’ve been in a postdoc for years. They’re an adjunct or still working on a contract. Irrespective of the nature of setbacks, PhDs suddenly get motivated, update their resume.

PhDs start their job search with excitement. Updating their resume then uploading it to a job site. This gives them a sense of accomplishment, a dopamine hit in their brain. A feeling that they worked towards their job search process. Then they don’t hear back in spite of working for an hour or two on their resume. They don’t even have the correct resume format to begin with just a few bullet points based on what they could recall from their memory. They don’t hear back and then lose motivation over time. You do this over and over again. You don’t hear anything back or don’t experience any sense of growth.

You’re not tracking any metrics. No visible results. And so you give up, you lose motivation.

Why It Is Important To Stay Motivated In PhD Job Search

Motivation is not the problem. As PhDs we know we can get motivated by watching a rousing speech in a movie, or turn to our PI and professors. Maybe they actually say something positive that makes us feel good for a little bit. But emotions are fleeting and so is motivation. You fail in your job search because you wait for motivation, or try to create one. Staying motivated is the problem, not the solution. Inconsistent motivation doesn’t last. The kind where PhDs feel like doing something challenging just two or three hours a week.

Searching for a job is challenging. A motivated PhD is someone who is consistent and determined to work hard even when they don’t feel like working. PhDs cross the latency threshold when they do the required even when they don’t feel like it. Over 90% of the time, we do not feel like working hard, especially on things like a job search. Most PhDs don’t prefer to indulge in a new area, something they don’t understand. There’s a lot of things you don’t know about a job search.

So how do you stay motivated? How do you stay motivated as a PhD, ask yourself that, how do you keep collecting research for something as long and arduous as your thesis? You set a goal and restructured your life towards that goal. It wasn’t motivation that kept you going. It was a rationale.

3 Tips For PhDs To Build Rationale And Stay Motivated

You had a very strong reason why you wanted to get a PhD. Maybe you wanted to have a bigger impact on humanity or be a doctor, for the recognition. In terms of education, PhD is the most challenging degree to get. And that’s why you wanted it. You had rationale which kept you consistent.

You have to create rationale. Rationale is something you understand, as a PhD. You had to embed rationale in every paper, every grant that you wrote. You have built a strong case up for you to get a PhD. And now you need to build a strong case in yourself for your job search. How do you build your rationale?

To create the rationale you need to look at the pain. Your driving force is usually not what you’re trying to be driven to rather what you’re driving away from. That drive inside of you keeps you going. That’s not the typical motivation. There can be power in the painful things that you want to avoid. It will drive you. It can be your rationale.

It was rationale that I leaned into, and created confirmation bias. I built a case for it purposefully to drive me so that my job search became easy. There’s three things that will help you in terms of building this rationale.

Always remember your value as a PhD

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

The post How To Stay Motivated In Your Job Search (3 Tips For PhDs) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

The (Revised) PhD Job Search Fundamentals Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the revised fundamentals of the PhD job search

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

First, Isaiah reveals how the job market is changing
Next, he shares the five mental areas where PhDs get stuck
Finally, Isaiah reveals the revised fundamentals for PhD job search

From This Week’s Show…

The Changing Future Of The Job Market

The job market is dynamic. The last year has seen a lot of drastic changes, from the first wave of lockdowns to the 2020 hiring boom. Then came the contraction in the second wave of lockdowns as a response to the pandemic. We have also witnessed the vaccine rollout, followed by a period of stability. Although it is not going to be entirely different from what it was in 2019, the economy might be up or down. We have all been scrambling to keep up with these changes. There’s going to be more changes in the future.

It’s important for us to now come back to the fundamentals of getting hired. Certainly we’ve already seen something we never saw before: at the end of the year 2020, we saw the highest month of PhD hiring ever in the history of cheeky scientists.

Since we started recording this data way back in 2012 and subsequently we have seen an 81% drop in hiring. This trend has continued till March 2021. What does that mean? Well, with the vaccine rollout, we’ve seen a lot of the explosion of clinical trials for COVID have slowed. So R and D positions, medical affairs positions, clinical positions for PhDs; clinical data management, clinical research associate, and many others have slowed, but it does not mean that the fundamentals of getting hired have changed.

The Five Areas PhDs Can Get Stuck

Although there are some changes, the fundamentals of job search are still the same.

So you might want to think of these as what’s in between the fundamentals. When I say revised here, I’m talking about how to approach the same fundamental differently, taking that fundamental and putting it into the context of where we are today.

You may be looking for a job or may have lost your job. Maybe you are at the end of your rope in academia because funding has plummeted. Though the funding from the government is a little stable but the funding from undergraduates tuition has dropped. And you’re seeing tenured professors being pushed out. You’re not seeing any new PhDs being enrolled at your university. You think this might be good for you? No, this is not good for you. It means the PhD pipeline is being shut down.

As you approach your job search, there’s only five mental areas that you can be stuck in. But using the revised fundamental job search info, you will be able to overcome those hurdles.

The Revised Fundamentals of PhD Job Search

So the fundamental way to get a response from the resume or to have employers actually find you on LinkedIn is by leveraging key words. You have to read through numerous job postings. You got to copy and paste those job postings into a word cloud, so that you can quantitatively as well as qualitatively evaluate the job posting. Start understanding the key words and the language of industry because those keywords will dictate how employers are searching for you. These are the same keywords that are in the ATS, the applicant tracking system software or in the LinkedIn recruiter.

The fundamental needs to be revised; instead of focusing, just on keywords, you need to focus on keyword connectedness. The job market is a lot more competitive now. Depending on which unemployment statistics you look at you might see numbers as low as six to ten percent. This percentage does not include people that have stopped trying to get hired altogether. Maybe they’re on some sort of assistance or have to take care of their kids since their kids aren’t in school. So they’re not even reporting that they’re trying to get hired but can’t. You will see numbers as high as 30% or 40% plus of people who are actually not employed right now, it is much more competitive than you might think.

It’s not enough now just to have the right keywords, you have to connect the keywords in the right way. So you can’t just splash five to 10 keywords from a job posting. You have to get 30, 40, 50 different keywords. You’ve just never gone through a job posting with a fine tooth comb and looked at things like -initiative- that’s a keyword. Looked at things like —can work autonomously— can look at things like good leadership. You’re passing by those for the longer technical skills.

As always remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

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

The post The (Revised) PhD Job Search Fundamentals appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

5 Curses Of Staying In Academia (After Getting Your PhD) Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the curses PhDs face by staying in academia

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

First, Isaiah reveals what prevents PhDs from transitioning out of academia
Next, he shares how tenure track positions are not an option anymore.
Finally, Isaiah reveals the 5 curses of staying in academia beyond your PhD

From This Week’s Show…

What Stops PhDs From Transitioning From Academia

Staying in academia beyond your PhD is a curse. You need to get your PhD. It is an incredible way to learn how not only to master a field, but to push a field forward.

A PhD is a training position where you need to learn how to do research, how to do analysis, how to deal with uncertainty, how to face failure, how to think creatively, how to innovate. These are all incredibly valuable in the industry. Most of us stay in academia after getting a PhD because we don’t have a plan. We focus intensely on a publication or reading papers or all the other things that we can do that make our PI happy, or is rather easy to do. If you are the type that likes to learn, then it is easy for you to be stuck in the learning loop and never transition out of it.

It is easy for you to learn about one subject that you have mastered and have gone beyond to push forward. That makes you complacent. But you have to learn how to get a job, how to apply your knowledge in the real world, how to go beyond the ivory tower to get off the mountain peak you are currently on.

Most PhDs have to start at the bottom of a mountain and struggle all the way up. That is why there is a pile of post-docs. The crisis in academia is this pile up of PhD who stay in academia working for free.

Well, you graduate but don’t have a job lined up. This leads to the decision to work for free. PhDs can’t live with the existential crisis that they got their PhD but are broke. So, instead of taking responsibility for that, they try to feel good about themselves by staying busy, working for their PI. They are convinced that this is for a noble cause.

The Dying Tenure

Let’s face it, tenure professorships are gone.

Lots of universities that didn’t have certain bylaws, have been cutting tenure professorships. Since the pandemic, there have been huge job cuts, funding losses, and pay cuts. So, in the US alone, the percentage has been matched in many other countries, 650,000 higher education jobs cut since the pandemic. These tenure positions are not coming back. They are not even taking PhDs into the academic system anymore. That is not good for you if you’re there because it means they are not going to support it.

There’s no money to support it. The dying trend of tenure made it to a front-page article on Forbes, which is not a higher education or academic medium. It is a business journal and Forbes certified that tenure is dead.

The article should get your attention because there is nowhere for you to go in academia anymore. So, if you stay there after your PhD, it is one of the biggest curses, because there is no use to your career. You are only advancing somebody else’s career. Rather if you stay, you actually become a worse candidate for industry.

The longer you stay after getting your PhD, the less likely you are to get hired and the less you will be paid.

The 5 Curses Of Staying In Academia Beyond Your PhD

If you want to develop a treatment or a drug, you would need to translate your knowledge into a developmental process. Most translational work and nearly all development work is done in industry because they have the advanced robotics, the teams, the structure, and a strict project management methodology that academia lacks.

When you get into industry, you will learn about the different types of project management from agile, to fall to six Sigma, etcetera. This is crucial because it is systemization, reproducibility. The ability to repeat something the exact same way over and over again is built into industry and only businesses that do that extremely well survive big enough to do anything big.

No reproducibility in academia is of the most taxing curses. The numbers are staggering. Anywhere from 50% to 90% of experiments can not be reproduced in academia. And this is reported by scientists, engineers, PhDs. This was triggered in a lot of studies and surveys done in 2010 then in 2016, the poll was initiated by nature.

There are big things ahead for you, but you have to take the first step. As always, remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

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

The post 5 Curses Of Staying In Academia (After Getting Your PhD) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

When Interviewers Ask For Your 30-60-90 Day Plan, Give Them This Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the strategies for the 30-60-90 day plan

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

First, Isaiah reveals why PhDs get interviews but no job offers
Next, he shares why companies care about onboarding
Finally, Isaiah reveals the strategies to create a persuasive 30-60-90 day plan

From This Week’s Show…

Why PhDs Are Getting Interviews But No Job Offers

We have a lot of PhDs right now that are getting to the interview stage but they are not getting a job offer. While some are getting to the earlier stages—a phone screen or an initial video interview— others make it to the final video interview stages or a site visit but no job offer. Just because you are being invited to a site visit does not mean that you are the only job candidate there is likely to be more depending on the size of the company. It certainly doesn’t mean that if you blow the site visit or the virtual interview, if you do not have questions to ask that are insightful, or if you do not come off appropriately educated as having done research on the company, you will get rejected.

As a PhD there is such an immense cost to this rejection. Going through all of that effort and not getting a job offer at the finish line is devastating , but you have nobody to blame, except yourself. Hence the question you need to ask is… “what more can I do to separate myself, to differentiate myself from other job candidates? The ones that they are comparing me to.”

If you have been following Cheeky Scientist, you have learned to communicate your transferable skills, not just your technical skills, like all of the other PhDs they are interviewing, but what else can you do to differentiate yourself?

Why Do Companies Care About Onboarding?

How can you go above and beyond? How can you give the employers certainty? The number one reason that will inspire them to be certain and extend a job offer to you. One of the best ways to give them this much needed certainty is to provide a 30, 60, 90 day plan on paper. So when they are onboarding you will likely have to create a 30-60-90 day plan, or they will create one with you. You have to hit the ground running right away. And the reason onboarding is so important is because they need to help you understand how things work at the company.

There are a lot of unspoken rules and guidelines that you can’t find on a company’s website, or even by reading through the company’s operations manual. Things you can only learn on the job. Hiring an employee is very expensive. In general, it can cost about $60,000 up to the salary you will get in your first year. I have heard numbers as high as 1.5 times more. The starting salary of an employee is how much it costs to hire that employee. The reason that companies care so much about onboarding is because they have invested so much in you already. And the numbers that employers see are as follows 22% of staff turnover occurs within the first 45 days.

Companies know that they are going to lose a fifth of their team members in the first 45 days. But 91% of the first year workers are retained by companies with an efficient onboarding process.

So they can dramatically increase their chances of retaining an employee that they have already just paid a lot for- by onboarding them correctly.

The 30-60-90 Day Plan

Start getting comfortable with the company culture. The strategy of how things are done, how you feel, how other people feel generally, how they operate. You want to do well with that, you want to understand the product or service or treatment or whatever it is that you are supporting. You might take on one small project in part with someone guiding you during this time. The 30-60-90 day plan can even guide the questions that you ask the recruiters during the initial interviews. What if you were trying to fill out a chart at 30 days, what do you expect at 60 days at 90 days?

In the first 30 to 60 days, you will want to start working with your team to really understand how they work, what are the individual responsibilities, you want to communicate with your team, but it will take you a while to start getting things done; where they can start to rely on you instead of you just relying on them. You want to start being seen as an asset to the team. You will want to take on a bigger project at this time, but still require some mentorship. From a company’s perspective, this is the assimilation phase.

They expect you to start understanding the unwritten rules of the company in more detail. The power structures will start to become visible to you.

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

The post When Interviewers Ask For Your 30-60-90 Day Plan, Give Them This appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Top Engineering Careers In Industry Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the top industry careers for engineering PhDs

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

First, Isaiah interviews a panel of PhDs who have successfully transitioned from academia to engineering industry careers
Next, the expert panel discusses the strategies to overcome the hurdles faced by engineering PhDs in the industry job search process
Finally, Isaiah reveals the top industry careers for engineering PhDs

From This Week’s Show…

Advice From Fellow PhDs

Engineering PhDs are very focused on their niche background. There are often arguments regarding the interdisciplinary nature of engineering backgrounds, especially with respect to hiring. Engineers argue that owing to this niche specialization, a chemical engineer cannot be hired as an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer and vice versa. The truth is that you can! Several companies have engineering teams where they prefer engineering PhDs of different backgrounds in the same team.

Most engineering PhDs think they have a very specific niche background of engineering that makes their situation very unique and impossible. There is no access to career centers that can really help you; therefore, finding access to people who know what they are talking about is important. Identifying those transferable skills that the employers care about is challenging but necessary. Building your network and getting to know people is crucial to getting hired in the industry.

Strategies To Overcome The Hurdles Faced By Engineering PhDs During Their Industry Transition

You have to be technically sound and also be able to speak in the industry language in order to convince the hiring managers and recruiters who may not have that engineering expertise that you are the best person for the job. The recruiters may know that you either have that technical skillset or you can learn it, but speaking the language of industry, the transferable skills, understanding the project management process, even in industry is a big gap.

Working in academia makes us single-minded, never considering the outside world apart from that, you need to widen your mindset for the transition. If you don’t work on your vision, transferable skills and LinkedIn among others you will have nothing in hand that would be of interest to the hiring people. Networking and setting up informational interviews is crucial to learn the first hand information about the industry. These interviews provide insight into how things work in the industry and what is needed for the mid-level and top level jobs in industry.

Yet another big challenge is to learn to market yourself, to move out of the invisibility. You have to shift things. The engineering PhD is a very specific process and path, very specific language, how you position yourself in the job market makes the difference.

The Top Industry Careers For Engineering PhDs

Our goal is to move you from thinking about where you are now in academia, where the disciplines are sliced up into very small niches and PhDs get hyper-focused on, to an industry where you could have an engineer from almost any background.

Several PhDs from all different types of engineering backgrounds emphasize these umbrella categories for engineering PhD careers: R and D information and data management, sales, and marketing positions. Engineering companies have innovation teams— a combination of information, data management, sales and marketing— that are directed towards improving the company’s overall efficiency operations. This includes both face-to-face work and technical work calculations. We are seeing a great deal of engineers that are feeding into these teams from diverse backgrounds.

There are always opportunities to move around through the companies, from data analysis to marketing to small business development. Always keep your perspective open where you could fit in as an engineer or as a PhD. You shouldn’t just be stuck in one career path, keep it open.

One of the rampant industry job titles is the business or business data analyst. This is in operations where you analyze and reform the internal data. If you want a higher level job that pays more like a data scientist or a higher level analyst job, or a senior analyst, you have to be able to translate technical data into business data. Your communication skills are extremely valuable. You get to speak engineer and normal person language too. You have to be able to pitch in front of a stakeholder, an investor or executive and explain it. So if you can differentiate yourself by training yourself on those communication skills, develop those communication skills, speak that language, and cater accordingly to your audiences. You will have the advantage.

If you’re looked at differently, you have to position yourself differently for success.

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

The post Top Engineering Careers In Industry appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Rejected 20+ Times? Make This One Change Mar 01, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the strategic changes you should make avoid being rejected

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

First, Isaiah demystifies the transition process
Next, he enlists the strategies to avoid getting rejected
Finally, Isaiah reveals the one change needed to avoid being rejected

From This Week’s Show…

Advice From Fellow PhDs

When it comes to your job search, having the right information matters the most. Cheeky transition stories provide valuable insights into the whole process. These stories have principles that apply to every PhD, no matter your background, or your situation, you have to do your part to follow those principles. You are not above the process. You are a sample size of one. There will be variations in the positions, locations, interview questions that you will face. Although it is not going to be exactly cut and paste from what the transitioned associates went through, they provide priceless comprehension of the entire process.

I am going to tell you the inside story of what a PhD transition looks like because many of you have never transitioned before. I want to demystify the process.

In the beginning of my job search, I was searching for posted ads on LinkedIn and company websites. I tried to network but was not successful. The problem was that I was not targeting any specific career, companies, or location. I was basically shooting everywhere that I thought would have some degree of match with my expertise. Needless to say this approach with inefficient job search is a long and frustrating process. Therefore, optimization and systematization of the process becomes very important. You are not above the process. I did around 20 applications, nine screening phone interviews, six long video interviews with members of different teams at the companies two onsite and got two offers.

Few months later, I got an offer from these big companies that I had been targeting since the beginning. The story of the offer I accepted started after I found a contact on LinkedIn.

Strategies To Avoid Getting Rejected In The Job Search Process

The average application for any job posted online is 525. It doesn’t mean that you are going to have to write 525 applications. If you do your resume correctly, it should go from about 20 to 40 applications, to about 9 to 12 phone screens. That will get cut in half for video interviews, and then you will go down to one to three different site visits but multiple offers.

If you do things correctly, you get a couple of different job offers. Multiple offers enable you to leverage it against each other and choose the best job. Don’t just take whatever offer you get.

It is imperative to conduct informational interviews. They give essential information at length about the transition process and the important aspects of working in the industry. More specifically, they give you insight into the organizational culture, hiring process, key personnel involved in hiring and hopefully referral to work at your dream company.

Take some time, be strategic, and focus. The more narrow you are with your career path choice, geographic location companies; the smaller will be the number of opportunities.

The One Change To Be Made To Avoid Being Rejected

What is the one thing you need to put on your resume as well as your cover letter that will make a huge difference in strengthening your job profile if you have not heard back 20 plus times. For a PhD level job, writing cover letters is indispensable as it individualizes your application. Tailoring the resume to an individual job, making it to two pages or less is obligatory.

Your resume has to be so highly targeted, that it could be submitted for that job alone. That’s how targeted it has to be. You have to use words that the company understands in the resume. The resume must also have the company’s specific proprietary way of explaining the technical and transferable skills that are needed. It needs to have a rationale, the reason why you applied to the company. Hopefully you have somebody, you can talk to an informational interview with someone who works at that company that you can mention in the first paragraph, that’s the kind of rationale you need.

You need to have confirmation bias. Even though you spent all of academic life trying to avoid confirmation bias. You need to do it for your job search. You should be biased for yourself.

Every company has its pros and cons, choose the top pros of that company and build a case for that company, because you’re going to use that rationale for both yourself and for that company in your resume and in your cover letter.

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

The post Rejected 20+ Times? Make This One Change appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

How To Get Hired Into A User Experience Researcher-Analyst Role In 30 Days Or Less (PhDs Only) Feb 22, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah and Erika as they reveal the strategies for PhDs to get hired into User Experience (UX) Researcher roles in record time

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

First, Isaiah explains what are User Experience Research roles and why they are available for PhDs
Next, Isaiah and Erika reveal why PhDs are a getting hired for user experience roles
Finally, Isaiah and Erika discus the strategies for PhDs to get hired in user experience roles

From This Week’s Show…

The User Experience Researcher Roles Available For PhDs

User experience researcher roles is one of the most exciting and buzz worthy career tracks that is available for PhDs now. Employers want to hire PhDs into these roles because of their understanding of the difference between quantitative and qualitative data and their importance. Every company has a website, apps that generate metrics that can be analyzed quantitatively to understand user experiences, while qualitative data are obtained through one-on-one interactions with the users. These data are crucial for all industries may it be biotech companies, retail, hospitality, or the service industry.

The global demand for user experience researchers is on the surge and is expected to grow exponentially. From a reference point view, the growth rate is 10X higher than most industries that are growing. PhDs are preferred in user experience roles since they know how to compile data from various sources, analyze them, and convey it as a story. As PhDs, we have had to tell a story with data for article publications or grants. The importance of analyzing the data correctly and telling a story with it forms the backbone of user experience roles.

Why PhDs Are The Ideal Hires For User Experience Researcher Roles

User Experience Researcher roles let PhDs work with a team and witness the impact of their research. They create a product and also visualize the journey of the product as it goes into the market. Product retention is an important goal in the industry.

Companies are increasingly realizing that in order to get people to keep using their product, they need to create an experience that people love. Therefore, they need to shift their focus from the product itself, to the experience that a user has while interacting with the product. Industries need people who have expertise in conducting research, interpreting the data, and communicating the research results to a general audience. Hence, a lot of the companies look for PhDs for these roles.

PhDs also have experience in troubleshooting, often they have had to get on a call or chat with customer service to troubleshoot an instrument. So, they are adept to figure out the problem, solve it, and get their research done. Troubleshooting is an integral part for several companies. Therefore, they need PhDs in this role to make the user experience better because the user experience is the product.

Strategies For PhDs To Be Hired In UX Research Roles

User Experience Research is multidisciplinary; your background as a PhD—STEM or non STEM—humanities, social sciences, life sciences, chemistry, does not matter. It is your ability to understand quantitative and qualitative research and your ability to analyze that will get you hired into this role.

It is really exciting as a PhD because you get a lot of data that impact the real world and real people. You get to come in as the respected person who is able to figure out the rationale and supplement the design and programming team. As a UX researcher, you have this specialized knowledge because you understand data and can tell a story with it.

A typical user experience project starts from collecting feedback from the stakeholders about their objectives, intentions, and aspirations with this research. While they have assumptions, they also have some research questions which PhDs can best answer. This is a collaborative process where you listen to your stakeholders to get their objectives, help them to frame the research questions, and select the most appropriate research method. PhDs compile these data into reports or present them in a slide in a way that the stakeholders can understand and appreciate.

Over 90% of PhDs that we’ve gotten hired into this role had no previous experience before their first job in that role. That doesn’t matter. You can still get hired by speaking the language of user experience, understanding the day-to-day metrics of success, product development, and having access to people working in that role for referrals. PhDs need both technical skills and the transferable skills to get hired into user experience roles. Skills as business acumen.

Your PhD experience has endowed you with the key to the kingdom, recognize your worth as a PhD.

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

The post How To Get Hired Into A User Experience Researcher-Analyst Role In 30 Days Or Less (PhDs Only) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

45 Salary Negotiation Scripts Word-For-Word For PhDs Feb 15, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the 45 salary negotiation scripts that PhDs should use.

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

First, Isaiah explains why PhDs should practice salary negotiation quite early in their job search process
Next, he reveals the strategies for salary negotiation in PhD-level positions
Finally, Isaiah discusses 45 salary negotiation scripts for PhDs

From This Week’s Show…

Why It Is Important For PhDs To Practice Salary Negotiation

PhDs in academia have been used to being paid almost nothing. However, it is an industry trend to negotiate your worth in terms of salary and incentives. There are some soft spots that PhDs can leverage for a big impact during negotiation. PhDs have to practice salary negotiation quite early in their job search process instead of waiting for a job offer to learn about it. From the moment that you upload your resume, the situation escalates too quickly to a negotiation.

When you upload your resume, you have to be prepared to answer the expected salary range. While hiring managers and recruiters negotiate seven to 10 times a day with seven to 10 different people typically, you will do a salary negotiation only seven to 10 times in your professional life.

The difference is huge, you are not going to outsmart or out negotiate them. You are never going to accumulate enough behavioral practice to meet the expectations. Therefore, you need to memorize scripts so well that you internalize them and use them naturally in conversations. In the briefcase strategy, PhDs leverage their research, their data, and their skills for higher salaries than their non-PhD colleagues.

Strategies For PhDs To Negotiate Salary

When it comes to negotiating the first thing that PhDs need to know is how to converse about salary, not being your first concern. Although you are concerned with salary, you don’t exude it to the employer. You have to focus on things beyond the salary or else you will be perceived as someone who only cares about the money but not about the job, the team or the company’s culture. Since salary is predominantly in our minds, it is too easy to slip into this. The recruiters already know you want to make it big.

The situation is much like that of a waiter where you want the tips but you don’t make it obvious. Most hiring managers and recruiters ask about the expectations from the job quite early in the hiring process. They want to know what it would take to get you on board.

45 Salary Negotiation Scripts For PhDs

I want you to think about salary negotiation, practice and role play it, do mock negotiations so that you get used to hearing things in different, conversational ways. Most PhDs are too literal; they don’t practice things behaviorally. Recruiters do not always use the prompts that PhDs often wait for before negotiating salary. They might say: what would it take to get you on board with us? Or what range are you looking for? What are your salary expectations? How much do you want to be paid? That will throw you off if you have not practiced behaviorally. Hence, when you encounter those questions, you have to turn the situation around by asking for more information.

It is very important to be able to discuss salary without getting uncomfortable about it. PhDs must be able to deflect a conversation about salary when it is too early in the job search process since you have not discussed anything that you can leverage. But you have to plan early, you can start by gaining information that is going to help you later.

Sometimes, you will be asked about salary expectations for a position that is set in a very expensive city. That is a good time to say something like, ‘I know I have to make a lot because it is San Francisco or London or New York or Sydney, I would like to make X, Y, Z amount. But of course that may not be possible. So, I’ll consider anything that is fair.’ XYZ here might be an amount that is at the level of what housing costs in that particular city.

You have to think about eight different anchors for salary negotiation in a big city. You really have to know what the cost of living is going to be. You can even ask questions throughout this process about what housing prices are in different locations of the city, but only if you have done your research.

In all of your early expected salary responses you are deflecting but staying positive. You need to do salary negotiations. That is the fastest way you will ever make money. Scripts done at the right time and the right way can make you tens of thousands of dollars.

Remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

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

The post 45 Salary Negotiation Scripts Word-For-Word For PhDs appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

15 PhD Careers Dominating 2021 Feb 08, 2021

Show notes

Join Isaiah as he reveals the 15 PhD careers dominating 2021 and beyond.

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

First, Isaiah explains why PhDs need a job search strategy
Next, he reveals how PhDs settle for non-PhD careers out of desperation
Finally, Isaiah discusses the 15 PhD careers dominating 2021

From This Week’s Show…

Why PhDs Should Have A Job Search Strategy

I want every PhD to be ready for 2021. A lot of career tracks contracted in 2020, but many expanded. Those that expanded fortunately were PhD-level positions. For the most part, I am going to go through all 15 of these career tracks. I am going to give you the description for these job titles and help you understand these descriptions from a PhD viewpoint.

You start to see PhDs at different levels of their job search. Unfortunately, most PhDs wait until they are in a very desperate situation to finally act on their job search because necessity is the mother of innovation. It is not until you move from moderate to massive pain that you finally take action. You start to see a lot of desperation there. At this point, PhDs take up any job they can find, which is a giant mistake as they have spent so much time and effort in academia.

PhDs are so educated, they possess so many different skills and now they are reduced to begging for whatever job they can take. The last moment of desperation leads them to target entry level jobs and settle with less pay.

PhDs Settle For Less In Desperation

Under the pressure of desperation and fear of being unemployed, PhDs go from begging for any job to taking any job, especially the ones that someone with a bachelor’s or master’s can do. These PhDs have been in academia and paid so little for so long, and then they get paid less in that same role as somebody who has a bachelor’s or master’s. Often, they have somebody with a bachelor’s or master’s managing them.

If you have a PhD, you have learned at the highest level, you can get into management level positions: you should be targeting top positions. You should not be in desperation mode, accepting any job offer just because you lost your post-doc or you have graduated.

A simple example would be a data analyst versus a data scientist. A lot of PhDs unfortunately, will get hired as a data analyst because they see it as easier. Then, they work side by side with somebody with a bachelor’s or master’s in that same position, often getting paid less. Why not go for the higher level position as a data scientist? Learn a few skills that you can easily learn, whether it is programming or some other technical skill, and then why not learn how to actually talk to executives, investors, how to communicate, how to translate technical data into business data, into actionable business suggestions? You can do all of this, as a PhD.

15 PhD Careers Dominating 2021

A few of these PhD career titles are buzzwords. They were just a very popular way of saying a position that is similar to a position that has been around for decades, but has now been slightly tweaked, usually because of technology or because of the current state of the economy.

The PhD career track dominating on this list is the patent analyst. This is what I love about job titles is they shift over the years, sometimes in a matter of months based on what’s happening in the economy; or just because a word becomes a popular bubble word.

Although a patent analyst is similar to a patent examiner, it is more advanced as it mandates more research, innovation, and analysis skills. PhDs are being hired into this role aggressively under the intellectual property umbrella.

What do patent analysts do? They review potential patent applicants. They work for companies that are developing products. They may even assess proposed products which are not public yet.

So, they have to ensure a patent application will not fail legally and that it can be successful on the business side as well. This requires a lot of investigative work. It needs PhDs to leverage their research analysis skills and understanding of innovation. Reviewing a patent application is no less than reviewing a grant because it has to be analyzed based on novelty, merit, marketability, usefulness, and earning potential.

We see a lot of PhDs getting into patent analyst roles.

PhDs are valued since they inherently possess all the skills necessary to succeed in these job titles.

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

The post 15 PhD Careers Dominating 2021 appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

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Why PhDs Are The Ideal Hires For User Experience Researcher Roles

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Join Isaiah as he reveals the 45 salary negotiation scripts that PhDs should use.

From This Week’s Show…

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Strategies For PhDs To Negotiate Salary

45 Salary Negotiation Scripts For PhDs

Join Isaiah as he reveals the 15 PhD careers dominating 2021 and beyond.

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Why PhDs Should Have A Job Search Strategy

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