5 Career Killing Mistakes PhDs Make (#4 Is Very Common)

Too many PhDs end up unemployed.

According data from the National Science Foundation, 80% of Life Science PhDs end up completely unemployed or in low-paying postdoc training positions, which the government does not count as employment.

60% of ALL PhDs end up unemployed or in low-paying postdoc positions.

Usually this happens after a PhD defends his or her thesis.

Oops - I spent the last 6 months of my grad school career doing nothing but experiments and writing. ...Was I supposed to be networking and getting job referrals too?

Or, it happens when a PhD is doing a postdoc and his or her lab runs out of money.

Oops - I've been working 18 hour days for my PI and have zero industry connections. ...Was I supposed to have a backup plan in case my dreams of being a professor didn't work out?

So, what do you do if you're a PhD and you find yourself facing unemployed or yet another year of a low-paying postdoc with no professorship in sight?

If you're like most PhDs - you do nothing.

Instead, you just keep waiting for academia to save you and keep working for your own destruction.

Why PhDs Get Stuck In Academia

If you have a PhD and you’re waiting for someone to come save you from academia and give you a great industry job, you’re going to be waiting a long time.

The only way to get your career back on track is to take matters into your own hands.

You must realize that the biggest obstacle between you and getting an industry job that pays you well and allows you to do meaningful work is yourself. It’s your own bad attitude and bad habits that will force you into unemployment.

Stop blaming other people for your situation and start taking responsibility for your situation.

This means identifying the mistakes you've made, or are making now, and working to correct them.

Make a decision today to quit making the following 5 career killing mistakes that keep PhDs jobless or stuck in postdoc purgatory….

Mistake #1 – Prioritizing your next paper (or your thesis) over your job search.

Publishing your next scientific paper is a means to an end, it’s not a work of art.

Why? Because...

In academia, it's no longer publish or perish. It's just perish.

A report by the Royal Society showed that only 0.45% of PhDs will ever become full time professors.

At the same time, the number of PhDs stuck in postdocs, part-time, or non-faculty positions has increased drastically over the past 30 years (see Figure below).

Too many PhDs treat the scientific paper they're hoping to publish as the next A Brief History of Time. They also act as if getting published in an academic journal will actually advance their careers.

Instead, see your publications for what they really are—a stepping stone to getting your first industry job.

Your goal should be to get your next paper (or thesis) done as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality.

The rest of your time should be spent on creating a job search strategy, networking on LinkedIn and generating job referrals.

Mistake #2 – Writing a bloated, self-indulgent resume that no one will ever read.

Most PhD students have no idea how to write a quality resume for recruiters or hiring managers.

So, they do what PhDs do best—research.

They Google “how to write a resume” online and read a few academic blogs and then start putting their skills down on paper. The problem is that most of the people writing these academic blogs are lifetime academics or journal editors who have never had an industry job and certainly don’t know how to write a proper industry resume.

As a result, these PhD students squeeze a thousand words about everything they’ve ever done in the lab onto 3-5 pages (with manually adjust margins) and start uploading these ridiculous documents to job sites.

Not surprisingly, no employer ever responds.

The truth is employers don’t care about your daily duties in the lab, your publications, or the name of the protein you’re characterizing. All they care about is the results you’ve achieved.

On top of this, eye tracking studies show that most industry resumes are read in 5-7 seconds. In other words, they're not read at all, they’re merely skimmed.

What does this mean?

It means that your resume needs to be two pages or less and that every bullet point on your resume must end in a quantified result.

Mistake #3 – Believing your cherished publications will mean something in the real world.

Your publications don’t matter in industry.

I know, it hurts. But it’s the truth.

Company hiring managers don't want to see a works cited section on your resume. They simply don't care about scientific publications when it comes to hiring talent.

Sure, there are outliers. There is always a very vocal minority who will swear until they’re blue in the face that everyone in industry cares about your publications, but again, this simply isn't true.

Think about it...

Do you really think your first author Journal of XYZ paper is going to get you an industry job?

How?

What do you think is going to happen?

Do you imagine the hiring manager (who doesn't have a PhD) sitting across from you at the table, looking at your resume, and saying, “Wow, I didn’t realize you were published in this journal! You’re hired! Thank you so much for listing the journal volume and issue number for me too. I really appreciate it”

Keep dreaming.

Ask yourself, who is the first person at a company to read your resume?

Is it likely another PhD?

No, the first person to read your resume will likely be a hiring manager or recruiter, who will very likely NOT have a PhD and will therefore be mildly annoyed (at best) when reading a jargon-stuffed resume that lists the volume and issue number of every article you've written (ask yourself, do they really need or want this information?).

If you want to get hired in industry, stop obsessing over getting that last publication out and start focusing on networking with the right people. 

Mistake #4 – Being too self-entitled to create and execute a real networking strategy.

“I have a PhD. I shouldn’t have to network to get an industry job.”

"Networking makes me uncomfortable so I shouldn't have to do it to get hired"

Unfortunately, this is the attitude of most PhD students.

Too many PhDs have been told for far too long how important and noble it is to work in an academic lab. The truth is academic lab work is nearly worthless in the real world.

Don’t believe me?

Then why does a 6th year postdoc gets paid $10,000 less than the average librarian.

The answer is simple:

Supply and demand.

There are far too many academic PhDs for the amount of academic lab work that needs to be done.

This means that you need to stop feeling special and stop waiting for someone else to help you with your career. Instead, you need get to work. You need to create a real networking strategy that will get you the industry job of your choice.

Start using sites like Meetup.com and Eventbrite.com to find both PhD and non-PhD networking events in your area. Aim to go to 2-3 live networking events a week and log these events in your calendar ahead of time.

Second, email or call the host of each networking event beforehand so you have at least one new connection before you arrive.

Third, set one goal to walk out of each event with the contact details of 3 new connections and set a second goal follow-up with each of these connections within 24 hours of the event.

One of the biggest mistakes PhD students can make, especially during their last year of graduate school, is working overtime in the lab.

It’s easy to feel like working extra hard during this time will help you graduate faster.

It’s easy to feel like working overtime will please your academic advisor so he or she will support you during your defense and give you a glowing letter of recommendation afterwards.

It’s also easy to stick to the same old routine of chasing publications and playing lab politics.

The problem is that every minute you spend in the lab is one less minute you have to spend on lining up an industry job.

You’ve been trained to care about nothing but doing experiments. Your advisor has conditioned you to feel guilty for any time you spend not doing experiments. Now, you feel like a bad person whenever you’re not in the lab working.

Stop feeling this way. Stop feeling obligated to advance your academic advisor’s career and not your own. Instead, start going to as many internal and external seminars, conferences, job fairs, and daytime networking events as you can find.

If you’re advisor gives you a hard time for it, create a schedule of the career related events you want to attend and hold a meeting with your advisor and your department to explain why going to these events is important for your career. Realize that your advisor cannot stop you from networking and going to career-related events.

Mistake #5 – Being afraid of looking stupid to hiring managers and recruiters.

PhDs are more capable of dealing with failure than any other professional in the world. Getting a PhD requires you to not only master a field but to push a field forward.

You have to discover brand new information, not just regurgitate it. The price of this is constant failure. As a result, PhDs become very skilled at responding to negative feedback and working hard under high amounts of pressure.

PhDs have to meet hard deadlines, manage multiple projects at once, and present their findings in front of other intelligent doctors who are trained to find holes in their logic.

Yet, despite these strengths, most PhDs are afraid to challenge themselves outside of their specific domain of knowledge. 

In other words, they’re afraid of looking stupid to anyone outside of academia.

As a result, most PhDs have never picked up the phone to cold call a recruiter or hiring manager to inquire about an industry position.

If you have a PhD, you can handle the pressure of having your data and logic ridiculed by reviewers, professors, and your peers. As such, you can certainly handle the pressure of getting on the phone and introducing yourself to a stranger.

If you refuse to cold call someone to ask about open job position, you deserve to stay stuck in academia. You deserve it because you’re refusing to do the most logical action that will help your career move forward. Instead, you're letting emotions like fear and anxiety dictate your actions.

If you try and fail—that’s okay.

But…

To not try at all is unacceptable.

The next time you see an industry position that might be a good fit for you, get on Google or LinkedIn and find out who the hiring manager or recruiter is for that position. Then, pick up the phone and make the call.

Are you a PhD?

If so, where are you stuck in your job search?

Tell me in a comment below.

To learn more about transitioning into industry, including how to gain instant access to industry career training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, a complete industry transition plan, and a private online job referral network for PhDs only, get on the wait list for the Cheeky Scientist Association.