Pivot After PhD: Why, When, and How? Career Development Strategies for Career Change After PhD.
December 28th, 2021
Last Updated on December 28th, 2021
This text was fully written by humans.
SUMMARY / KEY TAKEAWAYS
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In recent years, leaving academia and searching for new career opportunities in industry was no longer stigmatized and has become the new norm.
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However, the question is: when is the best time to make the decision? Shall I arrange myself a career checkpoint to reconsider my career options or rather, shall I wait for good opportunities to come first?
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In this article, we briefly review five strategies for taking the decision to make a leap towards industry. Many of these strategies overlap with what career counseling for scientists changing fields typically covers, since timing and self-assessment matter as much as the destination. Good career counseling for scientists changing fields usually starts with exactly this kind of honest timing question.
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We also provide a few tips for how to go through your career switch swiftly.
Table of Contents
- Why Is Timing the Key to a Career Change After PhD?
- How Can You Optimize Your Academic Career Track for Industry Careers?
- Why Should You Start Optimizing Early?
- So, When Is The Right Time To Pivot and Leave Academia?
- Summary: When and How To Pursue Career Change After PhD?
- How Can You Go Through Your Career Switch Swiftly?
Why Is Timing the Key to a Career Change After PhD?
As we all know in academia, the numbers work against us. First of all, you need to know that if you are going for an academic career with an intention to become a tenured researcher, the odds are against you. This reality is why career options for neuroscience PhD graduates increasingly extend well beyond the professoriate into industry, consulting, and policy roles. Exploring career options for neuroscience PhD graduates early can save years of uncertainty later in the PhD track.
According to the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, a large and growing share of PhD graduates take their first job outside of academia, reflecting how limited the number of tenure-track positions truly is (ncses.nsf.gov).
As Schillebeeckx et al. (Nature Biotechnology, 2013) have shown in their seminal article, the discrepancy between the number of tenure positions and PhD graduates in STEM sciences has been systematically growing all the way since the 80s.
So, you need to get over the prestige trap and assume that chances are, you won’t be able to stay in academia long-term for reasons out of your control. Effectively, academic life is the alternative career now.
As discussed in the article “We Are the Champions. Leaving Academia After PhD Feelin’ Good,” you should be proud of your PhD. But of course, finding a new career path outside of academia is a huge endeavor that only requires time and effort, but also some soul searching. Decision-making is energy-costly for the brain in general, and taking life-changing decisions is even a much higher burden.
According to the American Medical Association, sustained decision-making depletes mental resources over time, a phenomenon known as decision fatigue that impairs judgment and increases the temptation to default to the status quo (ama-assn.org).
So, how to strategically plan your PhD and prepare for the possible career change after your PhD? Is it better to start thinking about your further career plans from day one? Or, perhaps, better to live the “no plan B” philosophy, as famously envisioned by Arnold Schwarzenegger as described in his best-selling memoir “The Total Recall” (2011).
Well, today, the decision to go for a career change after PhD is not a plan B anymore. The statistics are becoming increasingly dreadful: in most fields, the capacity to accommodate new PhD graduates in academia is rapidly dropping.
Consequently, in this situation, switching careers after completing a PhD program is slowly becoming plan A. Overall, developing industry careers after a PhD is no longer stigmatized. More often than not, it is becoming a sign of professional success.
Governments also spotted the problem related to career development. Today, most universities were funded to develop their own training and career development centers where researchers can get helped with their career choices and dilemmas in professional life while still working at the university.
Are you planning to upgrade your career to the next level or change your career path? Are you pondering your options? Don’t be alone in the process – join us at our live online Ontology of Value® Career Lab!
At this intensive online training, you will focus on discovering your identity as a professional, and learn effective career development strategies for landing great jobs.
We will help you choose the right career path, assist you in landing your new job, and teach you self-navigation strategies that will guarantee your success in professional development, and serve you for a lifetime!
Please find all the information about our incoming, game-changing program here:
How Can You Optimize Your Academic Career Track for Industry Careers?
The job market for PhDs is shaping in a demanding way today. Given this, it is best to consider an industry career path early on and keep as many doors open as possible. You can play your academic career strategically so that you optimize your options in the industry in case you ever decide to switch a career development path.
It is all about skills not diplomas. You need to first carefully look into your academic curriculum and try to identify your current core competencies. Many PhD career change success stories begin with exactly this kind of honest skills inventory, long before any formal job search starts. Reading through PhD career change success stories can help you recognize transferable strengths you might otherwise overlook. What are your personal strengths? What do you enjoy doing at work the most?
Core competencies do not necessarily relate to the activities on which you spend most of your working time but rather, to the activities that allow for achieving flow states.
Then, you need to think of industries, professions, and positions where these particular skills are desired. Are you still unsure in which direction to go next? Discuss with your colleagues, and your friends in the industry, schedule informational interviews, and educate yourself about the job market for PhD graduates.
Please find an extensive list of materials, including books, blogs, courses, YouTube channels, and podcasts for PhDs at the pivotal point of their careers here.
Why Should You Start Optimizing Early?
Try this exercise at the beginning of your PhD track, for example after your first year of study. This way, you will still have plenty of time to develop your skills and adapt them to industry standards before your contract comes close to expiration.
Many wonderful online programs are dedicated to PhDs who wish to gain their first industry experience and build skills necessary in industry careers.
For example, Code-Switch Consultants lead a program in which you can embark on a 6-month group project developed by a private company and build your project management skills. The necessary commitment, in essence, a few hours per week, allows you to marry this program with your daily research.
The bottom line is: do not wait for the last moment with building your transferrable skills. This advice applies especially to PhD career transition for STEM fields, where technical depth alone rarely translates automatically into industry readiness. Planning a PhD career transition for STEM fields early gives you time to build the softer, business-facing skills that academia rarely teaches. Career development management is not just a sequence of decisions taken at pivotal points in your life. It is all that happens meanwhile: small, everyday, gradual effort. It is like a gym. If you exercise every week, after a few years you will have a great body.
Similarly, if you spend one afternoon a week for four years developing transferrable skills, you will become a highly competitive candidate in multiple industries. You will just look good to the employers.
So, When Is The Right Time To Pivot and Leave Academia?
On The Art of Pivoting.
The issue of “If and when to pivot” is actually a well-known problem in business, described in the seminal book “The Dip” by Seth Godin. The concept is simple: in every business and career, you will experience the dip. This is a period of hardship that you either decide to grind through or quit. Navigating this moment well is really the essence of academia to industry transition strategy, since how you handle the dip often determines the outcome. A clear academia to industry transition strategy treats this hardship as a normal, expected phase rather than a sign that something has gone wrong.
And now the central question comes: when is the right time to pivot from academic career? There are a few possible approaches to looking for reasons to leave academia.
1. As Soon As You Start Wondering and Asking Yourself, “Shall I Leave Academia?”
A popular opinion is that, once you start wondering whether the academic career is the career path for you, it is probably a sign that the idea of pivoting is already hatching in the back of your mind, and sooner or later you will pivot to another professional career track. So, better sooner than later.
This is not necessarily always true as many successful faculty members went through periods of doubt in their careers, or even went outside of academia and back.
However, statistically, most people who start mind-wandering will eventually pivot outside of academia and start the career development process.
2. During a Career Checkpoint Chosen By Yourself.
A good, functional strategy, is to set your own checkpoint. For example, after your second or third year of a PhD, you can take a long walk in the park and take time to think about your current situation and your professional future:
✓ Did academia meet your expectations as a workplace?
✓ Do you enjoy academic work, day to day?
✓ Which aspects of your daily job do you enjoy or dislike the most?
✓ What is the progress with your PhD project?
✓ And realistically, what are your chances of getting the faculty position in the long term?
✓ What are the stats and the odds of finding a faculty position in your research field?
Most PhD candidates are still overly optimistic about halfway through their PhD programs as they feel that their first publications are right behind the corner.
But sometimes, for your career management, it is better to be brutally honest with yourself. If the answer is, “At best, I have a 20% chance to become a faculty member in the future,” it is a good reason to pivot.
3. As Soon As You Encounter a Good Career Development Opportunity.
As a rule of thumb, you should keep your LinkedIn profile updated at all times, regardless of whether in academia or beyond. There are multiple good guidebooks to drafting your LinkedIn profile as a PhD, for example, this Roostervane article.
Once you use this free personal ad platform, career development opportunities may come at anytime. Who knows, perhaps a Google scout will call you one day when you are just peacefully drafting your next manuscript in your office? Or, the ministry of education calls you with an invitation to a very important think tank?
Certain career opportunities are worth a “Yes!” simply because they represent a once-in-a-lifetime chance. This holds true even if you were not planning to go this way in the job market.
4. As Soon As Your Career Development Opportunities in Academia Dry Out.
This is probably the worst scenario that you should avoid in your professional career development, on behalf of the former three options.
Anyways, many academic researchers experience hardship with finding new contracts. And, they spend way too much time trying instead of accepting the fact that the chances are slim and pivoting to another career.
If you do not have any personal invitations to apply for a Postdoc after your PhD or a personal grant that would allow you to propose your own project, the chances are slim by definition.
Let’s be real here: at senior levels, academic jobs are usually given away via contacts and personal recommendations and not just in a fair, open recruitment process.
Therefore, if you keep on applying and with no success, it might mean that your personal network is too weak to ever get another contract. And the longer the gap in your academic CV, the worse it becomes. So, this is a perfect situation to take the final decision about career change after a PhD.
5. As Soon As You Reach The Wall.
In your career, you write your own career story, chapter by chapter. If you start feeling like Bilbo Baggins, namely “thin, sort of stretched. This is because butter scraped over too much bread,” perhaps it is just time to go and start writing your next chapter. You can learn more about the concept of building a career story from Keri Twigg’s book “Career Stories.”
The question of when and how to pivot after a PhD is the central subject of Natalia’s own book, What Is Out There for Me? The Landscape of Post-PhD Career Tracks.
Summary: When and How To Pursue Career Change After PhD?
With a career change after PhD, it is a bit like changing partners. If all the signs on Earth and in the sky are telling you that you are in a deeply suboptimal situation, and you feel unhappy or anxious about your future, it is better to admit the truth to yourself and go.
After all, you only have one life. You don’t lose the time spent in academia. You will just need some time to integrate this experience with your new knowledge in a new discipline, that’s all.
Remember that challenging your career plans is normal and even encouraged! This mindset is at the heart of any solid academic to corporate career transition guide, since rigid five-year plans rarely survive contact with a changing job market. A good academic to corporate career transition guide treats course-correction as a sign of good judgment, not indecision. Successful career navigators do not wait for others to tell them what to do, or for a few big turning points in their careers — they implement small, incremental changes and improvements every single day.
And if you will eventually decide to step out, you should know that you are not the only one. Actually, the exodus from academia has already started and many research groups around the world struggle with finding candidates for Postdoctoral positions.
Hundreds of thousands of PhDs have realized how much they can do with their lives outside of academia and this trend will probably continue.
How Can You Go Through Your Career Switch Swiftly?
1. Get Familiar With “the PhD Creed.”
One thing worth remembering is that it is not your hard skills but your work ethic, a PhD creed of sorts, that presents the most value to employers. You should be proud of what you achieved. This pride should come not from your publications but from the unique character you have built over the years.
Please find more insights on the PhD creed in our article “The PhD Creed: Why Work Ethic Is An Important For Your Professional Development As Your Knowledge.”
2. If You Feel It, Go For It!
In fact, any moment for leaving is good if you feel deep inside that this is the right decision. So, don’t have any regrets – even as a senior researcher!
As Prof. Natalia Ingebretsen-Kucirkova pointed out in her Nature Careers article, the workload has only grown heavier as she has climbed the career ladder, with increasing requests for mentoring, article and grant reviews, departmental duties, committee memberships, and voluntary contributions of time and expertise to professional societies.” That’s why as a tenured professor, she decided to quit and doesn’t regret her decision.
3. Remember That The Future Is Bright!
Lastly, the job market reflects the value of PhDs: as a rule of thumb, PhD degree holders are highly desired and well-paid across the board:
Lastly, remember that today, leaving academia for industry has become a plan A rather than plan B. It is not stigmatized anymore and if you join the brave who are looking for their new way on life, you won’t be left alone.
Are you planning to upgrade your career to the next level or change your career path? Are you pondering your options? Don’t be alone in the process – join us at our live online Ontology of Value® Career Lab crafted specifically for PhD candidates and graduates!
At this intensive online training, you will focus on discovering your identity as a professional. And, learn effective career development strategies for landing great jobs.
We will help you choose the right career path, assist you in landing your new job. And, teach you self-navigation strategies that will guarantee your success in professional development, and serve you for a lifetime!
Please find all the information about our incoming, game-changing program here:
Please cite as:
Ontology of Value (December 28th, 2021). Pivot After PhD: Why, When, and How? Career Development Strategies for Career Change After PhD. Retrieved from: https://ontologyofvalue.com/pivot-after-phd-why-when-and-how-career-development-strategies-for-career-change-after-phd/
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