Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with academia and business

Sales as a bridge to other careers?

MouseOfHouseofAnony — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:27:57 -0800

Is a job in sales a good way to jump from academia to the corporate world? Background:

I'm someone who has spent their adult life doing experimental research in the social sciences. Since finishing my PhD, I have decided to move away from academia and into the corporate world. I don't know exactly which direction I want to go in, but I am hoping to get into something like market research or human factors research. I have also been thinking a bit about management consulting -- though the lifestyle seems stressful, it seems like a great way to be exposed to a lot of different fields and make a lot of contacts. The variety inherent in consulting is also appealing.

I was recently approached by a management consulting firm about a 1-year contract position in business development. I have never worked [non-retail] sales and have usually shied away from those positions (I'm not generally a pushy or aggressive person), but the thought of doing it doesn't fill me with dread or anything. I would probably learn a lot in that job, and the company assures me that I would have the opportunity to try move into actual consulting once the contract was up.

I'm a little hesitant though, that this takes me too far away from what I currently think I want to do*. On the other hand, I haven't had much non-academic experience (some part time jobs in retail and admin only), and I worry that the lack of "real business" experience might be hurting my odds of getting into my preferred industries. This might be a valuable first-step into showing employers that I have real-world skills outside of pure research.

Perhaps more crucially, I haven't had any luck with the market research/human factors positions I've applied to, and I need to find a job pretty quickly at this point.

My questions:

1) Is sales / business development a plausible path to get to where I want to go?

2) If you were an employer in market / human factors research, would seeing a sales position on my resume help/hurt/have no impact on my prospects of getting a job with you?

Thank you!

* And that I might hate it/be horrible at it, but I at least have a little more control over that.

Academic and business styled conversations

pmononoke1 — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:50:54 -0800

Looking to balance differences between academics and business world communication styles? For the past few years, I've been deeply into books and developing critical thinking skills. I do really great talking to academics and we can talk about fascinating stuff and discuss fascinating things with a good degree of deep thought and articulation.
When we do converse, it's normal to look away to gather your thoughts to process things in your head and then renew eye contact.

However, I am now heading towards business instead of academia and it's awkward not engaging in eye contact constantly when talking to a person, at least that's what it seems like.

How do I maintain eye contact and manage to have a good conversation?

Also, I tend to evaluate things quite a bit maybe due to the fact that I like to think deeper than everyday conversationalists?
I also tend to engage in deeper conversations with folks right off the bat often which tends to warm some up, while leaving a different taste in other peoples' memories. Any advice?

MBA to academia?

howiamdifferent — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:17:22 -0800

Is completing my MBA a logical step towards a career in academia? I am currently pursuing an MBA degree while working full time. I am loving the theoretical part of business and I'm considering pursuing a PhD degree in a business-related field to become a professor.

Is completing the MBA program a logical step towards my goal? Or should I quit and pursue a traditional MSc/PhD program in business?

Please note that my undergraduate degree is in computer engineering.

Getting out of academia

googly — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:31:31 -0800

I want to quit academia and embark on a lucrative new career in the private sector. How do I do it, and is it worth it to get an MBA? Here are the particulars.

Who I am:
- Late 30s guy.
- Ivy-league humanities PhD.
- Currently employed in a humanities/social science academic position at a university that is usually ranked in the top 30 internationally.
- Reasonably successful in my profession, though not a star. I have a good pedigree and have held a couple of relatively prestigious fellowships, but overall my CV is somewhere around average.
- My strengths: I'm very smart, and have a synthetic mind, good at seeing emerging patterns, and grasping and communicating complex concepts. I love public speaking and interacting with people.
- My weaknesses: I can be very detail-oriented if need be, but am not meticulous by nature. I have no specific marketable skills outside of academia, and no experience working 'real jobs' since retail in my mid-twenties.

What I want:
- A faster-paced, more challenging, riskier, and more creative work environment. Everything is so damn slooooooooow in academia; I feel like I am dying a long, boring, and painful death.
- I want to interact with people more. I can do just fine on my own (I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have if I couldn't do self-directed research), but the solitude and social isolation of academia is getting to me.
- I want to make more money. A lot more. I'm tired of seeing people who have my brains and education level, or less, make 10x what I do. I want a bigger slice of the pie.

What I am (and am not) willing to do:
- I have the extraordinary luxury of working a job that affords me a lot of free time. I can spend the next 3 years doing whatever it takes to make a significant career change. I could, for example, get an MBA on the side, or put in self-directed study to bring myself up to speed in some area.
- I understand that I will likely be somewhat entry-level whatever I do, and realize that I might well be working with a lot of people 15-20 years younger than me. But I don't think I can put in 100-hour work weeks and compete with 22 year-olds in terms of energy and time.
- That said, I am absolutely willing to work hard and put in long hours for a number of years.
- I am relatively flexible geographically, and would be willing to move to work in the US, Canada, or the EU (and I have EU citizenship). I would strongly prefer to live and work in a major metropolitan area.

The questions:

(1) What should I do? I am interested in finance and economics, do investing on my own, and read on these topics in my spare time. Something in banking, investing, or finance fits my criteria - such as a place like D.E. Shaw. Is it at all possible for someone like me to get in the door at a place like this without connections or a strong quantitative background? If I am effectively shut out of these kinds of jobs, are there other lines of work that fit my criteria? At this point, I alternate between feeling optimistic that I could do anything in the world, and being despondent that I am too old and unskilled to qualify for anything at all.

(2) Is it worth it to get an MBA? Like I said above, I have the opportunity to get one, for cheap. I think that it would help me in the relevant skills department, and would also signal my seriousness about a career change. But is it really worth anything, especially for someone in their late 30s/early 40s?

(3) Besides reading "What Color is Your Parachute," are there any resources that could help me making this decision? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Do alternatives to the HBR exist, if so what are they?

geoff. — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:55:32 -0800

Has anyone had success doing an academic lit review of business topics, particularly marketing? I am asking if such things lend themselves to learning and staying competitive along the lines of a bioresearcher subscribing to Journal of Biology. Are top executives and consultants going through graduate-level text? I find the Harvard Business Review somewhat of a joke. It'll have good case studies and an interesting article from time to time, but it lacks substance. It is like the Redbook for CEOs.

I'm looking to see whether more serious periodicals exist and whether anyone has found success combing through things such as Journal of Business or Journal of Marketing? That is if someone is hypothetically involved in a marketing project and they have not had any real marketing experience since school could they peruse through major articles published in the last 50 years, get a good foundation and work their way through case studies and more recent articles to run a more effective marketing campaign?

To give a contrast to better explain what I am trying to ask: quantitative finance lends itself very well to journal articles and academia. I would almost argue that one could not be good at quant fin if they did not keep up on the latest theory and developments. This probably applies to a lot of high finance. I was wondering if this were the case in other areas of business and what publications, if any, are worthwhile.

NB I am well aware of the Black-Scholes debate and the backlash against academia by some traders and professors. That's a separate topic, I am wondering if people like management consultants are even aware of what is coming out of graduate or research programs.