ISO headhunter for mid-career social scientist leaving academia. Canada

April 25, 2019 8:55 AM

I'm a mid-career academic in the social sciences. I have a high-pedigree PhD. I am leaving academia and I have no idea how to get another kind of job or what I can do. I think my situation is specialized enough that what I really need is a headhunter. Do you know one or how I can find one?

I know there are lots of resources for PhDs getting jobs outside academia, but these seem mostly for fresh PhDs. I find ads for more senior researchers, but they often also require management experience, which I don't have. I have skills and experience and credentials. Someone must want me. I don't know who or how to find them.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Start by reaching out to colleagues, asking them if they have industry contacts, or know people who have made the transition.

Also do some research on conferences in your area of study; see if there are businesses that have supported them or have sent representatives.

Look at major papers in your field; see who those researchers are connected to. See who supports their work. Do a lot of googling.

You may need a headhunter, but more generally you need to build a network. In academia to some degree your networking is somewhat automatic, but in industry you have to constantly curry contacts even when you're employed because you never know what's going to happen.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:40 AM on April 25, 2019

I don't know much about headhunters who could help you, but I 'd expect your academic experience is a sufficient substitute for management requirements of many jobs. Framing your experience thoughtfully (did you advise students, lead research projects, serve on university committees? That's leadership/management experience right there) will go a long way.

Also, don't be afraid to apply for interesting jobs like that when you don't meet all the requirements. Don't underestimate your value as a candidate with a prestige degree and experience as an academic.

I've seen assistant professors with no work experience outside of academia jump into management - level jobs immediately after leaving the academy
posted by shaademaan at 9:53 AM on April 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

In addition to talking to your colleagues I would urge you to use all the gov't resources you can. That's what they are there for. It might help to have someone non-academic work with you on rewriting your CV, since there's such a difference between how academia does it and the rest of the world.

My mom, in Manitoba, used to work for the provincial employment counseling/retraining agency. I think it varies a lot province to province, but there should be gov't resources for things like reconsidering your options and reframing your skills. She funded things like language acquisition, helicopter pilot lessons, and various kinds of certification.

She worked with people who were on social assistance, people who were recent immigrants, but also people mid-career who wanted to make changes in their working lives.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 10:02 AM on April 25, 2019

What shaademaan said. If you find any list of the responsibilities of a manager, I'll bet you've done a lot of it in your current position.
posted by grouse at 1:40 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

I don’t know about headhunters, but just some ideas - I’ve seen people with doctorates in the social sciences working as “ethnographers” (market researchers), consultants, non-profit managers... You could find work in government as well (although this kind of depends on which province you’re in, I doubt the OPS is on a hiring frenzy atm, but you never know).
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:55 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

My experience with recruiters is that they are really only very useful when you are senior enough to be more than cannon fodder. I tried to use one mid-career, and it wasn't a great experience. Remember that they work for the employers and not for you.

Depending on your field, there may be niche headhunters who will be very relevant, at least when you're trying to find out your market value. I have found recruiters by asking people I trust who are in a position I would want if they have worked with a recruiter and if so who, and then I ask them to arrange an introduction-- even as a senior executive, I have had very little luck with cold calling.
posted by frumiousb at 5:05 PM on April 25, 2019

I've not had very good experiences with headhunters; either ineffective or the offers are absolutely terrible (suggesting that the headhunters are taking a big cut - not from your monthly salary, but the difference between your offered first annual and what the company is actually willing to pay - and the lower your starting, the less hard % raises actually raise).

Canadian, (lib arts) BA (fancy US school), MSc, PhD in STEM (major Canadian school), having looked for biotech and non-science/ corporate jobs without having held a TT position, with and without headhunters. I've had (no fee) headhunters help me find positions, and have had positions offered to me by headhunters.

Personal networking (read: luck, really) got me my current 1/4 co-founder job that started out STEM+regulatory compliance, and now 90%+ regulatory compliance.


You sound like faculty ("high-pedigree PhD")? Industry can go in very polar directions - either undue respect for your "high-pedigree PhD" (and have undue/ clueless/ impossible expectations) or utter dismissal or complete misunderstanding. Headhunters might be able to filter out the worst of the second, but there are going to be a ton of the first who want to merely exploit your credibility.

Don't sell yourself cheaply.

Without knowing which field/ subfield/ special interest you are in the social sciences, it's very difficult to talk more specifically.

An obvious general target for your skills would be grant-writing jobs for non-profits and the like. Unless you're working for big corps grifting gov money, or scavengers offering grant writing services to non-profits, the pay might even be worse than what you're drawing now (if tt track), or merely double (adjunct).

The later is super duper sketchy, but the company you work for gets an unduly big cut - if you can get a good cut of that cut, the pay can be not bad.
posted by porpoise at 6:17 PM on April 25, 2019