#altac
June 14, 2019 4:06 PM Subscribe
I'm a postdoc. I was just invited to apply for a managerial position in a small nonprofit working in an international biotech/resource equity space, interfacing with lots of corporate folks. Have you made the switch from academia to a non-profit or corporate workspace? Please tell me about it!
How did you describe your academic experience in your application? How did you find the transition? How was the adjustment? I'm nervous about what leaving academia would mean - to my advisor (with whom I'm still quite close), to my mental self-image, etc. And I'm nervous about making the transition, regretting it, and then never being able to return to academia.
Bonus! Are you someone outside of academia who has hired academics? What do you look for in candidates who are successful at making that transition?
How did you describe your academic experience in your application? How did you find the transition? How was the adjustment? I'm nervous about what leaving academia would mean - to my advisor (with whom I'm still quite close), to my mental self-image, etc. And I'm nervous about making the transition, regretting it, and then never being able to return to academia.
Bonus! Are you someone outside of academia who has hired academics? What do you look for in candidates who are successful at making that transition?
I did this. I started at a small company, but we were acquired, then acquired again, and now I am at a very large company. That series of transitions helped with culture shock in some ways.
There are many valuable things from your training up to this point over and above your specific research that you have that you can bring to the new job, and that you could consider emphasizing in an application. And if there's opportunities to talk with your mentor/network about improving these before you go, you should do so:
• If we generalize what a dissertation is, it's an ambitious, multi-year project that you led. You led similar projects as a postdoc to result in "deliverables" (I know, I know) such as research papers or grants. So you may have direct experience in planning a project, justifying the money for a project, writing a timeline, sticking to or adjusting that timeline as needed, and delivering results.
• You also have a network of other innovative people that can be very valuable to your new role. You know who to read, whose work to follow, who to collaborate with. That's a valuable thing. Remember that in your new role, academics may not always trust you right off the bat as a fellow researcher, but you are now seen as a way to make their research more impactful (through products, collaborations, etc) or as a way for funding. If you welcome this new form of interaction, it can be pretty fruitful.
• Look up behavior based interviewing and be ready to tell specific, memorable, quick stories in the interview.
Some other things you asked about:
• Depending on if you're seen as a competitor, and depending on the confidentiality requirements of the new job, you may no longer get to speak as directly about their and your work. This is the toughest part for me. Setting up automated searches to keep up with people can help fill in gaps from the loss of informal communication (and can bring a smile or a chance to email congrats to someone). And the other good news is that the research colleagues that share your closest interests may no longer be at University X, Y, and Z but in the same building with you.
• My post-doc mentor was all for my new position, but my graduate mentor was unhappy about it. He said that he had been so sure that I would be a professor. That was hard, and to be honest I still sometimes think about it years later. But I remind myself that they, like most humans, are just relying mostly on their own experience, which has been academic. It's what they know, and it's what they naturally think is the best. But if they are looking honestly at funding etc, they should respect that you need to consider all options. Sometimes talking to a friend still in academia helps me shed any rose-tinted nostalgia I start to gather.
Other things to consider:
• Your schedule throughout the day may be cut up into smaller chunks. I needed to block out a few hours of my mornings from meetings so that I could still do research. When I get down, I remind myself that I'm doing some of the best science of my life, and even though I won't get to publish it for a very long time if ever, it may still be very impactful through science products that make people's lives better.
• You may have many more meetings, trainings, etc. That's part of the deal. In my case, I've implicitly negotiated that I'll get all that done, and done well, in return for the resources to do the research that I love. I remind myself about that.
posted by Jorus at 4:07 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
There are many valuable things from your training up to this point over and above your specific research that you have that you can bring to the new job, and that you could consider emphasizing in an application. And if there's opportunities to talk with your mentor/network about improving these before you go, you should do so:
• If we generalize what a dissertation is, it's an ambitious, multi-year project that you led. You led similar projects as a postdoc to result in "deliverables" (I know, I know) such as research papers or grants. So you may have direct experience in planning a project, justifying the money for a project, writing a timeline, sticking to or adjusting that timeline as needed, and delivering results.
• You also have a network of other innovative people that can be very valuable to your new role. You know who to read, whose work to follow, who to collaborate with. That's a valuable thing. Remember that in your new role, academics may not always trust you right off the bat as a fellow researcher, but you are now seen as a way to make their research more impactful (through products, collaborations, etc) or as a way for funding. If you welcome this new form of interaction, it can be pretty fruitful.
• Look up behavior based interviewing and be ready to tell specific, memorable, quick stories in the interview.
Some other things you asked about:
• Depending on if you're seen as a competitor, and depending on the confidentiality requirements of the new job, you may no longer get to speak as directly about their and your work. This is the toughest part for me. Setting up automated searches to keep up with people can help fill in gaps from the loss of informal communication (and can bring a smile or a chance to email congrats to someone). And the other good news is that the research colleagues that share your closest interests may no longer be at University X, Y, and Z but in the same building with you.
• My post-doc mentor was all for my new position, but my graduate mentor was unhappy about it. He said that he had been so sure that I would be a professor. That was hard, and to be honest I still sometimes think about it years later. But I remind myself that they, like most humans, are just relying mostly on their own experience, which has been academic. It's what they know, and it's what they naturally think is the best. But if they are looking honestly at funding etc, they should respect that you need to consider all options. Sometimes talking to a friend still in academia helps me shed any rose-tinted nostalgia I start to gather.
Other things to consider:
• Your schedule throughout the day may be cut up into smaller chunks. I needed to block out a few hours of my mornings from meetings so that I could still do research. When I get down, I remind myself that I'm doing some of the best science of my life, and even though I won't get to publish it for a very long time if ever, it may still be very impactful through science products that make people's lives better.
• You may have many more meetings, trainings, etc. That's part of the deal. In my case, I've implicitly negotiated that I'll get all that done, and done well, in return for the resources to do the research that I love. I remind myself about that.
posted by Jorus at 4:07 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm in a different field, so assume all the usual caveats, but where I work is full of people who dropped off the academic path either before completing the terminal degree (like myself) or after getting their doctorate, and all our competitors are the same. Credentials count for a lot in both the private sector and non-profits (rightly or wrongly), and it's easy to forget within academia (where everyone has a PhD and a masters or two, at a minimum) that a post-graduate education and completion of a degree is a rare and valuable commodity.
There are a lot of commonalities in the work, at least in my field. Yes, things get called "deliverables" and so on, but at the end of the day you are being paid to synthesize and produce knowledge using specific methodologies, and your product is generally a written document with citations that goes through a form of peer review. If you have given conference presentations, you are more than prepared to present to clients, agencies, or donors, also.
There are some downsides beyond the status/community aspect of leaving academia, though. Losing the research library access hurts. In some ways the academic calendar is much kinder than the regular working year, but you also don't have that existential dread of "oh shit, I should be working on my research" during every waking (and sleeping) hour, so that kind of balances. Whether it is easy or difficult to reenter academia is going to depend on your field, how much you continue to publish, your perceived status, and so on, but it is probably best to assume that it will not be easy to go back.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:41 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
There are a lot of commonalities in the work, at least in my field. Yes, things get called "deliverables" and so on, but at the end of the day you are being paid to synthesize and produce knowledge using specific methodologies, and your product is generally a written document with citations that goes through a form of peer review. If you have given conference presentations, you are more than prepared to present to clients, agencies, or donors, also.
There are some downsides beyond the status/community aspect of leaving academia, though. Losing the research library access hurts. In some ways the academic calendar is much kinder than the regular working year, but you also don't have that existential dread of "oh shit, I should be working on my research" during every waking (and sleeping) hour, so that kind of balances. Whether it is easy or difficult to reenter academia is going to depend on your field, how much you continue to publish, your perceived status, and so on, but it is probably best to assume that it will not be easy to go back.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:41 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
That’s a good point that I forgot to mention. The academic lifestyle takes advantage of your passion in both the good and bad senses of “takes advantage.” Outside of academia, there’s less of the performative “I always work and never sleep” culture. If a corporation is burning out their most innovative people, that’s not the strange glamor of intellectual pursuit - it’s bad management.
posted by Jorus at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Jorus at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2019 [2 favorites]
After my son finished his PhD, he was unhappy in academia and moved to the private sector. His wife is still faculty with a lab. They are both happy. The academia/research life requires a lot of self-motivation. If you wake up in the morning knowing you just don't give a damn about olfaction in nematodes anymore, you're not going to be happy.
My experience is that most of the private sector operates at a Master's degree level, or lower. The highly educated, like yourself, are valued more for their breadth of knowledge than for depth. It could definitely give you the feeling that you came up to a barrier and then the barrier fell away and your preparation was unnecessary.
Also, I worked for a company in a fairly technical area that would not hire PhDs because their bread and butter was producing written material for a much less technical people. It was hard to get the PhDs to simplify and generalize, and to write something on, say, the reading level of the NY Times (10th grade?).
posted by SemiSalt at 10:09 AM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
My experience is that most of the private sector operates at a Master's degree level, or lower. The highly educated, like yourself, are valued more for their breadth of knowledge than for depth. It could definitely give you the feeling that you came up to a barrier and then the barrier fell away and your preparation was unnecessary.
Also, I worked for a company in a fairly technical area that would not hire PhDs because their bread and butter was producing written material for a much less technical people. It was hard to get the PhDs to simplify and generalize, and to write something on, say, the reading level of the NY Times (10th grade?).
posted by SemiSalt at 10:09 AM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
And I'm nervous about making the transition, regretting it, and then never being able to return to academia.
Anecdota are not data, but I'm a FT lecturer and working on my phd, and my university is chock full of folks who have drifted in and out of academia depending on where life lead them. One of my coworkers did their masters with us, worked for the Census for a decade or so, did their doc somewhere else, and now they're back teaching with us and just got tenure. The head of my graduate department did foreign service before settling into academia. Places you want to be will appreciate your diversity of experience.
(Now, what the academic job market is going to look like in a few years... well, that's a conversation for another ask.)
posted by joycehealy at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
Anecdota are not data, but I'm a FT lecturer and working on my phd, and my university is chock full of folks who have drifted in and out of academia depending on where life lead them. One of my coworkers did their masters with us, worked for the Census for a decade or so, did their doc somewhere else, and now they're back teaching with us and just got tenure. The head of my graduate department did foreign service before settling into academia. Places you want to be will appreciate your diversity of experience.
(Now, what the academic job market is going to look like in a few years... well, that's a conversation for another ask.)
posted by joycehealy at 10:24 AM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
post this question to
http://reddit.com/r/askacademia/
https://twitter.com/chemjobber
you may be surprised by the answers....
posted by lalochezia at 6:56 PM on June 15, 2019
http://reddit.com/r/askacademia/
https://twitter.com/chemjobber
you may be surprised by the answers....
posted by lalochezia at 6:56 PM on June 15, 2019
How was the adjustment?.
I discovered this thing called the 'weekend'. It is amazing. I think you'll enjoy it too.
There are a lot of other perks that I appreciate, including job stability, annual performance reviews and associated raises, this thing called "HR", real live parental leave, sick days, labor laws and worker rights, and sleep. The job is also interesting too and people really respect and desire PhD's because they are less common. Also after being in academia, all other work (even when it is hard, frustrating and/or time-consuming) is like a freaking cakewalk.
posted by Toddles at 10:34 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
I discovered this thing called the 'weekend'. It is amazing. I think you'll enjoy it too.
There are a lot of other perks that I appreciate, including job stability, annual performance reviews and associated raises, this thing called "HR", real live parental leave, sick days, labor laws and worker rights, and sleep. The job is also interesting too and people really respect and desire PhD's because they are less common. Also after being in academia, all other work (even when it is hard, frustrating and/or time-consuming) is like a freaking cakewalk.
posted by Toddles at 10:34 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by porpoise at 11:29 PM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]