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.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-career-killing-mistakes-phds-make-4-very-common-hankel-ph-d-

After a long and gruelling recruitment process, reading through your employment contract might not be the most exciting prospect.

If you’re just starting out in the world of work, you may think it’s entirely unnecessary. If you’ve never had much need to refer to a contract so far in your career, you may think it’s just a waste of time.

But reading the fine print of your employment contract is a must. (Even if you think you’ve already reached an agreement with your employer on the key points.)

Understanding the legal jargon contracts are written in will help bring clarity to your rights and responsibilities – and any perks that come with the job.

Best case scenario, your contract never need be consulted again. But chances are at some point you will rely on it as the principle formal legal agreement between you and your employer.

Here are the 10 most important things you need to check before putting pen to paper.

1) Job title

This may not seem like something crucial, especially when first starting out, but it can prove to be.

Take care to ensure your job title best reflects the work you’ll be doing. This is important for representing yourself to external parties, your fellow colleagues, and to future employers too (it might be on your CV for the rest of your career).

Being given the wrong job title can have further reaching consequences than might be suspected. Negotiate this point if necessary, and be sure to know why you’re being given the title you’re offered.

2) Job description

Not all contracts contain a summary of the job description.

If your contract does feature one, ensure it is not too limited nor too expansive. An inaccurate job description might end up taking you down a path not agreed upon at interview.

If your contract doesn’t include a job description, make sure you are in no doubt as to the expectations around your role before signing.

3) Remuneration (salary and bonuses)

The first thing to do when checking this section is to make sure that the salary stated is the one you negotiated. You should also know how and when you will be paid.

Your contract should stipulate any additional incentives and perks such as paid bonuses, health benefits, travel expenses, and other reimbursements. It might also include the criteria where these will be given.

There are two types of bonuses – guaranteed and discretionary. A discretionary bonus is one where information about the bonus is not disclosed in advance.

4) Period of employment (start and end dates)

Both the start and end dates need to be clearly stated, unless the contract is a permanent one.

Your contract may stipulate a certain notice period you (and your employer) will have to give upon declaring that it’s time for you to leave the job (which is likely to change depending on how long you’ve been doing it).

If it doesn’t stipulate this, then it should state that local legal regulations will cover this issue. (You should always check the local employment law to ensure the details of the contract are within its scope).

5) Termination (leaving the job)

You may not be thinking about leaving yet, but that time will most likely come at some point.

Your contract should prepare for an orderly parting of ways by clearly stating the conditions around which the contract may be terminated by either party.

Read this section carefully and ask the HR department for clarification if you don’t understand the legal jargon. Before signing, make sure you know what the contract dictates regarding either you or your employer deciding to terminate your position before any given end date.

6) Working hours and place of work

Working hours should be stated, and will be in the form of a daily time period or “office hours” (say, 09:00-17:00), or a given number of hours per week you are expected to spend working.

Where your work should typically take place will also be stated.

Your contract may detail any flexible working practices – such as the right to work from home – that you are entitled to.

If your job is likely to involve overtime or work outside of normal hours, the rules governing this should be laid out, such as the overtime rate or convertible hours you can use in a “time off in lieu” system.

7) Holidays and sick leave

The points that should be clearly stated about holidays are:

• How many days of vacation you are entitled to
• When does the holiday year start
• When you are expected to take your ‘main holiday’, or the bulk of your time off
• Whether you can carry any days over to the next year (and how many)

While this is usually regulated by local employment law, your company may offer additional holiday or have some requirements regarding when your time off is used.

Sick leave may impact other areas of your agreement, such as termination, working hours and notice period. This is also subject to local law, but the process of informing your employer about your illness will often be stated in your contract too.

8) Pension

It is common for companies to offer a pension to all their employees (though this may depend on whether you are full-time and on a permanent deal).

Pension are sometimes offered as standard as part of your contract, but they may also be optional. Your contract should be clear about this, and about whether your pension contributions are taken directly from your salary (and how much this is). It should also clarify how much your employer is liable to contribute, and what aspects of the pension contribution are subject to tax.

9) Policies, restrictive clauses and rights (competition, confidentiality, and intellectual property)

Your company will most likely have detailed certain policies around behaviour, rights and proper conduct for you to consult and follow. Be sure to seek these policies out and, if necessary, read them in advance of signing.

Restrictive clauses often take effect after the termination of employment and are important for employers because they protect the business, its clients, and other employees. There are four types of these: non-competition, non-solicitation, non-dealing, and non-poaching clauses.

Knowing these terms and what they entail is important because they might restrict you when taking jobs in future:

• Non-competition clauses may limit your ability to work for a competitor of your former employer
• Non-solicitation clauses prevent you from poaching clients and suppliers of your former employer
• Non-dealing clauses prevent former employees from dealing with former customers and suppliers
• Non-poaching clauses prevent former employees from poaching former colleagues

Your contract will probably also address copyright issues, and may state who owns what you have “created” during your time there – the intellectual property. Your contract will ordinarily also put limits on what information can be shared by you with others outside the company.

Be careful to follow and take note of these rules once your contract takes effect.

10) Equipment

Depending on the nature of your role, the company should commit to putting equipment at your disposal to facilitate you in carrying out your tasks – such as a computer, phone, or other devices and tools.

This commitment should be stipulated in your contract. If it isn’t, seek assurances for what equipment you are entitled to. Your responsibilties regarding this equipment should be outlined in the agreement between you and your employer.

Source: https://graduateland.com/article/employment-contract

This article originally appeared in the 2010 Christmas double issue of The Economist.

On the evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.

In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research — a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

Rich pickings

For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing just under a third of the world’s university students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.

Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world’s students.

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009 — higher than the average for judges and magistrates.

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.

A short course in supply and demand

In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax — the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.

These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities’, and therefore countries’, research capacity. Yet that is not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.

In America the rise of PhD teachers’ unions reflects the breakdown of an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private university to recognise a PhD teachers’ union, but stopped negotiating with it three years later.

In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.

Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true; but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam.

Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia. One OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were postdocs. About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.

A very slim premium

PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree. A study in theJournal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor’s degree earn 14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to. The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%. In some subjects the premium for a PhD vanishes entirely. PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees. The premium for a PhD is actually smaller than for a master’s degree in engineering and technology, architecture and education. Only in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile. Over all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master’s degree.

Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses. Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to become “quants”, analysts and traders. Today several short courses offer the advanced maths useful for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course on differential equations is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.

Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this. Scientists can easily get stipends, and therefore drift into doing a PhD. But there are penalties, as well as benefits, to staying at university. Workers with “surplus schooling” — more education than a job requires — are likely to be less satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they are going to leave their jobs.

Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an individual.

The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD students on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records. Academics pick bright undergraduate students and groom them as potential graduate students. It isn’t in their interests to turn the smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One female student spoke of being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but after seven years of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding a rich husband.

Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic birth control is rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about PhD oversupply, said that if the top universities cut back others will step in to offer them instead.

Noble pursuits

Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more structured learning that comes with an American PhD.

The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD claims to develop just such skills in graduates.

Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.

Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.

Source: https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-349206f9addb