We lucky Canadians have a national holiday on Monday, so my husband and I decided to make it an extra long weekend by taking Friday off, too. That means that, when you read this, I should be sitting in the sun in an undisclosed location, enjoying a gin and tonic. Actually, given that I usually set my posts to publish in the early morning, I’ll probably be stepping on Cheerios while chasing after my kid when this hits your inbox. Regardless, I just want to wish all the Canucks a happy long weekend, and to let everyone know I’ll be back to my bloggy goodness–not to mention my email accounts–on Tuesday.
I’ve spent the last two months working with clients who are on the post-academic job hunt, and I’ve learned a few things along the way about what people find the most troubling and confusing about the process. In the best tradition of Glamour magazine, I’m going to present a do and don’t list summarizing some real golden nuggest of wisdom.
DO contact someone inside the organization if you’ve got questions. Sometimes that might be the hiring manager, sometimes in might be HR. One of my intrepid clients found someone inside the organization who would be her peer, someone who had the same job title that she was applying for. She asked a few questions about the job, and got back a really fantastic, informative, helpful reply. Not only did she glean some clues for how she should position herself in her application, not only did she demonstrate initiative to her potential employer, she got her name front and centre with someone who, it so happens, is on the hiring committee.
DON’T underestimate your past experience. I’ve had clients casually mention accomplishments in passing that hadn’t appeared on their CVs because they felt like ancient history (i.e. before the MA) and weren’t relevant to their academic work. Sometimes that stuff ends up quite fruitfully on the résumé. Any kind of volunteering, internship or leadership roles you’ve had can be useful woven into a résumé or cover letter, providing proof of the strength of your skills.
DO demonstrate enthusiasm. Employers want to bring people on board who will have energy. They want people who can get excited about the work they do and that the company/foundation/organization does. Excitement does not equal a lack of professionalism. Excitement equals commitment, drive and teamwork. Can you answer the question, “Why do you want this job?” with enthusiasm? If so, your future employer is gonna like that a lot.
DON’T be afraid to mine language and information for all different parts of your life. Clients have sent me grant applications, various cover letters, CVs, old résumés, some publications, lists of likes and dislikes–things that we wouldn’t use directly in their applications, but that give me a sense of their skills and that they can use as proof of their skills.
DO be yourself. Let your freak flag fly. If you act like someone you’re not, you’re going to be in a real pickle if you actually land the job. But more to the point, what you might perceive as a weakness or liability can actually be an asset. For some of you, you might feel like your Ph.D. is a liability. I had one client who had a hidden disability, one that she could hide very, very well. But instead of doing that, she was open about this disability, thereby demonstrating how her knowledge of and experience with disability issues actually makes her a strong candidate for the job.
DON’T confuse a CV with a résumé. They are two totally different docs. A CV is a list of all your accomplishments in one part of your life. It is read by people who have those same accomplishments, too. A résumé is an argument. It is a carefully crafted argument for why you are the best person for that job, with proof indicating why you are exactly what the employer needs. The company needs someone with good communication skills? You’ve got good communication skills! And you can prove it, too!
What have you learned along the way about the job application process?
Tagged as:
applying,
jobs
I’ve just come across a few more resources I wanted to share with everyone. This first one is something that Canadian job searchers may already know about is new to me. It’s a job search engine called Eluta (or I suppose it’s eluta, without the capitalization, but c’mon, people, isn’t that kind of ’90s?). From my brief poke around the site, it looks like a very smart way of organizing job search information; best of all, you can search for jobs offered by Canada’s top employers, the best employers for diversity, the greenest employers, etc. So it looks like a really nifty way implementing your values into the job search. Coolio, eh?
The other thing I’ve been meaning to share with you is this article at The Ladders (you may have to become a free member to access the piece) called “12 Daily Habits to Boost Your Hire-Ability.” The article, by Scott Ginsberg, has such sensible, practical advice that really applies to post-academic job searchers. Among his suggestions? “Be radically honest” (i.e. make sure everyone in your life, from your hair dresser to your dissertation supervisor, knows that you’re job hunting. Okay, maybe not your supervisor. But you know what I mean), start a blog, get up an hour earlier, etc.
What kind of daily practice have you instituted for your post-academic job search? Anything that you think might help others?
Tagged as:
resources
This is an email I received from an academic leaver I know, someone who left ABD and now works in a non-academic position. I thought it expressed some of the sentiments of leaving in such a tender and apt way that I got permission for all of you to read it, too.
Life right now is simpler, sweeter, more satisfying… and despite the initial trauma and some of the very dramatic unforeseen consequences… leaving remains the right choice for me. Sadly, the choice is often confirmed as I interact with my peers who stayed and struggle on.
That’s not to say I don’t ever think of finishing my PhD. I do, often; but these days I do things on my terms or not at all. My terms for re-engaging the diss have partially revealed themselves to me… if it is meant to be and when the time is right the rest of my terms for completion will become clear as well.
In the meantime, opportunities abound: to do work I find politically meaningful; to experiment with ways of being political and an agent of change in mainstream work-life environments — now there’s a challenge!; and, oddly enough, to connect back to university communities in more creative ways than the mainstream university worker. Since leaving, the latter options have always danced at the periphery of my world. I can pick and choose from these now; although, mostly, I continue to stay at arm’s length until I’m sure of my terms!
It’s only in leaving and exploring other workspaces that I realised that being a researcher is a mindset that bolsters creativity and yields practice. That mindset is precious and needs to be nurtured, not disciplined. It needs engagement, appreciation and discernment, not constant judgement and correction. In the end, I think I’d actually make a better academic — certainly a kinder, gentler and wiser one — having left academe than I ever did in academe. Ironic!
Tagged as:
leaving
Okay. So, we’ve established the Facebook page and the secret Facebook group (or is it the Facebook group and the secret Facebook page? Either way, go here if you’re not concerned about annonymity, and email me if you are). I’m also toying with the idea of setting up a wiki here on the site, as a way for the post-academic community to build and share knowledge and resources.
But sometimes, an academic leaver kinda just longs for a little bit of hanging out, some beer drinking and some story swapping–not to mention some intellectual stimulation. But there does an academic leaver find that kind of thing? Well, if you live in Toronto, you can come to a meetup on August 20th. And if you don’t? You can email me to let me know you’d like to initiate a meetup in your own corner of the world, and I will post a note here on the blog.
So far, I’ve had calls for community in Montreal, Quebec and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Do you live there? Would you like to connect with other people who may be experiencing what you are? Email me, and I will help you find some kindred spirits.
So, you know Paula Chambers, the brainchild behind the WRK4US listserv (the original place on the internet for post-academic information)? She’s actually doing a survey of ABDs and PhDs and she wants to hear from you, especially if you
…are PhD or ABD in any discipline
…do not also have a JD, MD or MBA degree
…currently have a post-academic career (between jobs OK)
…are not a graduate student, tenure-track faculty member or academic researcher in any academic department
…are not a K-12 teacher
…do not currently spend more than 10% of your total paid working hours teaching or doing scholarly research
Interested? Take the survey here.
Tagged as:
research
In response to what I’ve heard from clients and readers, I’ve been working to find ways to help establish a community of post-academics. Now, there are, of course, the comments threads here on Leaving Academia. I’ve also started a Facebook page, which has a discussion board you can use to reach out to other folks. There’s also our Facebook group, which is “secret” (i.e. not visible to non-members and does not appear on your own Facebook page when you join). This is oriented to people who would like to be part of a post-academic community but are concerned about their privacy and anonymity. If you’d like to join, send me an email (sabine at leavingacademia dot com) and I’ll get you set up.
I’m also really thrilled to announce two new offerings aimed at connecting academic leavers, while also helping people who have limited budgets that they can devote to their career change. I’ve also got an announcement about my limited-time introductory offer for one-on-one consultations–see below!
Free event!
Torontonians, unite! If you live in the GTA and you’re interested in meeting others who have left or are thinking about leaving academia, come on out for our first official Leaving Academia meetup.
We’re going to meet at 2:30 pm on Thursday, August 20th in room B-1 at the Toronto Reference Library (on Yonge, just a stone’s throw north of Bloor; use the Bloor/Yonge TTC station). I’ll be there to meet everybody and facilitate the discussion–and best of all, it’s free!
This will be an opportunity for you to connect with other (potential) leavers and talk about the challenges and rewards of (potentially) leaving academia. If this becomes a regular thing, the group can choose to make subsequent meetings more structured and information-based (like focussing on particular topics or inviting guest speakers, perhaps?). If you do plan to attend, drop me a line (sabine at leavingacademia dot com) to let me know.
Don’t live near Toronto but want to organize something like this where you live? Let me know and I can help spread the word!
Affordable help for your post-academic problems!
Teleseminars have arrived at Leaving Academia! Starting in August, I’ll be holding monthly phone meetings on a different topic related to developing your post-academic career. Our inaugural seminar is on that most vexing of topics: how to convert your academic CV into a killer resume. This teleseminar includes:
- an hour-long crash course on the absolute must-dos and FOR-GOD’S-SAKE-DON’T-DO-THAT don’ts of resume writing
- time at the end of the call to ask me questions about what to keep and what to excise from your academic CV
- a worksheet that will be emailed to you after the call is completed, summing everything up
- the opportunity to let me know if you would like to connect via email with the other participants you met during the teleseminar
- an offer to receive a discount for group-based or one-on-one consultations with me
And guess what? You get all that for $20.
This teleseminar will be held on Tuesday, August 11 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific). Interested? All you have to do to register is email me (sabine at leavingacademia dot com) with the subject line, “Teleseminar registration,” letting me know you’d like to attend. I’ll send you the number (the area code is 785, so check with your phone company about any relevant long-distance charges on your line) and access code for the call, and that’s it! When the date and time rolls around, you just dial the number, plug in your access code, and voila–sweet relief for your résumé quandaries.
Can’t make it at that time and date? Drop me a line and, if there’s enough interest, we can tack on an additional meeting time.
Cut-rate one-on-one consultations!
I’ve so enjoyed working with those of you who took me up on my introductory offer of one-on-one consultations. I’ve worked with Canadians and Americans, MAs to tenured faculty, each looking for help with résumés, cover letters, networking, information interviews–and sometimes, just a sympathetic ear. My introductory rate, however, will end at the end of this month. Starting at the beginning of August, my rates will go back up. If you want to take advantage of the introductory rate, book with me by the end of July. For more details, email me at sabine at leavingacademia dot com.
Have ideas for other ways you’d like to build community and get some post-academic support? Leave your comment here or give me a shout.
Tagged as:
consulting,
meetup,
teleseminar
Before the global economic meltdown, the prospect of leaving academia with Ph.D. in hand was generally perceived as a pretty crazy idea. Now that the shit has hit the fan in the university sector, it’s being perceived more widely as a smart career decision, or even a sensible detour while you wait for the academic jobs to open up again.
But way back in the day–I’m talking 2006, here–my decision to leave was cooked up in a very different economic context. The idea of having a Ph.D. but not being a university teacher probably looked to a lot of people like something bordering on insanity. And sometimes I did feel a little nutty to be considering the idea at all.
I was reminded of some of those crazy feelings this weekend when my crack I.T. team and I sat down to watch Gran Torino.
You know Gran Torino–the Clint Eastwood movie. The one where he growls and becomes a transformed person. The one that is ostensibly about anti-racism but is really about an old white guy. The one that people said was “masterful,” and “a cinematic tour de force” and rubbish like that. The one that left me scratching my head and turning to my crack I.T. team to say, “Huh?”
Now, Gran Torino, like grad school, has a lot of things going for it. It has a shiny, exciting car, an empathetic underdog character who you love cheering on, and most of all, it has Clint Eastwood. I understand that in many corners of the cinema-going world, Clint Eastwood can do no wrong. And really, he does turn in a great performance in this movie. Every time he turns around hefting a pistol or rifle in his hand, you get a little thrill, a little “Oh, shit! Clint Eastwood‘s got a gun!” kind of a thrill.
Similarly, grad school has little thrilling moments. There are those times in the classroom when you feel like you’re really connecting with your students. There are those moments in a seminar when your prof is setting your mind on fire. There are those amazing hours you spend getting lost in the stacks, devouring books and journals.
But then you start to realize that the whole isn’t the sum of its parts. You get to the point where you can’t deny that your relationship to this thing is breaking down. You start thinking, as I did over the weekend, “Um…WTF is going on here? Where is this plot going? Did Gran Torino get destroyed in the editing room?”
The difficult part about this, though, is feeling like you’re the only one who ever thinks this way. “I thought Gran Torino/grad school was going to be fantastic,” you think. “Everyone said it was a good idea.” “Am I the only one seriously not enjoying this?” “Am I crazy to just want to just press ’stop’ and try something different?”
Folks, I’m telling you, I watched Gran Torino to the end and I kind of wish I hadn’t. The first 1/4 of the movie was satisfyingly quirky in its own, poorly-edited way. The rest was craptastic. Whether you make the choice to leave grad school mid-stream, after the Ph.D., or once you’ve already got tenure, you’re making the choice to open yourself to possibility. You are sparing yourself–even if you don’t get to see the ending of that particular story.
Tagged as:
Gran Torino,
leaving
I have a client (we’re going to call her Eleanor Kaye) who is trained as a sociologist. Eleanor recently told me about an old sociological study on networking and job hunting. She offered to write a guest post about the study, knowing that it would be of interest to the readers here at Leaving Academia. Here it is–both the research and Eleanor’s own life experience illustrating the research!
We’ve all heard the cynical expression, “it’s who you know” when it comes to looking for a job. But in the 1970s, US sociologist Mark Granovetter conducted a social networking study and found that, counterintuitively, people didn’t necessarily get jobs through a close friend or family member–they got them through a contact that was more remote, a “weak tie” in soc-speak.
Granovetter’s explanation for his “strength of weak ties” argument is straightforward enough: the people we are closest to, the friends and family we consider part of our everyday social network, tend to know the same kinds of things (notice how your friends are, overall, more similar than different from one another). People we don’t know that well, those we may just call acquaintances, are more closely tied to other networks–so they know different things, have different connections. An acquaintance can be a kind of bridge to another network of unexpected information and resources.
Whether you consider someone an “acquaintance” or not, the fact is that anyone you don’t know that well is a person who is connected to other people you don’t know, who know things and other people you don’t know, and so on.
Many years ago, in sheer desperation, I worked at a call centre where my only work tools were a heavy, black, rotary-dial telephone, and a dirty phone book. I sat at a makeshift desk (a slab of plywood balanced on sawhorses) and made cold calls from the phonebook, trying to be heard over the din of the other callers. One morning, the two young men who worked on either side of me were talking past me to each other, in hushed tones, about their parole officers. I knew there was something seriously wrong with this picture.
One of the places I called that day was a small non-profit agency. When I asked to speak to the person in charge, in order to make my sales pitch, I was told that she was busy… conducting job interviews. I politely asked about the job and before I was caught in this inappropriate chat mode by the beady-eyed call centre bossman, I got the specifics and during my lunch break I rushed over there with my resume. I was interviewed the next day and got the job–needless to say, it was a much better job and I learned a whole new set of skills while there. This is perhaps an extreme example of the strength of weak ties, but you get the point.
This weak tie theory has practical applications for more than just job-getting.
When I first moved to Toronto in 2000, to start my PhD, the rental vacancy rate hovered close to zero and the apartments that were available were ridiculously overpriced (”no thanks, I don’t think that having the bathtub in my bedroom should be considered a ‘feature’!”). I began to panic. Would I have to cancel my acceptance and return to the coast? In desperation I began to talk to everyone I met about my situation. To my partner’s embarrassment, I literally stopped people on the street to ask them if they had any leads on a decent apartment. One morning I asked the woman who ran a nearby convenience store if she knew of anyone with an apartment for rent. She said that in fact she did. A man had come in earlier that morning to buy some milk and told her he’d just finished renovating an apartment and hadn’t yet advertised it for rent. We moved in a few days later and stayed for three years.
If you think of all the jobs you’ve had, you will probably find that quite a number of them were found this way–through the strength of weak ties. While we may be tempted to write off this research as more sociology-of-the-obvious, what we can take from it is this: talk to everyone you meet about what you are doing and what you want. Encourage them to do the same with you (this reciprocity idea is mine!). You simply do not know, and really should not assume, what someone else knows or doesn’t, and who they might know. If in fact it is a small world after all, it’s only because we talk to each other and pass along our stories and insights… or in this case, job leads.
But let’s face it–it’s not just about the strength of weak ties. It’s also about recognizing these opportunities, screwing up our courage and proceeding with chutzpa!
Tagged as:
networking,
research
A reader recently sent me a link to this New York Times piece on the value of an MA, and I found myself feeling really surprised about how many people had a negative attitude towards it. Maybe it’s because part of my job is to hang out with PhDs who regret having done a PhD at all (”why didn’t I just stop at the MA?”). Maybe it’s because I did feel like the MA experience was valuable in and of itself. Maybe it’s because I do feel strongly that the MA gives you a leg up from your BA vis-a-vis research skills (which, hello, are transferable skills on the job market). But I just can’t just on the “what’s the point of an MA?” train.
From an educational standpoint, an MA seems like a great idea. I can’t imagine suggesting to anyone that spending a year or two (fine, or three) elevating your studies, getting the chance to work intensely on a research project for probably the first time in your life, and (I mean this sincerely) getting a taste of a grad school experience that is less likely to crush your soul than the PhD experience is a bad idea.
From an economic point of view, it also seems smart. Sure there are opportunity costs blah blah blah. But it seems to me that MAs open employment doors, not close them (the way some people feel about the PhD, which, for the record, I do not). It’s not a professional degree, but it is a way to angle yourself into higher-level positions than what a BA may limit you to. In this age of credential inflation, isn’t getting an MA a good idea?
And guess what? Statistics Canada backs me up. This is from a 2002 study available on the StatsCan site:
Students who had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1990 were earning, on average, $38,000 five years later, Master’s graduates earned, on average, about one-third more ($50,000), although earnings varied considerably by level of education, field of study and sex. In terms of prospects for employment, the unemployment rate for bachelor’s graduates has, on average, been higher than the rate for master’s and PhD graduates. This is also an indication that a master’s degree is beneficial in terms of improving one’s likelihood of having a job.
Not to mention the fact that this StatsCan report indicates MAs in Canada earn 33% more than BAs (and PhDs earn 8% more than MAs, statistically).
What do you think of the value of the MA? Do you wish you’d just stopped there? Or have you stopped with an MA and still have wild thoughts of a PhD?
Tagged as:
MA
