Dear lovely readers,
When I let you know my good news about my new job, I truly did not intend to inspire mass feelings of panic over the disappearance of this site. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t mass panic, but I did get a few anxious emails from you lovely people about the value and helpfulness of this site, and would I prettyplease not take it down?
I just want to make sure you all know that Leaving Academia isn’t going anywhere. It’s perfectly clear to you now, however, that fresh content will be provided on a totally irregular and entirely unpredictable basis. And I am still investigating the possibility of turning the site into a group-written blog (any other people interested in contributing? Email me or leave a comment below). But in the meantime, I am not taking the site down.
I also just want to relate one little tip for those of you who’ve processed your decision to leave academia and are currently job hunting. One of my colleagues (this would be someone I work with at my job doing policy analysis for a non-profit organization in the health care sector) who has conducted a lot of hires mentioned this to me just prior to the talk I gave a few weeks ago at the University of Waterloo. It’s one of those tips that sounds completely self-evident, and that you want to laugh at smugly, thinking you’d never be the fool who’d make this gaffe. But there are people out there who are making this gaffe…and really, you don’t want to be one of those people.
When a prospective employer asks you in a job interview why you want the job (and you can be 99% sure that this is the very first question you’ll be asked), you can say things like,
“Because I’ve always wanted to work for this organization.”
“Because I have a passion for [fill in the blank].”
“Because I’m looking for a job where I have lots of learning opportunities and a chance to maximize my [whatever] skills, and it sounds like this job offers precisely that.”
There are lots of things you can say that will demonstrate your knowledge of the job, your interest in the job, and your understanding of the aims of the organization. Lots. What should you NOT say?
“Because I want to leave academia.”
Or:
“Because I need to get out of grad school and get a job.”
Or:
“Because I can’t get a tenure-track position in a university.”
Just don’t say stuff like that, okay? Think about it this way: if you were a professional dancer and were applying for a job as an IT guy (and this is the career trajectory of someone I personally know), would you say to your prospective employer, “Oh, I want this IT job because I can’t be a professional dancer for the rest of my life. I just need to get a regular job. And since I pulled my hamstring, I just haven’t been the same.” Yeah, it’s obvious how un-smart that would be, right?
In short, your prospective employer really doesn’t care about how difficult your career change is, or why things didn’t work out for you in your previous career. Your prospective employer wants to know exactly what you’ve got that makes you a great fit for their organization. And if one of the things that you’ve got is passion, enthusiasm and an understanding of the organization, that goes a long way.
Related posts:
- The résumé: To hide your academic credentials or not?
- Dos and don’ts of the post-academic job application process
- Podcast #1: “There are places that would walk over their own mother to hire you.”
- Midnight inspiration: The part you control is preparation
- Leveraging your assets in your post-PhD job search
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The very first interview I had sort of happened when I wasn’t really looking for a job, yet, and I had been invited by a prof friend of mine to apply even though I wasn’t really in the same discipline the position called for. (If I had known how difficult it would be to get a job now, maybe I would have handled it differently.)
Anyway, the first question they asked was, “So why are you thinking about ?” and the answer that blurted out of my stupid, stupid face was, “For the practice.”