Part of my mandate around creating this re-vamped version of Leaving Academia is to show people that having a Ph.D. (or being ABD) is not at all useless, let alone making you useless. In the coming weeks, I am going to launch a detailed, 5-part series aimed at helping you break down and identify your transferable skills (skills that I know ALL grad students have). But in the meantime, I’m going to throw out there a list I had brainstormed a couple of years back when I was trying to combat this “Ph.D. useless” misconception.

Read this list and let it wash over you. Have faith that you do have skills, assets and talents that are very much prized by employers in the private and public sectors. If any of this twigs with you, write it down. You can use it next week when the series on transferable skills starts up. So here goes:
Doing a Ph.D. makes you a communications expert:

• You write documents that are tailored for specific audiences, that must deliver certain pieces of information and draw conclusions from that information.
• You conduct lectures and presentations that demonstrate your ability to convey (sometimes complex) ideas verbally.
• You teach other people how to write similar documents that follow certain conventions.
• You have developed assessment methods/tools for evaluating others’ writing skills and you’ve implemented them fairly and consistently.
• You might also teach and assess oral communications skills.
• Your lesson plans are communications documents as well. Thinking about the goals you have for each lesson, the practices you will use to reach those goals, and the reflecting you do after class all point to the skills you have in effective communication.
• You have tonnes of experience as a group discussion facilitator.

Doing a Ph.D. makes you an expert in research:

• We live in the “information society,” right? Well, knowing how to access, categorize, analyze and synthesize information (which is what we do as grad students) is crucial in today’s economy. This is not just for corporate work but for NGOs and the non-profit sector, as well.
• Even if you don’t know how to do qualitative research, lots of places need researchers who don’t just do quantitative stuff; social science and humanities grads have their place doing research, too.
• Your dissertation makes you an expert in handling large volumes of information, both electronically and on paper. Managing information in a way that is well-ordered and can be easily located is a significant skill that many people do not have, but Ph.Ds do.

Doing a Ph.D. makes you an expert in looking for money.

• OK, perhaps I have a hint of bitterness here (don’t we all?). But seriously, there is, apparently, a booming industry in grantwriting. This is one of the consequences of the past couple of decades of neo-liberal cutbacks to the non-profit sector. So there are now tonnes of worthy places out there that need help in researching where to find the money and then securing funding. Although grant proposals look a little different from scholarship and bursary applications, the years you spent hustling money from SSHRC and other funding bodies gave you a lot of practice in writing for that audience. That kind of writing is a skill, honey!
• Those scholarship applications also help you develop the skill of “marketing” yourself, which feels totally repulsive, but comes in handy for job searches (academic and post-academic).

And then there all those “soft skills” that a Ph.D. helps you cultivate:

• Ph.Ds are masters/mistresses of time management and meeting deadlines (well, sometimes)
• Your organizational skills are superior.
• You can work well individually (helloooo isolation!), but you also work well in teams (TA team, departmental committees, and any organizations you were involved in, like the union or a publication).
• You learn things quickly and grasp complex ideas easily.
• You are a master/mistress with word processing programs, various Web browsers and possibly other software applications and operating systems.
• You are disciplined, motivated and a self-starter.
• You enjoy challenging yourself.

All of this is just the stuff that you do in grad school, let alone the stuff you did PGS (Pre-Grad School) or outside of grad school (volunteering, non-academic work). Start thinking this way and you might be able to start chipping away at all those years that grad school eroded your self-worth.

What other skills are ABDs and PhDs armed with? What do you think you offer an employer?

Related posts:

1. Tackling transferable skills, part three
2. The résumé: To hide your academic credentials or not?
3. 11 things you need to know about leaving academia