Exploring Career Options Beyond Academia: Essential LinkedIn ‘tricks’ for researchers

‘I ‘m on LinkedIn, but… I’m not sure what to do with it” – said by more PhD & Postdoc Researchers than I can count

LinkedIn.

It’s a single word, yet it provokes so many responses from researchers I work with who are exploring their next steps. Some of the most popular go like:

• LinkedIn? You mean, that nauseating den of iniquity where people inflate their achievements and boast about themselves? No thanks.
• Using LinkedIn? As in… professional stalking? Hmmm… not sure
• Well I HAVE a LinkedIn profile… but I’m not sure what to DO WITH IT.

The third response at least gives me something to work with. However, what I’ve noticed is that practically all the people who give response 1 or 2 haven’t yet unleashed the power of LinkedIn… not as a place to show off, or a place where you need to lay yourself bare to public consumption… but simply as a research tool.

In this post therefore, I wanted to share some of the LinkedIn research techniques that I’ve found to be of most use to PhD and postdoc researchers looking exploring careers beyond the academy. Importantly, none of these require you to have a perfect profile, or even to approach people directly if that doesn’t sit well with your social anxiety: they’re just ways to… lurk strategically… and in doing so, hopefully come up with some inspiration and career ideas that are based on real people and real career paths, rather than being stuck reading endless job adverts and questioning what this all means (as in questioning what the jargon in the adverts means, rather than questioning what life itself means, but I fully understand how the two can go hand in hand…).

Let’s dive in then:

1) The ‘What have other PhDs & Postdocs done?’ searches

I highly recommend these searches if any of the following sound like you:

• You’re struggling to come up with options, or think there may be many that you’ve missed so far
• You know of some career options, but are unsure which ones you can access with a PhD/ postdoc in your subject
• You’ve started to research options, but are struggling to ‘relate’ these options to yourself and your own academic background

In situations like these, being nosy – I mean, taking inspiration from what other PhDs and postdocs have done – can be a great way of generating relevant and meaningful career ideas.

If you’re still doing, or have very recently completed, your PhD, then your first go-to search is:

Your current/ former University LinkedIn page -> ‘Alumni’ -> Scroll across to ‘What they studied’ -> insert your subject area -> Type into the extra little search bar ‘PhD’

The idea here is to identify people who have graduated with PhDs in your subject area to see what they’re doing now. This one isn’t fool proof, and can just end up throwing out lots of people who are still doing their PhD, so adjust the ‘end year’ to try to filter these out.

In an online demo with Doctoral Researchers at the University of Birmingham (UK), we looked at this for ‘Immunology,’ and found PhD grads working in areas including pharmaceutical R&D, technical sales, medical science liaison, medical communications, policy, business development, research management… I could go on.

But.. what if you’re a postdoc, I hear you cry? Then, you can’t just do a simple search for ‘postdoc alumni,’ can you…? Well… if you delve into LinkedIn’s people search functionality, you can (sort of). Have a go with this:

Search for your current/ former university in the LinkedIn search bar -> select ‘People’ in the menu bar above the search results -> ‘All filters’ -> Scroll down to ‘past company’ and select your university -> Scroll down to ‘industry’ and select an industry of interest

In theory, this should now show you people who used to work at your university, but who now work in your chosen sector. Then, you can take a look in the ‘past’ section of their profile thumbnail to identify those who were Research Associates or Postdocs in a past life.

I did this with a great bunch of researchers from the University of Glasgow up in Scotland recently; we selected ‘University of Glasgow’ as the ‘former company’ and ‘biotechnology research’ as the ‘industry.’ We came up with an array of search results which helped us to identify several employers of former postdocs in the biotech industry… bingo.

2) The ‘What career options use my skills?’ search

I think I’m an even bigger fan of this search than the ones above, mainly because so few people think to do it.

It’s only natural that, after spending [four, five, eight, insert number as appropriate…] years refining your research skills in a particular field, you might want to continue to use some of those skills in your future work. If that’s the case, then taking a look at the kinds of roles and employers that people have moved into with similar skills to you is a great way of working out where your skills are valued.

For this one then, the search is as follows:

Your current/ former University LinkedIn page -> ‘Alumni’ -> Scroll across to ‘What they are skilled at’ -> insert a skill you want to keep using

The more specific you can be, the more targeted and useful your results will often be.

For example, I did this search recently with a bunch of Doctoral Researchers from Aston University in Birmingham (UK), where we entered in the following skills:

• Survey design: this example was for the social scientists, just to prove this isn’t a technique restricted to technical STEM things like lab skills and whatnot. We found alumni skilled in survey design were now working in UX research, evidence & insights roles in charities, roles in market research consultancies, health care analytics, consumer behaviour and brand development… to name just a few.
• Monte Carlo simulation: nope, it’s not a VR casino… this is mathematical technique that predicts possible outcomes of uncertain events. We found people using this skill were working in areas including ‘Quant’ roles in finance, trading, risk analytics, and investment management, not to mention a variety of roles in other sectors including aviation and the NHS.

3) The ‘I think I might want to work for this particular organisation’ search

This search is useful if you’ve identified one or more companies, organisations, charities etc… for whom you might like to work. It helps to answer the question ‘what could someone with a PhD do in this organisation?’ or ‘what kind of role would someone with my kind of background have in this organisation,’ to try to find out where you might ‘fit.’

Most recently, I did this with a doctoral researcher in history who was interested in working for an organisation supporting humanities research. We chose The British Academy as an example, to see what types of role other PhD graduates had moved into within this kind of employer.

The search is:

Search for the organisation/ company on LinkedIn-> On their page, select ‘people’ -> In the little search bar above the results, enter ‘PhD’ (or alternatively, you could scroll across to ‘what they studied’ and select your subject)

… and there are (hopefully) the people with a PhD who work in that organisation. For the British Academy, some of the ideas we came up with Senior Policy Adviser, International Programmes Officer, and Grants Officer.

So, there you have my top 3 LinkedIn searches for researchers exploring career ideas. They’re all imperfect, and each have their gripes. However, I’m willing to bet that they’ll give you more relevant and meaningful hints about your future options post-PhD… based on real people… than whacking anything into Google will.

Happy stalking*!

* I MEAN SEARCHING