‘You don’t realise the value of (and the extent to which you have) these skills as a humanities PhD, until you’re in an environment when not everyone has them.‘
– Cat Quine: career changer from academia to tech
You know how career guidance appointments rarely go?
‘So, you’re looking to leave your lectureship in Biblical Studies? In that case, you should definitely move to working for a software company that supports highly regulated industries…!
But that’s exactly the route that Cat Quine took when, three and a half years into a permanent lectureship, she took the leap to leave academia for pastures new.
I’ve heard countless career change stories, but Cat’s captured my imagination because, on the face of it, her switch from academic research on the Hebrew Bible to working for a tech company seemed particularly ‘out of the box.’
So, knowing how tricky it can be to understand how an academic background in the humanities can translate to working beyond academic research and teaching, I decided to pick Cat’s brains about her career move, to see what her story could tell us more broadly about putting together a strategy for leaving academia in the humanities. The result is (drumroll….): five key steps for career transition from humanities academia.
1) Talk to people
Cat explains:
My best friend, who studied Theology with me, is now a technical writer for a software company. I don’t think I would have considered moving into tech if he hadn’t said that technical writing was definitely something that I could do with my skills.
So, it isn’t just talking to anyone that came good here for Cat. It was talking to:
- People with a similar academic background
- People who knew her skills, and could point these out
- Someone she trusted
I feel like talking to people about their jobs, and about the fact that you’re looking, is even more crucial for people coming from humanities disciplines, as I think we often have to think more laterally than some of our STEM counterparts about how our skills apply beyond academia. So, just having someone who’s made the move saying ‘yep, you could totally do what I do with the skills you have’ can be just the nudge you need.
And if you don’t feel you have anyone in your immediate network, then here are some tips on how to leverage LinkedIn for this.
2) Have some idea of ‘what you’re looking for’
Cat admitted that she certainly didn’t feel she had a clear target when job hunting. But the more she told me, the more I saw some strategy in her job hunt.
Based on my chats with my best friend, I started looking up content writing roles, she explains. However, a lot that I found were quite marketing focused which didn’t really interest me. Others seemed very ‘techy’ and not my thing either. When I came across this one particular role though – looking for writers to summarise legal concepts for software products – I thought yeah, it doesn’t sound sales-y, but also doesn’t sound super technical, so it seemed like a good one to go for. I was also looking for roles that featured ‘research’ pretty highly on their requirements, because that’s something I knew I could do!
So even though Cat felt like she didn’t know exactly where she was aiming, she did have some guiding principles. She identified skills she wanted to use, and a general sense of the kind of sector she wanted (or rather didn’t want!): I’d sum it up as she was looking for writing-based roles, involving a decent amount of research, in fields other than marketing and very technical STEM.
So, step two then… draw up a sense of what you’re looking for: that could include skills you want to use, the type of sector and employer you want to be part of, the causes you want your work to support, and so on. To know where to look, and to know when you’ve found something, you need some sense of what you’re looking for.
3) Acknowledge, and translate, your skills
With the above in mind, Cat found an advert for a regulatory content writer with a software company, writing accessible summaries of new laws related to the environment and health and safety. These summaries then go into a software product to help companies get quickly up to speed on how to stay in line with legislation. The job advert certainly included requirements that I would have found intimidating coming straight out of the academic humanities, e.g.:
- A background in journalism or content writing, preferably from a legal, audit, or compliance perspective
- Experience of summarising technical or legal content for a non-technical audience
So with a background in Theology, how did Cat show evidence of the skills the company wanted? The key here, I realised, lay in looking past your academic subject niche, and instead focusing on the actual day-to-day activities (‘bread and butter’) involved in academic work, which we can so often take for granted. Here are some examples she gave me:
- Ability to translate technical/ legal concepts for a non-technical audience: The only legal content I’d ever dealt with in Theology was ancient law, but I felt that didn’t matter so much. In academia, you often write content for different audiences, from academic articles (for ‘expert’ or ‘technical’ audiences) to blog posts and Twitter entries. So, this was good evidence to use here – it might not be journalism, but it’s writing for lots of different audiences.
- Ability to read and summarise complex information: this one was easy – if you’ve written a book review in academia, then that’s exactly what you’ve done, so you can definitely show evidence of this!
- Editing and ability to work to deadlines: in academia, you get used to peer review, receiving feedback on your work and then having to turn around the new draft often within a tight deadline – another tick.
Cat explained: Being able to research and deliver writing were skills I’d dismissed because in academia, I did them without thinking. You don’t realise the value of (and the extent to which you have) these skills as a humanities PhD, until you’re in an environment when not everyone has them. In academia we’re all used to performing at the same level, but if you move into an ‘industry’ role that involves skills like writing and research, you’ll be in the top 10% of people with those skills without even thinking about it.
Now that would’ve been just the pep talk I needed when I was job hunting post-PhD.
4) Think of your career move as a ‘two-step process’
Cat landed a job offer for the regulatory content writer role, but her story doesn’t stop there:
I picked up the job extremely quickly, she explains. In fact, after a few months I was already a bit bored.
Now, this is a fear I hear a lot from people considering leaving academia: that work outside the academy won’t fulfil or challenge them. So, it’s important to acknowledge that with your first job, that may happen… but it doesn’t have to be for long.
Cat continued: about 4 months into my role, I had a conversation with my manager about finding out more about the company, and she set up conversations for me with people in different parts of the business. I realised there were several options open to me as a next move, including project management and product management.
Step 4 then is about keeping those lines of communication open with management once you start a new role, so that if you do start to feel twitchy then you have the opportunity to tweak or change your role. Cat sums the situation up well by saying:
You are very unlikely to move out of academia and straight into a role that is perfect for you. Your first job is unlikely to be the dream, but it’s a gateway. Once you’ve made the jump out of academia, you can jump again in industry – this is so much more common and easy to do than it is in academia.
So think of your career transition as a two-step process. Get your first job, and use that to give yourself the security, time, and space to figure out where you want to be: time and space that you won’t have whilst in academia. Originally I thought that I couldn’t leave unless I had landed a job that I knew I’d be 100% happy in, but then I thought ‘no: it’s ok to go, to get your foot in the door, and to buy yourself the headspace to make the right choices to then build a career.‘
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
5) Stay curious, and trust your abilities
Through her discussions with colleagues, Cat found her next move – into product management. She explains:
I decided product management was the way for me to go, and so far it’s been the biggest and best challenge of my life.
Tell me more!
So many people are involved in creating a product. In our company these include software engineers; sales; marketing; content writers; IT and compliance… but there needs to be someone who takes an overall lead on making decisions like how we develop the product, what features we add, and so on. And that’s the product manager... they see all the moving parts, and make sure they are all working together as they need to do.
Now I’m working in product management, I’ve also realised that it’s a brilliant job for former academics! In academia you are constantly spinning plates and context-switching. For example, one day you might be at an open day talking to parents of prospective students who know nothing about your subject area; the next day, you might be presenting to experts at an international conference. You have to think big picture (for example, delivering a three-year research project), but also need to deliver small short-term things, like that teaching that needs to be planned for tomorrow! This is all great experience that has prepared me well for working in product management, and working across all those many business functions and teams of people.
To end then, staying curious once you leave academia is key… keep building your network, learning about different areas, and using your first role beyond academia to find out more about what’s really out there. And I hope, like Cat did, that this leads you to the biggest and best challenge of your professional life.