I remember the day when weekends away with friends would begin by comparing the new outfits we’d each bought for the holiday. Now we’re into our 40s, it seems that comparing new threads has been replaced by comparing what medications we’re all on. C’est la vie.
Anyway, one weekend over the summer I realised that three of us were taking the same drug, but for three different reasons. To one of us, it was a relief from spinal pain. To another, a tool in managing anxiety. To a third, a way to alleviate the effects of migraines. Same molecule, targeting the same receptors, but being applied in three different ways… and ‘sold’ to us in three different ways.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might see where I’m going with this. So, I’m just going to come out with it.
PhDs are like multiple-use drugs.
You can ‘sell’ and apply yours in many different ways, even though at the end of the day, you are the same person with the same set of experiences. You just need to do a bit of ‘repackaging’ depending on your audience.
To complete this month’s elaborate analogy between everyday occurrences and post-PhD careers, enter Brendan*. Brendan came to me earlier this year to discuss ways he could ‘package’ his PhD on the role of sex hormones on the heart for different types of roles. He’s since gone down in my PhD careers record books as ‘the Master of Spin,’ due to how quickly he picked up the knack of ‘pitching’ his PhD experience in multiple ways depending on his audience.
To give you some examples, here are a few of the options we looked at:
- A job with an aerospace company focused on human physiology during flight.
This one might seem like a stretch, and was as much informed by Brendan’s interest in aviation as it was by his research. His pitch for this role combining personal interest and PhD experience went something like this:
I’m an expert in physiology, which comes from four years researching how cardiac physiology changes in response to sex hormones, and more generally from teaching a broad range of human physiology topics, developing expertise in the physiology of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems, as well as the cardiovascular system. On top of that, I have a long-standing interest in aviation and flight and have previously been a member of a gliding club. - Editorial position with medical education company.
Quite a big switch from the previous job, but the terms of this job (mostly remote, flexible hours, a wide variety of science in the workload) appealed to Brendan. This time, his pitch was along these lines:
I’m experienced in writing for professional audiences and communicating science and subject-specific knowledge for a range of different audiences. This comes from writing papers, teaching, and delivering public engagement events. I’ve also got specific experience of producing educational materials through a range of university teaching and tutoring experience. - Specialist role with a growing Medtech company (with a cardiology focus)
The role that was most related to his PhD, Brendan’s ‘spin’ for this one was as follows:
I can do what this Medtech firm need me to do because I’ve had lots of experience designing and running experiments, performing data analysis on cardiac dynamics, and I also understand the current state of literature in cardiology, to be able to make sure that their product is right up-to-date.
Brendan was a credible candidate for all three roles, he just needed to pick-and-mix his most relevant bits to pitch himself in a way that he could help each company to solve their own unique set of problems.
As a PhD, it’s easy to think that you are only an expert in one small thing, Brendan explains. However, that’s not necessarily true. Different aspects of your research will be of interest to different types of people, so you can shine lights on different aspects depending on who you are addressing. On top of that, if you’ve done teaching on broad undergrad modules like I did, you can also show that you’re a generalist as well as a specialist.
Now, Brendan’s job hunt could easily have gone wrong. For example, if he’d gone to medical education companies for editorial roles and told them he was good at designing experiments, he’d probably have got a lot of blank faces. To return to our opening analogy… doing this would’ve been like telling someone with arthritis that the drug you’re going to give them treats depression: it’s not going to convince them that it’ll do the trick.
So if you’re job hunting at the moment or are about to start… what’s your pitch? What does that company or organisation really need, and which pick-and-mix parts of your expertise, experience, and interests (academic or otherwise) align best with those needs? How can you package your PhD drug to show that it can solve your prospective employers’ ailments? Here are some tips to put into action in your applications and interviews:
- If a role links to one of your personal interests outside of your immediate research, don’t just say you have an ‘interest in X’… give the employer some evidence of that interest, like Brendan did with the gliding club example.
- If your most relevant experience for a role comes from a mixture of different places rather than one role, then go for it… but be clear about this. Don’t expect the employer to join the dots for you and have to draw their own conclusions about how your mix of experience is relevant to them. For example, Brendan had never been an editor for a medical education company before, but he DID have experience relevant to a range of things that an editor in a medical education company does: scientific writing from his thesis; engaging wider audiences from public engagement; producing educational materials from teaching and tutoring. He’d never applied that combination of experience in one single role before, but the employer still liked his ‘pitch’ and offered him the job.
- Practise talking about yourself in a range of ways. For example, attending a conference that is related but at a slight tangent to your research might mean that you talk about yourself and what you do slightly differently. Similarly, taking part in a research communication competition like Three Minute Thesis will mean that you have to use a different ‘spin’ more relevant to a lay audience. The more practice you get in talking about your work to different groups of people, the more naturally you’ll be able to flex your pitch to employers when the time comes.
(*Brendan’s name has been changed to keep the Master of Spin anonymous, at his request.
P.S. he ended up taking the editorial job in the end… but is still exploring MedTech consulting on the side for future ventures).