"While some PhD transferable skills give you an edge, others are harmful for your employability. You hear a lot about the transferable skills you must acquire during your PhD experience. The skills that you need to get a job in industry and which will make you successful in your following career ..." by OLGA POUGOVKINA
" While some PhD transferable skills give you an edge, others are harmful for your employability.
You hear a lot about the transferable skills you must acquire during your PhD experience. The skills that you need to get a job in industry and which will make you successful in your following career.
The main idea here is that industry recruiters have a hard time understanding how your PhD makes you a good candidate for a job opening.
In order to help the recruiter understand your value, you need to mention those transferable skills you developed during your PhD and present how they can be applied in your future job in industry.
Typical PhD transferable skills are being able to give a presentation, to manage a project, or to supervise a small team.
If you put together slide decks and presented at scientific conferences, you can do the same in industry.
If you were able to take a complex project like a PhD, split it in subprojects, manage all the timelines and deliverables, you are expected to do some project management successfully in industry.
If you supervised a group of interns during your PhD, you could supervise a small group of younger colleagues later on in industry.
So far so good, that PhD was not such a waste of time after all. Heck, you might even be well suited for a job in industry.
On the flip side, not all PhD skills you developed are so positive. In fact, some will harm you and won’t let you to move forward. They are bad habits.
In the rest of this post we are going to cover 9 useless PhD transferable skills that can work against you in an industry job, aka career-limiting skills.
Not a problem if you plan to stay in Academia. A serious hazard if you want to move onto industry.
Published on the Next Scientist - Helping PhD Students Stay Motivated, Graduate And Then Find A Job In Industry