PhD Skills for Industry Jobs Part 1: Research and Analytical Skills

Mrim, B. (2020, July 1). PhD skills for industry jobs part 1: Research and analytical skills. LinkedIn. Retrieved November 26, 2024, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/phd-skills-industry-jobs-part-1-research-analytical-mrim/?trackingId=JrVoEquxTg6lu5tug%2BLJ6A%3D%3D

COVID19 has been hitting the academic job market hard!

As a recovering neuroplasticity PhD, and former H1B visa holder, I know how difficult it is to translate one's academic research achievements into a compelling story to compete for industry careers in the private, non-profit, and government sectors.

As PhDs, we develop a number of sought after skills that many global employers find very valuable. However, many PhDs use the wrong terminology for industry jobs, or are so focused on the knowledge they are accumulating that they are not even aware of the transferable skills they are building as they make contributions to their field!

In my 16 years of career coaching experience, I have been developing a model looking at skills as your career currency. Of course, your subject matter expertise can be a tremendous springboard towards specific career paths (e.g. a PhD in statistics is a shoe in for any data science roles in the tech industry, while a macro-economist might have to further articulate how their analytical skills will be of help to a tech firm). Some of the core transferable PhD skills include research and analytical skills, communication and relationships management skills, project management skills, as well as your self-leadership skills and entrepreneurial mindset.

In this post, I will cover research and analytical skills, how to define them, some examples of terminology for these skills in industry for PhDs in the humanities, social sciences and STEM, and how to demonstrate these skills in bullet points of a non-academic resume. In future posts, I will do the same for the other critical transferable PhD skills listed above, including communication and relationships management skills, project management skills, as well as your self-leadership skills and entrepreneurial mindset.

Before I dive in, it is important to note that the same skills will be named differently in different organizations, sectors, industries and geographic location. As you are looking to move beyond academic jobs, here are four core skill sets we all develop by virtue of completing a PhD, whether it is in the humanities, social sciences or in Science, Technology, Engineering and math (STEM). For each of these skills, I will include a short definition of the skill set, along with examples of what to do and not to do when listing those transferable skills on your industry resume.

I hope the insights below will help you get clearer about your transferable skills so you can emerge as a credible and qualified candidate for non-academic jobs.

Skill #1 - Research and Analytical Skills.

Definition: Ability to review, select, and distill large amounts of relevant and high quality information into a rigorous set of arguments or strategic insights that add new discoveries, interpretations of, or ways to explain complex questions.

Examples of transferable research and analytical skills for all PhDs include critical thinking, formulating hypotheses about the complex contributions of factors to a current dynamic issue or research question, conducting literature reviews to gather qualitative data that infirm or support our initial hypothesis, and distilling large amounts from multiple sources into clear and compelling recommendations in writing or via oral presentations. In addition, STEM PhD also develop a strong set of research and analytical skills applied to quantitative data, including leveraging coding skills and analytical software along with statistical or computation approaches to collect and analyze quantitative data to infirm or support hypotheses.

How to demonstrate your PhD research and analytical skills in your non-academic resume.

Recruiters in non-academic jobs are less interested in the knowledge PhDs bring than in the transferable skills they have leverage to achieve measurable results. I am a big fan of the XYZ method of building resume bullet points around WHAT you did, HOW you did it, and WHY that impacted your work, the team and organization in meaningful ways. Here are some ideas and examples of how to package your research and analytical skills in your non-academic bullet points:

Humanities PhDs:

• Basic: Examine the role of burials and mortuary rituals in Minoan and Mycenaean societies through through fieldwork and the study of past excavation.

• Better: Catalogued 75 newly excavated artifacts and distilled findings from the study of 250 artifacts and 120 published articles into four conference presentations and two submitted manuscripts on the role of burials and mortuary rituals in the new Bronze Age.

PhDs in the Social Sciences:

• Basic: Research EU policies impacting women and girls’ access to health services in refugee camps.

• Better: Synthesized insights from 280 sources in English and German into a 45-page report outlining 4 policy recommendations to increase safety and health outcomes for 4M women and girls currently living in six refugee campus distributed across 5 European Union member states.

STEM PhDs:

• Basic: Conducted research projects to investigate the impact of age on memory.

• Better: Distilled insights from 4-year research projects across three universities into 2 conference presentations and one published peer-reviewed paper on the impact of age on executive function and memory.

I will go more in-depth in future posts about how to think about and build bullet points around other transferable PhD skills:

• Skill #1 - Research and Analytical Skills (this is the one you are reading right now)

• Skill #2 - Communication and Relationships Management Skills

• Skill #3 - Project Management Skills

• Skill #4 - Self-Leadership Skills and Entrepreneurial Mindset (forthcoming)