Stories from Beyond Academia #15: Sam Baggott

(PhD in Cognitive Science)

Dr Samantha Baggott (PhD in Cognitive Science)

In our posts thus far, we’ve introduced this newsletter and we’ve heard some fascinating stories from PhDs from all kinds of disciplines. You might have also gleaned a bit about us from these posts, but we thought we really ought to properly introduce ourselves. And we’ve decided to stick with the interview format to do so!

So, first, a little bit of backstory – we completed our PhDs as part of the same PhD cohort at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and we crossed paths again several years later, working in a data and analytics team together. At that point in our careers, our career stories had strikingly similar start and end points: from PhDs in the same discipline at the same Uni to working in that same data team.

Despite the start and end point similarities, it was quite interesting for us to realise that we’d taken very different paths throughout the intervening years, and we brought very different things to the table.

We’re also both keen on the idea of helping PhDs understand and communicate the value of their PhDs beyond the academic context, and in reflecting on our stories we’d stumbled on a pretty neat real-life example of taking skills developed from the process of completing a PhD and applying those skills in different ways in the non-academic world.

We’ve both since moved on into different ‘day jobs’, but we co-founded this small business together to try keep the conversation about non-academic post-PhD careers going. We’ve delivered lectures, workshops, and presentations on this topic to various universities and student groups, and we’re now running this newsletter – all of which continues to remind us   just how valuable PhD skills are outside of academia!

For the purposes of this interview, though, Jonathan is pretending none of that has ever happened. He’s going to put his interviewer voice on once again, and get the story of Sam’s career beyond academia, so far.

Jonathan McGuire: Yep, this isn’t weird at all, pretending I don’t know you. Can you tell us about the field of your PhD?

Sam Baggott: Sure, not weird at all, insert an awkward pause here! But yes, I have a PhD in Cognitive Science, and I studied the way humans process emotional information from facial expressions. I started research in this area as part of my honours project. In that project, I paired emotional words and emotional facial expressions where the face displayed could be emotionally congruent to the word displayed (an angry facial expression shown with an angry kind of word), it could be emotionally incongruent (a sad facial expression with an angry kind of word), or it could be neutral relative to the word (a neutral facial expression with an angry kind of word). And I looked at how quickly and accurately people could categorise the emotion of the word, ignoring the face). I found that responses were slower and less accurate when the pairings didn’t match, meaning that the emotional information conveyed by the face is processed - even though there’s no need to really care about the face at all.

I really enjoyed my honours research, and I remember having a conversation with one of the PhDs working in a similar field at my Uni who told me that a PhD was just like an extended version of an honours research project, quite possibly with scholarship funding attached. And my thinking was along the lines of ‘what’s not to love about that?!’ So, in terms of motivation for starting a PhD, that was a big part of mine!

I enrolled to go from my honours year straight into the PhD program the next year. I also had the opportunity to do a summer research project to learn about electroencephalography (EEG) and somehow managed to squeeze that in between. This summer project extended the research from my honours project to look at brain activity, in addition to accuracy and speed of responses, when doing this word categorisation task. And together, that pretty much set the stage for my PhD research - I knew I was interested in the processing of emotional information from facial expressions, I knew I was interested in how that might be impacted by whether or not you’re paying attention to the facial expression, and from this summer project I’d have this exposure to this other research method to help understand what’s actually happening in the brain when this processing is going on.

So, yes, there were quite a few experiments in my PhD, but I continued to look at the way humans process emotional information from faces under different attentional conditions. I got to do some more behavioural experiments and another imaging experiment in my PhD - this time a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. And, long story short, turns out humans process emotional information from facial expressions pretty fast, mostly whether you're paying attention or not. And you'll be happy to know that in the fMRI study, the expected parts of the brain lit up in response to what we displayed. How very reassuring!

JM: Very reassuring, indeed. When you wrapped up your PhD, you didn't go down the academic path at all. Tell us a bit about what you did directly post PhD.

SB: So there was almost no discussion about non-academic careers amongst the PhDs in my cohort, all the conversations were about where you’d do your first postdoc. I think I was at least a little bit uncertain about what I'd do post-PhD for almost my whole PhD candidature though. I wasn't committed to a non-academic career, but I wasn't committed to an academic one either.

And so, I think I was really just trying to figure out how to turn these things I was interested in into a series of studies that could form a PhD. And I remember thinking how it would be useful to get exposure to all these different kinds of techniques and research methods, to do all the conferences and lab visits and all the rest, figuring that helped me learn more and more about the options, and also keep my options open.

But actually I think the decision point for me was probably a post-PhD careers workshop that I attended in my research centre. There were a number of academics talking about their career pathways and how they made it to where they were, and giving their tips and tricks. And almost as a side note, right at the end of the workshop, I think in the Q&A session, one of the presenters said something like “of course, as well as all of these academic pathways that we've just been talking about, you could also do what this colleague of ours has done", and they proceeded to tell a quick anecdote of this colleague who had a PhD and had moved into what I’ve since been calling a research-adjacent role.

Much to the amusement of some of my PhD friends who were sitting in this workshop with me, I walked straight out of the workshop and knocked on the door of this colleague's office and asked if she could talk to me a bit more about what she did in her role. I think that passing comment in the workshop, and the conversation with that colleague, helped me start clarifying my thinking a bit more, and the first role that I held after my PhD was a research administration role in that research centre.

… in the first instance, that’s what I was doing: just doing some casual hours to backfill her role, supporting the researchers in our research centre in that capacity, while I finished up my PhD. So, that was certainly a good opportunity to ‘try before you buy’, if you will - for them and for me, I guess!

JM: Was that a submit thesis on Friday and start a research administration role on Monday kind of thing?

SB: There was a bit of overlap with the later stages of my PhD actually, as this particular colleague was promoted just as I was coming to the end of my PhD and they were looking for someone who could do some casual hours to backfill her role. I heard about this on the grapevine and I put my hand up. And I think because the people doing that hiring knew me and knew my work, and I’d flagged my interest in this kind of position already, they gave me some of these casual hours. So in the first instance, that’s what I was doing: just doing some casual hours to backfill her role, supporting the researchers in our research centre in that capacity, while I finished up my PhD. So, that was certainly a good opportunity to ‘try before you buy’, if you will - for them and for me, I guess!

I really liked the work, I was keen to do that sort of work on a more permanent basis, and so I was quick to put in an application when the centre advertised that research administration role as a full-time opportunity. I applied for several other roles at the same time (I figured you never know what the outcome of any recruitment is going to be, and I was very keen to finally be in full-time work!). That was really quite interesting too, I found there really are all sorts of research adjacent roles out there. But of course I was very happy to take the role in that research centre when it was offered - I already knew that it was a great place to work, with some really wonderful colleagues and inspiring researchers, and I was thrilled to stay on with that additional stability, a fixed salary and leave entitlements!

JM: What was it about that job or that statement in that workshop that appealed to you?

SB: I think that was twofold. On the one hand, I was in my PhD watching researchers around me applying for grants and seeing the highs if the grant was successful, and the very, very deep lows if it wasn't. And I just did not like the idea of living grant to grant one little bit. I personally couldn’t imagine living a life like that, I really wanted something more stable.

At the same time, I was seeing and hearing this colleague contributing to the broader research endeavour through supporting other people's research: helping people structure and redraft their grant applications, helping craft the arguments, helping make sure the logic made sense, and that was really appealing for me - it was like I could still be part of and contribute to research, but it just wasn't my research anymore, and I could avoid that precarious grant-to-grant lifestyle.

JM: I love that you saw how disappointing and unpleasant the grant application process can be, so you went into a grant administration role.

SB: I hear that, of course - but that’s the way the research system ‘worked’ (and still does, as far as I know). I was just hoping I was doing something to help!

JM: You've been in a few fields since - how have you chosen which fields to go into?

SB: When I was in that research administration role, I worked with an academic who had what I would describe as an incredibly passionate loathing for ‘missed opportunities’. And I think I’ve taken a bit of that on board, because I feel like there’s been an element of chance, coupled with a willingness to give things a go, and really trying to seize opportunities, in everything that has happened in my career so far - and I’ve really related to hearing that in the other interviews we’ve done for this series so far too!

So in terms of my career story, and the fields I’ve worked in so far, here goes:

The first move I made after working in research administration for several years was into an outreach role. And I put that down to being known, being willing to try a new thing, and timing. This outreach role was in the same research centre as the research admin role I was in, and that role was soon to be temporarily vacated as the person in that role was preparing to go on a period of parental leave. I was on parental leave myself at the time, but I was starting to think about what my return to work might look like and I’d kept in touch with several colleagues and heard about this potential opportunity through them. I flagged my interest in the role, and ended up job-sharing that role as a parental leave cover, as I returned to work. When the job-share partner left, I took on that role full-time. I was really familiar with the research and the researchers, so the change I experienced in switching into the outreach role was about the audience. I went from helping researchers communicate their research plans as they applied for research funding (via grants administered by funding bodies) to helping researchers talk about their research findings, and to the general public. For instance, that research centre ran a high school work experience program and when I was in that role, I was helping to coordinate that. I also helped researchers put together newsletters, I helped write content for the centre website, I tried to grow the centre’s social media, all to help tell the broader world about all the findings coming out of that centre.

And I should say, it was fascinating to see how the communication needed there was same, same but different: we were still talking about the same research - grants at the beginning stages of research to a relatively expert audience, and outreach more about the research findings to a much more general audience. It was a really interesting role, and I very much enjoyed that ongoing involvement in research and this new angle.

Toward the end of my time in that role, I was preparing to go on another period of parental leave but I was curious about what else might be out there and what I might return to this time. So, right before I went on my parental leave, I applied for a few jobs. One was a research evaluation role within that same university. I already knew I quite liked working with data, so a job looking at research metrics seemed kind of interesting. And I can say that it was an interesting proposition, applying for a role when pregnant!

I was totally transparent about my pregnancy in my cover letter, and used my cover letter to argue my case for what I believed I could bring to the role (acknowledging that I’d most likely be on parental leave when they would have been expecting their new hire to start).

I wasn’t sure what would happen, to be honest. I interviewed for that role at something like 36 weeks pregnant. I remember it being an incredibly hot day, and I remember feeling not very good at all. But I got a formal offer just after my baby was born, and I had that role to go back into after six months of parental leave. It was actually a bit of a hectic time.

JM: Yes, I can't imagine that interviewing at 36 weeks’ pregnant was the most physically and psychologically comfortable experience.

SB: True. Although I did have a really good icebreaker for my interview: my opening line for my interview was something like "I hope I don't go into labour in the next hour". I promise you, everyone on the interview panel chuckled at that.

Anyway, I worked in that research evaluation role for a while and quickly discovered that the process was extremely manual: relevant research outputs were listed in a master spreadsheet, which was then copied, filtered, and sent all around the uni to be ‘coded’ by academic experts from the different research fields. The codes supplied were then collated centrally and checked row-by-row. There were a LOT of spreadsheets, let me tell you.

And so I started talking to some colleagues about how we could potentially look to automate things. Next thing, I was working on drafting a business case to request funding for a custom software development project to facilitate this coding process.

Side note - and this next comment may be a strange one for anyone who knows what a business case is, but that was the moment where I realised that I LOVE writing business cases!

Anyway, the project was funded, and I went on to that project as a process analyst. And that was the beginning of a series of technical projects that I worked on as a process or business analyst. And so, by this stage, I had moved from research administration, to outreach, to research evaluation, and then into IT.

After working on this software development project, I moved to a data project. I knew I liked data, I’d gotten a sense that I enjoyed project-based work, and I’d moved over into IT working on technical projects, so this seemed to work as a next step. This project was a bit of a transformation project, setting up a new data warehouse for the organisation from scratch. And so we as the project team needed to consider the technical architecture, needed to procure the relevant products, needed to identify the hundreds of organisational systems containing data that would need to be ingested into the warehouse, the governance arrangements and policies and procedures we’d need to have in place, all before we even got to thinking about what questions could be asked of the data! And it was that experience that moved me off into the land of data for a bit - I moved from that role to a new organisation as Assistant Director of a Data and Analytics team, then took over the Director role for a time as well, before moving into a data strategy role.

From my time in data land, I’d say I ended up with a few different ‘buckets’ of experience: conceptualising data strategy; experience working between the business (who were looking for data to answer particular operational questions) and the data engineers and data analysts (who had access to the data that could provide the answer); some opportunities to do some work much closer to the research-side of things, undertaking an impact analysis and seeing non-parametric statistical tests in action (data is much dirtier in the real world!); and finally, I had the privilege of leading an excellent data and analytics team.

I still love data, the chance to do some strategic work and some hands-on problem-solving, the opportunity to craft a good narrative, and I have found the project-based work format is really good for me at the moment. And my current role is a pretty ideal combination of all of these things - working on digital, technology, data and communication projects as the need arises. And I think that pretty much brings you up to date!

I don’t really think it was until I sat on the other side of the recruitment table that I felt compelled to make my CV as succinct as it could possibly be!

JM: I'd like to go back to that first post-PhD job. Looking to go into research administration, coming from a research background, was there anything in particular that you did to prepare?

SB: I wouldn’t say I did any particularly conscious preparation. I needed to prepare a CV for the applications to those first research administration roles though. I knew that an academic, track-record-style CV wasn’t going to cut it; in fact I think I actually ended up taking the format of the CV I’d used to apply for casual jobs while I was in high school as the starting format for my applications to non-academic post-PhD jobs.

But I look back on those versions of my CV now and there are so many things I’d change - I might have used a non-academic CV format, but I still included details of my academic publications and presentations in those early versions of my CV (probably because it felt too painful to cut them out at that stage).

Actually, I don’t really think it was until I sat on the other side of the recruitment table that I felt compelled to make my CV as succinct as it could possibly be! With the amount we talk about it, everyone probably knows just how much we’re in favour of a 1-page CV, and for me that was after being on the other side of the recruitment process…

All that aside, there were things from having a research background that did really prepare me for those research administration roles. It probably sounds a bit obvious, but having done my own research really helped me be able to support research more generally. I’d lived on that side of the fence, I knew the process. I ended up relying heavily on the skills I had around how to craft an argument and tell a logical story about the things that you've done and why that matters. That was something I could do to help researchers as they were preparing ethics or grant applications - checking they were able to clearly communicate and do that storytelling part (it’s also the part about business cases that I love the most). Of course I also did a lot of checking of budgets!

JM: You've just touched on this, but what skills or knowledge or experiences from your PhD do you think carried over into that work, and the work you've done since?

SB: Crafting a narrative was definitely something that was necessary not only in that immediate role post-PhD, but everything I've done since. As I mentioned, I love writing business cases and I have found myself as something like the go-to person now for writing business cases, which is fine by me. But I think that’s absolutely a skill from my PhD: so much drafting and redrafting to make sure a particular paper makes sense, doing that several times for the papers that make up chapters of your PhD, then the ultimate test of writing introduction and concluding chapters that bring all those individual pieces together into the cohesive whole that is the PhD. There’s a lot of framing and crafting practice right there!

Another thing I think I've needed as my career has continued is the ability to zoom in and zoom out. Coming out to the highest level and looking at things with a really broad, strategic mindset, and then also zooming into detail. I think that's something that a PhD taught me to do. Having to be really across the details of a particular experiment or series of experiments, but also trying to figure out how you were going to put those experiments together into something that made sense together. And then there's the data side of things. I did stats in every year of my undergrad, and then again in my PhD. And I thought I'd left all of that behind. Until several years later, when I found myself working on that impact analysis and needing to run some nonparametric tests. I needed to go back to my PhD stats textbook and try and figure out how to do that, but I think knowing where to look and how to learn that stuff was very valuable indeed.

JM: Thinking about your current role now, are there particular skills from a PhD that are most useful?

SB: My current day job definitely requires critical thinking and the ability to try and cut to the core of the matter. Sometimes you'll find that you're having a discussion with a group of stakeholders, and they're talking about a thing that they need, and you realise that is absolutely not the thing that they actually have a problem with. So you have to dig a little bit and then dig a little bit more, and try and analyse the situation that's in front of you as best you can to work out what’s ACTUALLY going on. Then there's the ability to synthesise information that kind of sits with that. And I think that's the kind of thing that you have to do all the time in completing a PhD. You just might not think about it so often.

A second thing that I'm going to raise is that flexibility you have to have when you're doing your PhD: you don't really know where a particular project is going to take you, so you just have to try to ask the next right question. My job right now sure has lots of interesting next questions to ask!

JM: Excellent. To wrap up, what advice would you give someone considering the switch from academia into a non-academic role or career?

SB: Clearly I’ll be a little bit biased here, because I am obviously a big believer in non-academic post-PhD career paths being available as a credible option. But here's two things. One, a PhD grad might have a whole raft of skills but, and I think this was true for me too, coming out of a PhD, I don't think I really felt like I had much to offer. I think that I felt like something of an "expert" in an incredibly niche topic that wasn't really useful to anyone. And I think that was a big part of the reason that I kept going back to my uni, and other unis, to talk about how we need to think bigger about PhD skills, and how those skills can be useful in the world outside. And it's a big part of the reason that we're here now. Because I genuinely believe that a PhD prepares you in a bunch of ways that you might not realise or expect.

Two, if someone was thinking about moving to a career beyond academia, I would say it needs to be right for you - if it is right for you, and it's something you're wanting to do, then my advice is that, no matter what other people say, it is an equally credible post-PhD path, and I wish you best of luck!

Thus concludes Sam’s interview… make sure you stay tuned for the next stories from beyond academia (including Jonathan’s)!

If you are a PhD who has moved beyond academia and you are interested in sharing your story, please get in touch with us via our LinkedIn pages - Sequitur Consulting, Sam, Jonathan - we’d love to hear from you.