Ten things we’ve learnt about our PhDs in a decade away from research
Somehow it’s been a decade since we graduated from our PhD programs.
On the one hand it doesn’t feel like our graduation ceremonies were all that long ago, but upon reflection we’ve done and learned an awful lot since those days. So, in honour of those ten elapsed years, here’s ten things we’ve learned about our PhDs since finishing them.
1. The skills we developed during our PhDs remain surprisingly relevant
Between us, we've now had a few different roles beyond academia (if you're interested, feel free to snoop our LinkedIn pages: Sam, Jonathan) and, in all of these roles, we've found that some or other of the skills we developed during our PhDs have proven useful. And sometimes in unexpected ways!
A good example of this was when Sam was working with a team of business and technical experts to write a business case asking for funding to undertake a software development project. During this process it became clear she was drawing on skills she’d developed way back in the early stages of her PhD candidature, when she had to craft and frame an argument around a gap in the literature to justify her research plans.
2. Critical thinking may be the most useful and transferable skill from a PhD
We think critical thinking is the main skill we’ve taken into our lives beyond academia. We want to understand things, we want to ask ‘why’ and then ‘why again’. And, yes, sometimes in this process we discover things we didn’t want to…
Interestingly, when we were surrounded by other researchers all day, we tended to assume that this kind of critical thinking was the default mode for people in knowledge work. But that’s not always the case: critical thinking is a skill set that we've learnt over the course of many years, and not everyone has spent as long honing their razor as we did.
This makes critical thinking an incredibly valuable and infinitely transferable skill in roles beyond academia. Irrespective of the context, well honed critical thinking skills allow for quickly cutting to the core of any matter.
3. We’ve often known how to do the thing; but not how to talk about the thing
Early in our non-academic careers, we found ourselves sitting in a meeting where all the participants were talking enthusiastically about how we need to do a particular thing that we’d never heard of.
When those meetings would end, we’d quietly ask a colleague to explain the activity that had been discussed, only to realise as they explained it that we were totally familiar with the concept, just not the jargon used to describe the concept in this particular context.
An early example of this in Jonathan’s career was the first time he was exposed to the concept of data governance. He didn’t know the jargon, but when it was explained to him it became obvious that there was a huge overlap between data governance in a non-academic context and the data management rules he had to follow during his PhD in accordance with his ethics clearance.
On the upside, while we may have sometimes found ourselves in situations where we don’t know the jargon of a particular domain, we do know how to learn jargon. After all, we had to do that when we were learning the jargon of our PhD topic areas.
4. We’ve had to get comfortable with incomplete evidence
Every single thing we wrote or presented for our PhDs contained caveats. We were trained to present our findings and their limitations, to provide not only our interpretation of the evidence but also the many other explanations that might equally explain our findings. And we would inevitably note that more research would be necessary to draw any definitive conclusion.
While this is an incredibly important practice in scientific research, there’s often no time or appetite for heavy caveats in roles beyond academia.
In fact, it’s often the case that you’re asked a question that needs an answer next week, or tomorrow, or even today. And because people are hoping to take a course of action based on your answers, they're not always keen on being presented with a list of limitations and alternate interpretations.
We do still caveat our work, but we're still adjusting to the fact that there simply isn't always the time for someone to do the further research that would be necessary to give a rock solid answer to a question.
5. You’ve already trained yourself to take the long view
A PhD is not a short-term proposition.
As a time commitment, it’s likely something along the lines of 3 to 4 years of full time study (at least!) before completion. This is a long time indeed to commit to working on one particular thing.
And what’s more, at the end of it, your PhD is unlikely to change the world. Maybe the best you can hope for is that your research might be useful to the next researcher and the next and the next until eventually there is a discovery that does make a big splash. To paraphrase Pink Floyd, we're all just putting more bricks in the wall.
We think the lesson here is that if you’ve signed up to a PhD program, you’re likely already thinking about the long game. And given how important skills like project management are to roles beyond academia, our PhDs have given us a good foundation in taking a strategic approach, seeing the long game, and working backwards to figure out what needs to be done here and now.
6. A PhD may be an exercise in resilience rather than brilliance
People have wanted to be on trivia teams with us because we have PhDs and so it’s assumed “we must be super smart”. It’s fair to say there’s been more than one trivia-related disappointment…
We might not be trivia guns, but we must be pretty gritty - we’re pretty sure that surviving our PhD candidature ranks right up there in a list of toughest things we’ve ever done.
Those tedious days of writing, editing, re-editing; experiments not turning out as expected; having manuscripts we submitted getting rejected… the list just goes on and on.
But these experiences taught us that we can push through and get things done, and that we can find ways to adapt or change course when things don’t go to plan. We’re resilient enough to try and try again.
7. Our PhD topics are largely irrelevant
To be clear, here we are drawing a distinction between the process of undertaking a PhD (see all of the above - definitely relevant!) and the PhD topic itself (largely irrelevant).
That’s right, beyond academia, no one really cares about those super niche topic areas we lived and breathed for many long years.
Occasionally, someone might ask in passing about what we did for our PhDs but that’s about it. Mostly we reply with two to three words, and then everyone just moves on.
Once in a blue moon we’ll find ourselves going into a bit more detail, and as we rattle off a few sentences, we’re reminded that we once learned a huge amount about that niche topic area (and apparently still remember some of it!).
8. People are impressed that we have publications
It was truly painful the day we took the publication details off our CVs. It was such a big deal to get those publications, so it seemed wrong to do anything other than include every single detail in a ‘publication records’ section of our CV.
Our newsflash? Just as a PhD topic is largely irrelevant, so too are the specifics of any resulting publications. So we found this was really just wasting valuable CV real estate.
But we didn't remove the fact that we have published. Instead, we include on our CV a summary of the number of publications we have, because it turns out that having had work published seems to impress beyond academia.
And that’s not because we have particularly impressive publication records: people don’t ask about our citations or h-indices, they don’t ask about the journals we’re published in or where we are in the author order.
It’s sufficiently impressive that we’re published, in and of itself.
9. Not many jobs call for a PhD, but many benefit from you having one
If you snooped our LinkedIn back at point 1, you might have noticed that most of the roles we’ve held don’t look like they would have required a PhD. And that’s true.
In our experience, there aren’t a whole lot of roles that list a PhD as a prerequisite, even though many of these roles would benefit from a PhD skill set. We even read recently that “80% of employers who post a research oriented job do not put ‘PhD’ in their ad”.
The upshot of this? Just because a job ad doesn't mention the need for a PhD doesn't mean that the role won't benefit from you having one.
10. You’ll feel a connection with other people with PhDs
Once you start looking you’ll likely find that there are a few people in roles beyond academia that hold PhDs. In some workplaces it’s a lot, in others maybe just one or two.
And, acknowledging maybe this is a bit weird, having been through the process of doing a PhD we really like finding and chatting to those other PhD graduates.
Hearing their stories, we realise there’s a lot to relate to. Even though disciplines and institutions have varied, so far we’ve found that PhD tales tend to be not too dissimilar to our own.
Speaking of which, unless something goes horribly wrong, the next post in this series will be an interview with a PhD holder who is now working in a role beyond academia. There will be plenty of PhD and post PhD tales to share with you!
And if you'd like to be interviewed for this series, please get in touch with either Jonathan or Sam via LinkedIn.