Five Valuable Grad School Skills that Translate Outside Academia
November 15, 2021
5 min read
The soft skills that will land you jobs outside of your field of study.
Written by Simon Spichak
You may find yourself stressing over finding employment or figuring out a career path after academia. But you’ve developed the skills that make you more capable than you previously thought.
I felt like a failure and a fraud when I decided to leave my PhD program. While I still finished with an MSc, there was this nagging feeling that I wasn’t prepared for the world outside of academia. Sure, I had plenty of research experience in neuroscience and bioinformatics, but outside of a research environment, did they really bring any value? While I enjoyed talking to the public about my research, I didn’t know if I could make it work as a sustainable career.
Over my first few months post-academia, I reflected on what I learned and applied to several jobs that I thought I was in no way qualified for; but I did receive interviews based on the unique perspective that I could provide with an MSc. Of course, I didn’t get many of these opportunities, but I learned to frame my experiences in ways that can further my career.
Believe it or not, there are five skills that most people learn during their MA, MSc, or PhD (even if they leave it unfinished) that are highly sought after. Here, we’ll discuss how to reframe your experiences to apply for a wide variety of jobs and opportunities.
#1 Reading and Analyzing Enormous Piles of Data and Research
How many papers and documents have you read since you started grad school? This number is likely even higher than the number of tabs you’ve got open on your web browser right now. You’ve also sat through countless presentations and seminars, listened to experts in the field present their work, and learned how to critically analyze it all.
Many other jobs also require due diligence; think about journalists who need to sift through data and verify the facts. Or people working within banking, finance, and venture capital funding who need to learn about different companies to learn if they’re worth investing. We are also living through a period of rampant misinformation, making it more important than ever for many companies to verify their sources and accurately analyze their own data and conclusions.
I always repeat the line that I bring a fresh perspective because of my degree. Sure it is in a different field, but it means you’re bringing fresh eyes to the problem without any past biases or preconceptions.
#2 Solving Challenging Problems
In grad school nothing comes easy – in the sciences and social sciences, designing experiments and analyzing data is never as simple as it sounds. Something always goes wrong and you need to pivot or find a different strategy to solve the problem. For scientists, we’re constantly troubleshooting experiments to get them working; it took me several years to figure out how to grow a pesky type of cell in a dish!
Other times, you might be working with something very novel or trying to integrate new evidence and ideas into existing theories. These conceptual problems are also not easy to navigate and solve, which is why it takes several years to get to the thesis stage. Suffice it to say, there isn’t much that the world can throw at you that’s going to be harder than some of the problems you worked through in grad school.
#3 Communication and Teamwork
Grad school teaches you how to talk and work with your colleagues. You also learn how to deal with clashing personalities and difficult individuals. While some of these experiences aren’t very good, I learned the best ways to navigate these conflicts. In any interview, you can impress your potential employer by discussing these tricky situations.
In addition, you learn how to communicate with your advisors through different stages of your degree. You learn about collaborating with colleagues and how to negotiate your own limits. How to say no when you’re already overburdened or how you can improve your work by consulting with a colleague.
#4 Adapting to High-Pressure, Chaotic Environments
Over the course of grad school, your project can radically change. Experiments or lines of inquiry fail, side projects become main projects, and hypotheses get abandoned. For me, it felt like every year I had to learn new skills and a new topic. It doesn’t help that I was also adjusting to living on my own at the time.
Grad school is an extremely high-stress environment where things change quickly. But you’ve developed your own ways to manage this chaos and pressure. This is highly valuable especially when working with companies that often face similar pressures. You can thrive and adapt creatively to chaos.
#5 Time Management and Organization
Grad school is a tumultuous time in our lives where we juggle our personal lives, relationships with friends and family, as well as our program. Often times, there’s a research and a course-load component; some people continue working other jobs to make ends meet. To get through grad school, you develop these skills that make you extremely efficient and capable.
Combine time management and organization with everything else and you’ve got an impeccable track record of transferrable soft skills. While your academic journey might be at the end, the skills you’ve developed along the way will serve you in just about any career you choose. The trick is to put yourself out there, I wouldn’t be where I am now without sending a few applications for jobs I thought myself unqualified for. Don’t undervalue your skills!
**Please note that this post is written for educational purposes, it is not therapy. If you need to talk to a professional please book a consultation with a psychotherapist through Resolvve. **
