The Doc Report - April 2017

by Leah Colvin, Office of Postdoctoral Affairs

A growing diversity and acceptance of careers available to those holding doctorates combined with fierce competition for grant dollars and a shrinking pool of tenure-track openings is leading to more and more postdocs considering leaving the tenure path in favor of careers outside academia. The good news for postdocs considering this path is that they have highly desired transferrable skills and qualities. However, because academic training often involves the assumption that only tenure-track faculty careers require professional preparation, many postdocs are unsure of how to take the first steps in preparing for and applying to nonacademic positions.

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by Julia McAnallen, Inside Higher Ed

Most PhDs develop a résumé as the first step in their expanded, or nonacademic, job search. Once they create a résumé, they apply for jobs, perhaps tweaking the résumé slightly for different applications. But I argue that this order should be reversed.

I encourage students to build their documents around job postings. The résumé and the cover letter are the first steps in a conversation between an applicant and an organization. In conversation, it is obvious when someone is not paying attention and responds inappropriately; likewise, it is usually obvious when a résumé was not written in response to the posted job.

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