There are quite a few resources that explain why there is a job for you outside academic research. These resources often focus on transferable skills, analytic thinking, project management, and all the other buzz words. It’s all true, but these articles often understate the importance of communication skills to your academic exit strategy. You may be the world’s leading expert on the hibernation cycles of tardigrades, but unless there is a non-academic version of your research position, you’ll have to make your experience relevant to your future employer. So let’s dive into the three reasons why communication will be one of your most important skills when you decide to pursue a non-academic career.
Getting the job in the first place
Unless your current research has direct commercial or public sector value, you will be changing fields and trying to land a position outside your subject expertise. To get a job interview you’ll have to tailor your resume and cover letter in such a way that it explains to a recruiter:
- why you’re applying,
- what you did, and
- how that makes you the person they’re looking for.
When you make it to an interview, which you will, you’ll present that same message ‘in-person’. Bottom line, you need to be able to convey years of highly specialised research in a 1–2-minute catchy pitch as if you’re explaining it to your parents (we’ve all been here). This is often a key skill looked for in PhDs and postdocs. They’re not looking for revolutionary geniuses, they are looking for clever people that can explain complicated things to anyone.
Making your ideas happen
You’ve spent the past years solving problems in science. You gather information to form ideas and hypotheses. However, outside academia you won’t be trying to convince Reviewer 2 to approve your ideas. Instead, you’re trying to convince your manager. Trust me, Reviewer 2 pales in comparison to your executives. Logic and reason, the founding pillars of your academic career, do not necessarily lead to decision making outside academia (do they even in academia?). Unless you’re going to work in a start-up, you’ll end up at an existing organisation with an existing mindset and existing organisational structure. Influencing change in a positive way, or even just conveying your ideas, requires you to be able to see through your manager’s eyes, and be able to clearly communicate ideas tailored to their needs and mindset. It’s all about messaging.
Being a true team player
In academia you might be working in a big or small collaboration, you may have written a paper with a team, or shared a lab with other researchers. Outside academia being a team player is taken to a whole new level. Firstly, you no longer work on ideas that are yours (see previous article). Whatever you’re going to work on will go through many iterations as it goes up along the management hierarchy. Secondly, you’ll work with people from all walks of life. They most likely have not taken the same academic path as you, i.e. undergrad, master’s, PhD, postdoc. In addition to working with managers, you’ll also work with, and maybe even supervise, a broad range of people. This can range from highly specialised technical staff to project managers. Working with such a diverse set of people is incredibly stimulating and challenging, and similar to working with executives you need to be able to articulate your ideas and tailor your vocabulary to the background of your colleagues.
There you have it: three reasons why communication is the primary skill you need to hone when you plan to leave academic research.
- Getting a job offer
- Being able to convince your future managers
- Working effectively with a broad range of people
Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to do lots of problem solving and analytic thinking, but communicating with people will be become a bigger part of your work. Perhaps bigger than it ever has been, because you’ll spend a lot of time tailoring your messages (more about that in a future article)! In the meantime, start working on your science pitch; try it out on friends, family, or the random stranger at the bus stop.
Curious to how you can practice communication, or did you have other skills that became a large part of your work when you left academia? Feel free to leave any questions or thoughts behind in the comments!
Ronniy Joseph is an Astrophysicist at the McGill Space Institute in Tio’tia:ke (or Montréal) in Canada. He has previously worked in Data Science & Strategy while in Australia, and Higher Education in the Netherlands. Apart from travelling the world, he enjoys thinking about science and its impact on society.
Ronniy Joseph 