Common Key Skills And Action Verbs For Phd Resumes For Industry And Non
To leverage your Ph.D. for a job in your field, you need to optimize your resume with appropriate keywords and action verbs. An Applicant Tracking System will scan your application at the onset of the application process. To achieve compliance with the keyword requirements, you need to strategically implement these terms into your document. Providing a mix of technical skills, soft skills, and industry knowledge will provide a broad range that emphasizes your versatility as a well-rounded candidate. Below, youll find a list of potential action verbs and skills across various fields and industries.
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Second Cohort Collaborations And Interactions
Industry is a collaborative environment, so industry hiring managers place a special value on interpersonal and leadership skills.
Make sure to claim any results that relate to collaboration, mentoring and teaching, as these show that you can work in a team and can lead and inspire your coworkers.
Dont let imposter syndrome convenience you that you cannot claim these results because you didnt achieve them alone. Nobody achieves anything alone, everything is part of a collaborative process and industry employers know that.
Once you make it to the interview process, you can explain your involvement in more detail.
But you only have a couple of seconds to convince someone looking at your resume to give you that interview. Dont lose that chance because you are afraid to take ownership of a collaborative result. Instead, take a look at the following bullets and add them to your resume.
If You Have Been Submitting Stock Resumes Its Not Surprising That You Havent Been Getting Called In For Interviews
However, you can start writing your resume before you have a specific job posting in mind.
To do that you just need to identify the type of position that you are interested in.
For example, your resume will highlight very different skills and results if you are targeting a medical writing position versus a user experience position.
So, before you start writing, look over the industry positions available to PhDs and reflect on your core values to decide what positions might be a good fit for you.
Additionally, when deciding what positions are a good fit for you, its wise to set up informational interviews with people who already have those jobs.
Ask them questions about their day-to-day, career trajectory, and overall satisfaction.
They have a perspective on the position that it would not be possible for you to gain by just doing online research.
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How To Write Your Phd Resume
Before you start writing, make sure you know how to write a resume in a way that best emphasizes your strengths.
If youre a PhD looking for jobs outside of academia, youre not confined to one specific job title.
PhDs can find jobs in many sectors, including:
- consulting
- industry labs
- high school education or university education as a lecturer
While some jobs may require a hybrid resume-CV or even an academic CV, most non-academic jobs require a standard resume format.
Follow our 3 tips to write an effective PhD resume:
Examples Of Professional Experiences For Phd
Cornell University03/2016 Present
- Encouraged students ability to think critically and participate in discussions in the courses of drama by implementing a variety of teaching methods and techniques.
- Increased employees attendance records from passable to exceptional by emphasizing punctuality and being prepared to start work on arrival.
- Implemented discipline and other measures into lesson plans to encourage students to participate in class and concentrate on their lessons so that they would take responsibility for their own learning.
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Dont Follow Bad Advice
I felt stuck and lost so I asked my academic advisor to help me write my résumé. He sent me his CV and said Here, look at this. Great. Thanks for nothing. I knew that industry hiring managers werent interested in CVs. How did my advisor not know this?
Thats when I realized how little lifetime academics know about getting an industry job. So, I asked one of the job counselors at the graduate school for advice. She told me the key to getting an interview was to write a very detailed cover letter, make sure that my education history was at the top of my résumé, and to include a one sentence objective at the very top of my résumé.
Okay. Thats great advice. Right? Nope. She was wrong too. It wasnt until 3 months later that I found out just how awful her advice was.
Oddly Popular Phd Careers In Finance And Business
PhDs in the sciences and humanities are not qualified to work in finance or business. At least thats what I thought. That was until I started hearing more of my former colleagues talk about their transition into consulting and financial service roles. These were people who specialized in very niche areas of science. I was surprised to learn that their skills were needed in the financial and business sectors of industry. What can a PhD in the sciences or humanities possibly contribute to finance and business? As always, it comes down to your transferable skills. These sectors are seeking highly
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These Frequently Appearing Words Are The Keywords For Your Target Position
For example, a Data Science word cloud will likely have data analysis as a frequently occurring keyword, and the word cloud allows you to figure out what the other, not as obvious, keywords are.
Write down these top key skills.
Start thinking about your own experience as a PhD and identify ways that you have demonstrated these skills.
If needed jot down some quick notes about each of the key skills that you can revisit when writing your bullet points.
How To Write An Industry Resume
Lets start by setting out your goal and a key expectation as you begin to turn your CV into a resume:
- Your Goal: Concisely describe your unique research experience and background in written form so that you stand out from the crowd of other job applicants
- Key expectation: It will take some time investment and iteration to get a concise, clear, resume – whether youre starting from your CV or from a blank slate
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Adapt Your Results To Include Industry
Another way to increase the impact of your results is to change the language to refer to industry jargon.
Take the term SOP . It might sound like a very industry-specific result, but it refers to protocols and methodologies.
Look at the bullets below and use them as an inspiration to include keywords like optimization, discoveries, and systems to your resume.
How To Sail Smoothly From Academia To Industry
Scientists at the biotechnology company Affymetrix in Santa Clara, California. Positions in the biotechnology sector are highly sought after.Credit: Stephan Elleringmann/laif/eyevine
When immuno-oncologist Martijn Bijker decided to move from academia to industry, he asked a friend to review his CV. His friend who had worked in the pharmaceutical sector for two decades told him to relegate his lists of publications, posters and presentations to the back of the document. The focus, he said, should be on teamwork skills and the ability to perform the job requirements.
The advice was an eye-opener for Bijker. He was used to the academic hierarchy, which values individual achievements above all else. But in corporate research, candidates must focus on collaboration.
Bijker subsequently founded From Science to Pharma, a consultancy and recruitment firm based in Sydney, Australia. He now regularly issues similar counsel to scientists hoping to shift from academia to industry, encouraging them to flip their CV and their mindset to reflect the differences between the sectors.
Biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry positions are attractive to many recent PhD graduates and are thus highly competitive. More than half of the respondents to Natures 2017 Graduate Student Survey said that they would like to work in industry, and nearly one-quarter said an industrial position was what they most wanted.
The switch to industry
Do your homework
Industry contacts
Career keywords
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Phd Careers In Clinical Medical And Regulatory Affairs
I was defending my PhD in 6 months, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do. What job did I want? Where did I see myself in 5 to 10 years? My goal was to get out of academia and into industry and as quickly as possible. Beyond that, I hadnt thoroughly considered my options. In fact, when I finally sat down to apply for jobs, I blindly searched for open positions using standard terms: Researcher, Scientist, Biologist, and so on. As a science PhD, thats what I was qualified for, right? What I didnt appreciate
Isaiah Hankel
The LinkedIn tips & strategies within have helped PhDs from every background get hired into top industry careers.
Professional Summary For A Phd
More often than not, there will be a lot of other PhD graduate candidates looking to get employment at the same positions youve applied for.
Whats even more interesting is that employers receive over a hundred applications every day this holds especially true for non-academic positions.
Recruiters simply dont have the time or ability to fully read through all of the applicants resumes. Instead, theyll just skim through applications.
A great way to get around this problem and grab the hiring managers attention right away is by putting a short, concise section into your resume that discusses relevant information about your expertise.
This part of the application is called the professional summary section, and it briefly talks about your relevant experience, achievements, and skills in regard to the position youre applying for.
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Best Of Transition: Phd Jobs & Job Search Strategies August 06 2022
Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week if its a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.
Avoid Sharing Awkward Information And Avoid Images And Artwork
Industry resumes with photos are rejected 88% of the time.
Sure, there are very rare exceptions in certain countries, but even this is changing.
LinkedIn is where images and semi-personal information should be shared, not on your resume.
Why? Because submitting a photo is too personal. Dont make the mistake of getting too personal too soon.
Likewise, try not to be creative with your resume.
Your resume should be one color , one font style , two font sizes and one level of indentation, and one type of bullet point .
The most important rule of writing an effective industry resume is to leave off almost all personal information.
Networking and strong references are all the personal items your resume needs.
Include a short cover letter with a personal greeting and a personal reference who works at the company.
However, dont be afraid to add a single line to your resume indicating an award youve received – especially if its a non-academic award or leadership role.
Things like, Captain of the swim team with 3 consecutive awards for leadership or Four-time Habitat for Humanity project leader will help you to stand out from the piles of other resumes.
Most of those other resumes will come from PhDs who have nothing but their academic achievements to cite. Avoid all of these things on your resume and youll take a step toward all the successful PhDs who have finally joined industry in awesome roles where theyre paid what theyre worth.
Are you a PhD?
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Start With The Contact Information Of The Phd Resume
Just like properly starting any academic presentations, so does your PhD CV need a strong, informative start.
A great way to begin your writing process is by introducing yourself to the reader. After all, the main reason why youre writing a resume in the first place is for employers to notice your credentials.
This information can be provided to the reader through the contact information section.
After writing your name as the title of the CV, include your job title, physical address, email address, and relevant professional website below.
Measurable Results That Any Phd Should Add To Their Industry Resume
I knew I wanted to leave academia, but I didnt know how to set up an industry job search strategy. The only thing I could think of was uploading resumes online.
I kept doing that, but I never heard back from employers. I knew there was another world out there, but I had no idea how to crack into it.
Eventually, I became convinced that I had no value. That my PhD was useless. And I lost all my motivation.
I had undervalued myself so much that I started doing landscaping work and working as a janitor.
Believe it or not, the job itself I actually enjoyed because I could see the impact of my work. I felt that I had gained back the control that academia had taken away from me.
This kind of situation happens a lot to PhDs.
We feel that academia takes away our control, so we decide to leave, but we get confronted with the overwhelming process of getting a job outside academia, we dont know where to start, and we end up devaluing ourselves.
If this has happened to you, know that you are not alone and that you are valuable in industry. You just need to identify the gaps in your knowledge and understand the process of setting up a successful job search strategy.
So, how do you reinvent yourself to show employers that you are a valuable industry professional? You start with your industry resume.
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Best Of Transition: Phd Jobs & Job Search Strategies July 16 2022
Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week if its a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.
Why You Should Always Target Your Resume
For every open position, a company gets 250 resumes on average big companies like Apple and Google can receive up to 2,000 resumes for each open position.
The hiring committee will shortlist 10 of those candidates to go through the interview process and only 1 will get hired.
Currently, more than 95% of fortune 500 companies use applicant tracking system software , an artificial intelligence programmed to select the resumes that better match an open position.
In companies that use ATS as part of their selection process, only 60 resumes out of the initial 250 will make it into the hands of an actual person. This means 4 out of 6 resumes are weeded out by the ATS.
If you dont have a referral, you dont stand a chance if you apply to a position with an untargeted resume that doesnt have a proper industry format.
And as you saw from the story in the previous section, you can lose your chances at a job if you apply with an untargeted resume even if you have a referral by making the wrong impression to someone in the hiring committee.
So, how can you ensure your resume makes it past ATS and impresses every person who reads it?
You target your resume for each position by adding the right information in every single bullet point.
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Best Of Transition: Phd Jobs & Job Search Strategies August 20 2022
Every week, we at Cheeky Scientist scour the Internet for the best articles on topics that help in the search for the Best of Transition: PhD Job Search in the industry. Our two consultants independently search for the most informative articles in the categories of networking, CVs/resumes, interviews, transferable skills, academic blues, industry positions, and business acumen. Our consultants vote on a top article for each category and a top overall article for the week if its a recent article that can help readers find and acquire PhD jobs, then we want to include it in this weekly digest.
There Is A Proven Pattern To Adding Measurable Results To Your Resume
Coming up with a template of transferable skills that PhDs can use in their resumes was not an easy task.
Everybody has a different story. The PhDs in our programs come from different backgrounds and are targeting different positions. They have a different number of publications and collaborations.
However, after looking at hundreds of successful resumes, I started to see some patterns that came up over and over again.
This allowed me to create a list of measurable results that any PhD no matter their story can add to their resume.
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