A 6th year PhD student asks—

I've been working hard on my PhD and I’m finally going to graduate soon. Things went wrong with my project and I had to really focus to get things done on a reasonable timeline. Now I’m learning about what it takes to get a job and I’m feeling exhausted already—it’s so much work! Honestly, I thought getting a PhD was supposed to make it easy to find a job. Is having a PhD not enough?

Wow, I am right there with you! This question could easily have been written by my younger self—I often tell people that I have never been more wrong about something than thinking that ‘getting a PhD would make it easy for me to find a job.’ In fact, this is a huge part of my motivation for being in this line of work! Even though a PhD (and the training involved) is a necessary requirement for some jobs, it is never sufficient for getting hired on its own, so it makes sense that learning all the pieces of the job search process feels new and hard.

Now, as far as what to do with this feeling and the exhaustion that comes with it, I want to recommend reframing the job search and application process in a few ways.

• One common sticking point that comes from your PhD training is that you have probably (and appropriately) become used to doing things to a ridiculously high standard, with a ridiculously high level of effort. If you’re familiar with the Pareto Principle (roughly, the hypothesis that 80% of positive outcomes come from a 20% outlay of effort), PhD training mostly involves spending your time pouring extra effort to get the final 20% of outcomes. Job searching doesn’t have to be like this! We try to encourage everyone to focus on making their job search efficient and sustainable for the reality of their life and other obligations. We don’t want anyone burning out by constantly reaching for an unrealistic standard of perfect networking, perfect career exploration, perfect application materials, etc.
• Another difficult aspect of job searching with a PhD is, while you have developed a wide range of highly desirable and marketable skills, there’s a persistent gap between what you know you are able to do and what a typical hiring manager will think you are able to do based on your degree alone. Academics frequently get into the habit of explaining their skills and accomplishments in a way that is only immediately understood by other academics in their same field or sub-field. Translating things to make you an attractive candidate can be an entirely separate project. Honestly, if I had my way, developing the skills to communicate your skills and accomplishments beyond your academic area would be an integrated piece of PhD training, not an additional project you had to fit in on your own time. You’ll hear a lot of advice about how important professional networking is, and the practice you get explaining your work and skills to different audiences is a major reason why.
• It is also important to acknowledge that a lot of ‘traditional’ hiring practices in the US are pretty messed up. Soliciting long application questionnaires, ghosting and otherwise being non-communicative with prospective candidates, scheduling excessive interviews or sample job tasks and other hurdles are way too common. It is up to each individual candidate to decide what they are willing to put up with, but it’s not unreasonable to treat overly burdensome hiring practices as a dealbreaker.
• Finally, please remember, you only need to find one job at a time! It is ok to get frustrated and take breaks, and to go back-and-forth through periods of maximum and minimum effort.

Unfortunately, we can’t do much to change the cultural systems and expectations that make it so much (difficult) work to find a job! But, hopefully reframing some of your thinking can help you engage with the process in a way that works for you, even, and especially, if part of your process is loudly complaining to your support network about the unfairness of it all—I know I did.

-David Blancha, Assistant Director, Career Development Team for Researchers