Job-Seeker, Market Thyself! Thoughts on Not Finding My "Brand"

The following is a guest post from Sarah S. If you would like to contribute your own post about leaving academia, finding new employment, or any other topic, please contact us!

A current trend in career advice is to build your “brand” in order to better “sell” yourself to prospective employers and control your career trajectory.(*) In this digital age, the thinking goes, employers can find out all about people online and it behooves the jobseeker/career builder to stand out from the crowd with focused, personalized branding. I mean, if it works for soda and tennis shoes and software companies, why not you?

Transitioning academics likewise receive this branding advice. In fact, the difficulty of translating academic experience to employers in the “real world” makes concise, coherent branding particularly attractive. It can also supposedly demonstrate a post-academic’s business acumen as well, her awareness of market realities outside the Ivory Tower. I get these arguments. They make sense to me. So why am I so unable to discover and package my brand?

The Academy, at least in the Humanities, traditionally eschews this kind of corporate speak. And yet I was never so well branded as at the end of my PhD in English. In fact, I’d spent ten years honing and narrowing myself into an incredibly specific area and then spent hours perfecting my “elevator speech,” as well as articulating my philosophy of teaching (student-focused!) and area of expertise (British and American modernism, with an emphasis on the novel, trauma, and war!). I even had multiple distillations of my dissertation argument. First, the formal: “The Great War was so unprecedented it disrupted traditional mourning rituals, with their attendant resolution, leading to a traumatizing state of irresolvable mourning that I call ‘traumatic grief.’ This state caused post-war novelists from Britain and the US to represent the war as causing a widespread sterility, an inability or unwillingness to procreate, that manifests in characters, themes, and narrative itself.” And then this version, honed over beers and tator-tots, “World War I was major and it made people feel bad on their insides and then broke their baby makers.” By the end of the PhD I was this scholar-teacher—squished, narrowed, and branded within an inch of my life.

As we know, all the branding in the world can’t fix academia’s job issues and so after a fruitless year “on the market” I embraced my decision to stop applying for tenure track jobs and become post-ac, alt-ac, what-have-you. But one cannot transform on openness alone and magically transition from what she was to what she will become.

I tried the branding thing. I really did. I researched various careers. I participated in online communities. I did informational interviews. I wrote and rewrote (and rewrote and rewrote) my resume and cover letters. And I discovered a couple of things. First, getting a job is hard, ya’ll, even outside the Academy. Second, after the corseting I experienced by the end of my PhD, I didn’t want to “brand” myself, to limit myself to a single identity. Sure, I attempted to market my experience and goals for a handful of different career paths. Yet whenever I seemed to encounter a point where I really ought to buckle down and choose something, I balked.

I think there were several reasons for this. On some level, I was (I still am) gun shy; I put all my eggs in the academic basket and I remained wary of making the same mistake again with a new career path. I was also still connected to my identity as a scholar and teacher, and even though I was rationally comfortable with my decision to leave academia, the emotional and personal effects could not be wished away. When you spend years becoming a thing you cannot simply cease being it. Surely, as the soldier finds civilian clothes a little too constrictive and the transformed princess still wants to flap her goose wings so too the no-longer-academic forgets that she is not, anymore, a scholar, teacher, researcher, and so forth.

On the other hand, I pushed back against “branding” because I was also tired of being constrained. For so many years, I had been this very specific thing and now I wanted to take this new ephemerality out for a spin. Sometimes this flexibility involved uncovering things I’d always been, such as “writer.” I’d relinquished the right to call myself a writer after my MA when I chose the PhD path rather than, as did many of my peers, the MFA. They were writers, and I was this other thing called an “academic.” But as soon as I stripped off the title of academic, “writer” was underneath, like a worn undershirt. Other things I’ve come to realize as essential parts of me include “mentor” and “critical thinker” but also “story-lover” and “rock climber” and “political news junky”—none of which cohere nicely into logo form.

Apart from uncovering these bedrock components of myself, I also felt an expansiveness in self-definition, at times exhilarating and at others, I must admit, discombobulating and horrible. And yet even in the darkest times of uncertainty and seeming dissolution, I could not seize on a new thing: This is me. This is who I am. This is my brand! Would this experience have been different if I had been quickly hired into a job with a viable career path? Possibly. But I wasn’t and however I tried I found that, post-PhD, I encompassed far more than an elevator speech—for good and for ill.

I don’t write this post as a tirade against “branding” or to discourage anyone from taking the ubiquitous branding advice because it probably is good advice, or at least practical. I write merely to note that, at least so far, this approach has not worked for me. And so I embrace Walt Whitman’s declaration, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.” Despite the rigidity of academia, many of us loved it because of the endless possibility. Imagination alone limits one’s potential for reading and thinking and writing and teaching. I submit that the same holds true outside academia’s hallowed halls. Those who triumph with this approach are those wildly successful, entrepreneurial types who switch careers every three years and go base jumping. Meanwhile, the world also holds the rest of us, who may wish for greater specificity but will not relinquish our multivocality.

I thus prefer the approach of storytelling rather than “branding.” (I am a literature person, after all). Chris Humphrey has two excellent posts on this subject, one on overcoming the post-academic “failure” narrative and the other on telling a great story about your transition out of academia. Stories allow for so much more dynamism than a brand. Stories can develop and grow. Stories also honor the complexity that makes up a life’s journey, pulling together the splatters of experience, synthesizing the shared and highlighting the unique. And stories emphasize that I, that you, are so much more than a “brand.” In the end, practical or not, I’d rather be represented by a narrative than a catchphrase.

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(*Here are a few examples of the type of "branding advice" that is referenced in this post.)

How to Get a Post-Ac Job?

 

Cross-posted from Kathleen "Currer Bell"'s blog.

Whew! The first two weeks of [my new job at an online university] are kicking my ass! Adjusting to the new gig, along with continued health problems, has left me feeling pretty wiped out most evenings and disinclined to sign on and blog. Yet I had an email recently from a reader that inspired me to pop on here and share a few thoughts.

A reader who had found the piece "I Hate My Post-Ac Job" on How to Leave Academia asked me how I got my post-ac job(s). Like many of us, he earned a PhD and is having a difficult time securing employment. Or, scratch that, he has managed to secure employment, but it's at a job that doesn't take advantage of his talents/abilities/education level and pays a ridiculously low wage. Plus, the hours are crap and he doesn't like the work.

Sound familiar?

In this new age of "post-ac advice giving," (seriously, I feel like I can't sign onto Twitter without some new person advertising their post-ac help business) part of me wanted to be able to confidently reply to his email, "Have no fear--here are 10 easy steps to get your post-ac job." We've all read this type of post--network, hire someone to change your CV into a resume, work through your post-ac emotional stuff with the help of a life coach, take my 5 session webinar on the Post-Ac Job Search--sometimes it seems like the post-ac community has shifted to a post-ac "help" industry.

Instead, I replied with what I see as the (messier) truth. The type of advice he can easily find if he wants it (network, resume building, webinars) is fine. There's nothing inherently wrong with it and it probably can't hurt if he has the time and money to devote to it. Heck, I hired a coach to help me with my post-ac transition and it was helpful. And I've helped others through their transitions as a coach.

However, my hunch is that as an intelligent person with the skillz necessary to earn a PhD (research, reading, writing, critical thinking) he probably already knows how to write a pretty decent resume without hiring a professional. He may not think he knows. He may not have the confidence to strike out on his own. But he probably can handle writing his own resume. And if he can't handle the task at the present moment, a library is never far away with a book that'll show him resume templates and verbiage that he can imitate to draft his own resume.

The nuts and bolts of the (post-ac) job search are really a small part of the problem for most post-acs.

The bigger problem?

The fact that there is no easy answer. The fact that employers do shy away from degrees they don't understand. The fact that not everyone has money to hire professionals to help them. The fact that not everyone has the luxury of taking more courses, doing an unpaid internship, etc. The fact that as much as we'd like to say there are guarantees and simple, clear solutions to the post-ac job problem, there are not.

How did I get my post-ac jobs? Time. Persistence. Crying. Feeling like a failure. Networking. Not networking. Building a LinkedIn profile. Taking down my LinkedIn profile. Hiring a life coach. Taking classes for a new career path, but not getting certified. Taking any post-ac job because we needed to pay our bills. Refusing to take a post-ac job just because we had to pay our bills. Starting and then not starting a new career path. Applying to go back to school and then withdrawing my candidacy. Starting to open and then pushing pause on my own business. Giving up. Trying again. Luck. Dumb luck. The dumbest luckiest luck.

Some Legal Differences Between Ac and Non-Ac Employment

This guest post is written by Paul R. Sullivan, Jr., Esq, an employee rights attorney in Pittsburgh, PA. With a keen knowledge of employment law and a personal investment in the experiences of post-acs (he is engaged to How To Leave Academia's own Currer Bell), Paul wrote this post to help make post-acs  aware of some of the legal differences between academic and non-academic employment. You may find him at http://paulsullivanlegal.com or on Twitter at @sullivanlegal.

My fiancée received her Ph.D. in English last year. Since then, she’s become heavily involved in a growing community of grad students and professors who, voluntarily or otherwise, are leaving in droves the sinking ship that is academia. Because working in the academy is very different from most jobs, I decided to put together some helpful tips to help academics transition from the ivory tower to the downtown skyscraper.



There are a number of concerns that go along with any career transition: what types of jobs are you qualified to do, what skills do you possess that easily cross-over into new fields, and how, for the love of god, do you find those jobs. Unfortunately, I don’t have those answers. If you find yourself asking these kinds of questions, you may benefit from the services of a career coach or counselor who works with people making career changes. I can, however, highlight some of the important legal issues you may encounter when leaving academia.

What Is Employment At Will?

Most academics, whether a professor, grad student, or an adjunct instructor, work on a contract basis. A contract provides certain guarantees, such as a defined length of employment and a list of reasons for which you may be terminated. Most jobs in the private sector, however, are “at will” employment. This means, with few exceptions, you can be fired at any time, for any reason. However, even when your employment is at will, federal and state laws protect you from discrimination based on characteristics such as race, age, gender, religion, and disability.

While working at will may seem intimidating, it does provide some benefit to the employee. Because you can be terminated at any time, the flipside is also true. The ability to leave a job at any time can be very beneficial, especially when you are unhappy, or a new opportunity suddenly presents itself.

Pennsylvania, where I am located, is an employment at will state. However, the law regarding at will employment varies from state to state, so if you have specific questions about your local law you should contact an attorney in your jurisdiction.

What Is This Overtime Thing I’ve Heard So Much About?

I’ll refrain from a diatribe on the working conditions most academics face in this new world of temporary positions, adjunct assignments, and grad students working for peanuts. Indentured servitude is an accurate, if slightly hyperbolic description of what many people face in today’s academy. For those of you who have grown accustomed to this way of life, take hope—there are laws to insure you get paid for all your hard work.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), along with similar state laws, require employers to pay employees overtime wages for every hour worked in excess of forty hours per week. The amount of overtime is usually calculated at time-and-a-half, but can be more depending on your local law.

“But I’m a salaried employee, doesn’t that mean I can’t get overtime?” Absolutely not! There are certain exceptions to the FLSA, but being a salaried employee does not automatically make you exempt from receiving overtime wages.

So feel free to continue to put your nose to the grindstone, burn the midnight oil, etc., just make sure you’re adequately compensated for doing so.

Have Questions? Just Ask.

The most important take-away from this post is simply this: always ask questions. When you’ve spent a large part of your life working in one particular field, it’s easy to assume the rest of the world operates in the same way. Don’t let your assumptions prevent you from understanding and asserting your rights.

There are numerous resources on the web, and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction if you have a specific question. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call an attorney in your area. Most employee rights attorneys will take the time to speak to you on the phone about your concerns. If you have more specific questions about leaving academia, feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet @sullivanlegal.

Discovering a world of post-academic possibilities: How to benefit from informational interviewing

This guest post was written by Liza Shoenfeld, a blogger who studied neuroscience at Bowdoin College before working as a research technician, and is now a second year grad student funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. By day I research how Lou Gehrig’s disease slowly obliterates muscle control, but by night she explores the many career options open to graduate students in the sciences.



When I decided not to pursue academic science, I suddenly confronted, as I’m sure many of you have, the enormous task of trying to choose between all of the other careers that there are. Worse, I had no clear idea of what these possibilities even were – only that there lay a vast, hazy world of jobs out there that did not involve test tubes or spectrometers or grant applications.

I came to this decision during my first year of grad school, already embedded in an institution so divorced from the reality of its trainees’ futures that it seems to hold a restraining order against the grim statistical evidence that fewer than 15% of PhDs in the biological sciences go on to attain a tenure-track position within 6 years of graduating. Yet this was precisely the career for which we were trained. There was little room for – or even interest in – a discussion of more realistic career options.

So I embarked on a project to meet with people who had left grad school to pursue careers in a variety of different fields. I wanted to learn from these people: How did you get where you are today? Which skills have you carried with you from grad school, and what have you learned since then? What do you find most meaningful in your work now? What is your advice for someone in my position?

I met with people in consulting, insurance, policy-making, competitive intelligence, teaching, grantmaking, project management, freelance writing, technology transfer, human resources, communications, university administration, and more. Some had quit grad school and found fulfillment elsewhere. Some had come from academia, some from other graduate
backgrounds, and I also spoke with some who had found success without ever stepping foot in the fluorescently lit halls of graduate school.

I learned that this type of conversation is generally called an “informational interview,” and aside from its obvious networking benefits, I found the process enormously inspiring for two reasons: One, it opened my eyes to a world of fulfilling and successful careers outside of academia. And two, each conversation taught me something new about how I might find my place in that world.

My interviewing project, now in its second year, was born out of my frustration that my graduate program is training me for a career that I’ve come to view as both unrealistic and undesirable. By talking with so many people outside of my graduate school bubble, I’ve learned how to branch out from the narrow path of the academic pipeline.

For those who have not yet benefitted from informational interviewing, I highly recommend it. I knew little about the process when I started, but in the last year have conducted over 2 dozen of these conversations. I have since created a website called, called “branching points”, designed to give graduate students ideas and resources for careers outside of academia. While much of the site is
targeted to students in the sciences, there are a number of resources that I hope are helpful to people of any background. You can find my beginner’s guide to informational interviews, which includes how to find people to interview, how to ask for an interview, 10 tips for informational interview success, and 10 questions you should ask. Also included are profiles of nearly a dozen “alternative” careers. Q&A’s with recent grad-school-grads, resource guides, and my thoughts on branching out from academia.

Making the Most of LinkedIn®: A Guide for Beginners

This is a guest post written by Cicely Rude, a post-academic turned language consultant and coach. See her website here. Thanks for the awesome advice, Cicely!

LinkedIn® has become a powerful professional networking, job search, and career development tool with multilingual capabilities. Building a solid network of contacts is an important and ongoing part of career development. For that reason, I've created the following introduction to some of the ways that you can optimize your LinkedIn® profile, build your professional network, find your next job, and advance your career. It is written with multilingual as well as monolingual job seekers in mind. For more information read 13 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find a Great Job.

What is LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn® is a professional networking website. As of June 2012, LinkedIn® reports more than 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia.

 

How can I make the most of LinkedIn®?

• Create professional profiles and invite others to become connections, thus building a network of professional contacts. 


• Create parallel profiles in multiple languages. 


• Build a network of first, second, and third-degree contacts. 


• Request introductions through the contact network. 


• Find targeted jobs, companies, people, and business opportunities. 


• Upload an online profile that showcases experience, projects, and skills. 


• Gather recommendations for professional or academic work. 


• Review the profiles of hiring managers and find contacts who can introduce them to you. 


• Follow companies and receive notifications of new job postings. 
  

 

How about employers and recruiters? 

• Employers list jobs and search for potential candidates. 


• Recruiters search for people who match the requirements for particular jobs, then contact those people through LinkedIn®, so make sure your profile is fabulous, succinct, and current. 

 

Things to keep in mind when building a LinkedIn® profile:

• Build a complete profile. 


• Add names of schools you attended and companies you worked for, so the system can find possible connections. 


• Include the dates during which you worked each job or attended each academic institution. 


• Add the languages in which you are proficient, projects you have worked on, etc. 


• Keep your profile current, even when not job-hunting. 

©2013
Cicely Rude
English Language, Culture and Curriculum Consultant
www.cicelyrude.com

13 Tips for Using LinkedIn® to Find a Great Job

This is a guest post written by Cicely Rude, a post-academic turned language consultant and coach. See her website here. Thanks for the awesome advice, Cicely!

1. Build your network before you need it. Click the “Add Connections” button and look for people that you may know, have known, or have worked, studied, socialized, and collaborated with in the past.

2. Think in terms of reciprocal relationships. Instead of asking yourself only, “What can this person do for me?” when requesting connections, ask yourself “What can I do for this person?”


3. Personalize your connection requests for better results. Add a personal note to the generic "I'd like to add you to my professional network" line. Giving an indication of where you met (e.g., at a conference) will help them to remember you and increase your rate of accepted link invitations.


4. Spread the word about your job hunt. Use the update feature to tell everyone in your network that you are looking for a job and ask for leads and introductions. Announce what type of job you are looking for and be as specific as possible. Don’t be ashamed. Everyone has been on a job search and most will be again…and again.


5. Customize your headline. The text beneath your name at the top of your profile page is called your headline. LinkedIn® will insert default text that matches your current job title, if you have one. However, that text can be easily changed to reflect what you want contacts and recruiters to see first. For example, one of my clients adopted the headline, “Executive Assistant, Actively Seeking New Opportunities” and saw an increase in interview offers.


6. If you are bilingual, build a bilingual profile. If you are proficient in a second language and want to capitalize on that skill set in the job market, you can build a second version of your profile in your second language.


7. Optimize your profile for searches. Use LinkedIn®'s suggested key words and phrases to attract recruiters who are looking for what you have to offer. Use consistent word choices, tenses, and adhere to industry standards. Check your grammar and spelling meticulously.


8. Exchange recommendations and endorsements. Invite people with whom you have worked or studied to post a positive review on your profile, or to endorse your skills. Positively recommend and endorse others.


9. Join groups that match your interests. There are many networking groups on LinkedIn®. You can search by topic yourself, but after you have built a profile the system will suggest some for you. Groups can keep you apprised of new developments, discussions, and jobs in your industry or profession. You may also let a group know that you are searching for a new position. Set your e-mail notification frequency to suit your preferences.


10. Follow companies where you may be interested in working. Searching for companies in your geographic area and professional field will enable you to follow them and receive notifications of new job openings.


11. Actively look for job postings and find useful connections. Browse the “Jobs” tab in LinkedIn® for positions that might interest you. Check for second or third-degree connections between yourself and the company– a personal introduction from a first or second degree contact within a company might not automatically get you a job, but can help you get an interview.


12. View your own profile page regularly. Many people overlook this strategy, but it's useful because LinkedIn® will constantly suggest people you might know, companies you might want to follow, groups you might want to join, jobs you might be interested in, and new ways to improve your profile.


13. Remember that LinkedIn is a professional network. Don't confuse LinkedIn® with social networks or social bookmarking. Keep your content professional and relevant.

©2013
Cicely Rude
English Language, Culture and Curriculum Consultant
www.cicelyrude.com

A great career advice podcast with Julie Clarenbach

A post-ac blogger, Unemployed Philosopher, has a nea-to post-ac podcast and recently interviewed post-academic career coach Julie Clarenbach. Julie left a tenure track job in technical writing to become a post-ac career coach. She works at Escape the Ivory Tower (she calls post-acs "escape artists"). This covers so many of those initial concerns we have about moving into "real world" careers: networking, emotions, next steps, cover letters, etc. It's a great listen! Add it to your podcast and listen to it after the Freakonomics podcast on Quitting and you'll be fired up and ready to go!

Martin Fisch via Compfight

Link Roundup: The Job Hunt

These links are helpful for find out information about jobs out there in non-academic realms (which is like 90% of the world). This can seem completely overwhelming when your only source for advice is a clueless advisor. Check out these links for some grounding information, and don't forget the many sites that focus on career issues in our Resources list on the left.

Kevin Collins via Compfight

Amanda Krauss @WoPro (which you might as well go read the entire archive of!) has this amusing story as she searches About.com for job advice and starts putting out her first non-academic job applications. Writes Amanda:

Real-world job hunting is something new. There are online applications and phone interviews and hiring managers and people using phrases like “corporate culture” un-ironically. What I’m looking up is usually basic stuff: how long do I wait to send an followup email? Should I call? How am I supposed to phrase this thing, anyway?! This last one isn’t too bad, at least. Years of writing thank-you notes (thanks Mom) have given me a lot of experience in putting  a personal spin on a generic form.

And, a question that has plagued job-hunters since primitive times: What should I do if I don’t hear back?

Lauren @ Mama Nervosa talks about how confusing and conflicted you can feel when pursuing multiple possible careers at the same time. On a particularly bad day during her waning days of grad school, she writes:

One of the things that frustrates me about post-academic advice in terms of career searches is that often, they act as if you will immediately shift out of “tenure track or die” mode into a solid idea of what your next move should be. There’s advice for going into freelancing, or administration, or management, or whatever, and it seems like there’s a straight line from point A(cademia) to point B. Obviously, all those Point B, post-academic people had a chaotic transition from A to B, but you don’t hear those stories. You hear, “Now I have a full-time gig as an academic publisher! Now I make money and lose weight in my incredible outdoor education business!” All that advice is written from this point of stability that’s absolutely foreign to me as I muddle through the messy middle.

 

Curious About Salary?

If you're as clueless as we were about what pay you can get for different jobs, check out Glass Door. It aggregates salary info from job ads, so it can give you a ballpark sense of salary range for different companies or positions. You can also often find salary information for state/public sector jobs at major newspapers (e.g. The Des Moines Register has state salaries for Iowa), and most universities/schools will have salary "families" buried in their Human Resources info if you search ( try "job families" or "compensation table" or "job classification").

Be sure to check out our other articles about careers after academia!