Making a big career change? Don't look for jobs yet

I was not a fun person to be around from late 2014 to early 2015.

This was the last year of my PhD program, and I was searching for jobs outside of academia. My emotional state was a constant clash between hopeful aspiration and excitement over a possible career in a cool industry and a clammy dread that I would fail hard and find no gainful employment.

The latter was often a stronger feeling, putting me in a mindset of desperation for any job at all.

Different, right?

I thought she was crazy, and told her so (in nicer words).

You know what happened? She freaking did it.

We both had PhDs in Social Psychology. So largely quantitative experimental research. She found a high-paying job in jury consulting in California, an industry that was so far off my radar as even a possibility for someone with our skills that I literally gaped at her when she told me about it.

I’m not saying you should use the same criteria, or go into that particular industry. From what I heard about it, I don’t think that career is a good fit for me, and honestly I feel like most PhDs I personally know would not enjoy that job.

So what wisdom did Ruth have that I’m trying to sell you on?

Order of operations

Honestly, Ruth and I thought about similar things. How we wanted to live, which jobs were out there that matched our interests, what was important to us… we just did it in a different order. I started with the job I thought was good and let that dictate the rest.

Ruth, on the other hand, started with what SHE wanted out of life, and let that filter out the opportunities until she got to one that put her on that path.

Crystal clear values and priorities

Although I did think about what I wanted out of a job, that thinking was very disorganized. My thinking changed on a weekly basis, and honestly I may have glomped onto UX research as the first role that seemed to match what I was looking for, as if I couldn’t believe there was something out there for me.

Part of this was because the atmosphere I was in conditioned me to think that I was doing something wrong by leaving academia, that I was “supposed” to only want to become a professor.

It’s not just your work culture that influences your mindset, some of your beliefs come from way earlier. Take this story from my friend, who we’ll call Katrina: “my parents believe that you shouldn’t really change jobs, and have sort of tried to scare me out of changing jobs I wasn’t happy with because they were afraid future employers wouldn’t want to hire me as a result.”

Breaking your conditioning can be tough, and it can limit your thinking because you feel like you’re already doing something “different”.

For me, it meant that I had very few criteria other than “I want this type of job” and “I hope you can give me a living wage plus a little more.”

Compare that with Ruth, who looked at herself first and said “My priority is to live in this specific location that’s important to me, have work that fits what I want, and get paid an amount that enables my lifestyle.”

My description of Ruth’s thinking has a lot of “I,” “me,” “my” in it. Does this sound selfish? If it does, that’s the point. You are planning YOUR life. Why should random people’s expectations of you impact how you do that?

Be clear about what matters to you. Be honest with yourself about which things are most important.

Connecting values to logistics

I made a very fast mental leap from “Academia isn’t working well for me” to “This specific job (UX research) is the answer.” Don’t get me wrong, I did some research and I made it in the end, but looking back it could have gone much worse.

What I wish I had done was to explicitly connect what I wanted out of life and career to the specific targets I had defined for myself to aim for.

For Ruth, that logical connection was clear. “I want to have X lifestyle in Y location. That costs Y amount, which means I need to be making at least $100K.”

I made it past that phase successfully through a lot of effort, a bunch of mistakes, and a ton of luck. If I could do one thing differently about that job search, it would be changing my mindset about finding a job in the first place.

The wrong way to find a career

Although I had some fanciful thoughts about what a good career was, my thought process on the job search was pretty linear. I had my sights on a specific job (UX researcher in the technology sector). And I wanted to be making livable (more) money.

Please keep in mind that my reference point for income was a graduate student stipend, which for me was so low that I qualified for food stamps. And I was so afraid of not being employed that I might have jumped at the first offer even if it was bad.

I didn’t write any of this down. I thought a lot about all of it, but it was just a constant shifting swirl in my head for more than a year. I spent most of my time working on my resume, job materials, and applying for jobs. You may have noticed that the goals I had were either too vague or too specific, and didn’t have too much thought behind them.

Importantly, my fears really shone through when I got interviews.

Desperation isn’t a good look for a job seeker

Don’t be like me.

A different perspective

Let’s contrast my approach with my friend who was also transitioning out of a PhD to industry around the same time as me. let’s call her Ruth.

Ruth had a much different mindset.

I asked her what jobs she was looking for, and she replied: “I just want to live in California and do work I find interesting and challenging. I have a certain standard of living, and in California that means I’d have to be making over $100K.”

Where did my values show up in my job criteria? What even were my values? I had a sense that I wanted to keep doing research and that I wanted it to have some impact on the world, but that’s so broad and could point to a lot of other jobs besides the one I chose.

Plus, without connecting my personal values to the decisions I ultimately made, it made it very easy to forget why I made those choices, so how could I monitor how things were going in my life?

Honestly, it took a trip to the emergency room to make me realize I needed a change. That’s a story for another time.

Being assertive about what you want

I’m not saying you should arbitrarily add $50–100k to your salary expectations. But also, don’t be like me in the early days and stammer out a lowball estimate based on vague feelings and a quick google search, and ignore the other factors built into the job.

When you’ve taken the steps to figure out what your requirements (needs) and nice to haves (wants) are, you need to use those as part of your process to evaluate opportunities. Too often, salary is one of the only things considered, meaning that other details get overlooked.

Salary is hugely important! But it may also be the least flexible factor on the hiring side. In the realm of direct cash, there’s also a signing bonus. Moving costs. Commuting costs. Child care costs. Education costs. Don’t limit yourself to what’s on the job ad!

And don’t just think about money. What about stock options? PTO? Training opportunities? Work from home?

What about the job itself? Your title, responsibilities, work environment, working hours… you get the idea.

So much of the other factors that impact your working and personal life can get passed over with the hyper focus on salary.

Speaking to my fellow PhDs, part of your conditioning from being in academia so long is that you think almost nothing is in your control. You don’t get to choose what you do, what people call you, where you work, how much you earn, what you can do with your time… Most of that is something you can seek out and negotiate once you leave the ivory tower!

So what should you do?

I’m hoping that at least one light bulb went off for you while reading this, and you may have gotten some ideas for how to change your own tactics.

If you’re looking for a step-by-step playbook with very specific actions to take as you navigate a career shift, you can get my ebook here!