The aim of this blog post and interview is to give readers a primer on how to create the conditions that make you hireable as a philosopher outside of academia. The Cocoon also has other practical advice on alt-ac careers such as how to write a resume and how to network outside of academia, and you can find earlier advice by Aaron Kagan here. The focus here will be on mindset: on overcoming cognitive obstacles and preconceptions. This is an interview with Aaron Kagan (UX Researcher- formerly at Google, now at Facebook Reality Labs). I asked Aaron about how he made the transition from being a philosophy graduate student and PhD at Fordham University, with a PhD with a focus on the role of the body in emotional experience, to a researcher working at big tech companies such as Google and FaceBook.
Q: Could you tell me a bit about mental obstacles and how to overcome them for philosophers seeking alt-ac jobs? For philosophy grad students (and postdocs, VAPs, etc…) it seems like gaining the skills, connections and mindset to get outside of academia is an insuperable problem.
It might be worth reminding ourselves that we are talking about the practical world. I say this to draw a distinction from the “rational” or “theoretical” world. Trying to collapse these two worlds when thinking about life outside of academia is a great source of pain and suffering (at least it was for me, and yes, I know I’m playing fast and loose with metaphysics, but hear me out).
In the rational/theoretical world, you are a catch: You are highly educated. You can pick apart and construct arguments of all kinds. You can take highly complicated topics and technical information, distill things down, and communicate them to non-specialists (e.g., your teaching). Your academic work/specialization may also have strong or direct theoretical ties to a certain industry.
What’s more, you’re willing to start at any entry level position; any employer can get you for cheap, at least by non-academic standards.
In the practical world however: You have no previous work experience–none. And you don’t “make sense” to employers. Why are you leaving academia? What does your work have to do with this organization’s? How exactly can you help make us money? From this perspective, you’re also “overeducated”.
But you might be thinking: “I just got a PhD, I’m pretty smart, and can make contributions and add value to an organization.” Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee your resume and interviewing skills are likely to only really convey to employers “Trust me, I have lots of transferable skills,” and you’re probably pretty light on the specifics. But who cares about that, right?! It makes sense rationally to you and you say to yourself “...this is easier than doing a PhD [which is true], I really can add value [also true], so just give me a chance at doing X and I’ll prove myself right [maybe true]”.
Here’s the thing. You are right in thinking this. It’s true (as far as I’m concerned), but here’s the problem. No one cares, especially when presented in this way.
This is where that ‘practical’ sphere comes crashing in. You need to start thinking from the perspective of a hiring manager and the organization. On this view you’re likely to be met with: “You don’t make any sense. You’re overeducated. Why are you leaving academia? You have no (“real”) work experience. I hated philosophy class; my professor was a jerk.” While great/perfect responses to these kinds of questions do exist, it’s unlikely you’re positioning, or describing yourself in the right sorts of ways–i.e., very concise answers, made in the right place(s) at the right time(s). I’ll talk more about this later.
Psychologically, there’s also a weirdly lurking sense of ‘failure’ for not ‘sticking it out’ in academia. This feeling is “wrong” but it can nevertheless feel (subjectively) real; at least it was for me.
You might think, since you are pivoting careers/industries that you’re not ‘good enough’ to hack it in academia. I’m here to tell you, this is bullshit. It’s something I believed for a long time before, during, and well after my transition out of academia. It’s a hard one to avoid. I wish I had better tips for making this feeling go away, but I don’t. There are too many individualized, psychological things going on for me to make any universal claims about it. I’m sorry. The only thing I might say here is spend as much time with people outside of academia as you can; make non-academic friends. It will change your life. You’ve probably drank more ivory tower kool-aid than you realize or would like to admit.
That said, you nevertheless carry on and work up the courage to try something else, start applying to jobs, etc. This is where you crash head first into this aforementioned practical world–i.e., by getting hit with rejection after rejection for jobs that (in your mind) you are massively overqualified for and frankly think are “stupid” or “beneath” you. Somehow rejections from these jobs sting more.
I know this sounds pretty dark. So what do you do when you’re at this point?
I have no easy answers here. We’ve got to remember that there’s a huge shift in personal identity happening right now. This is painful. If it is not, then either you are much better than me at life or you’re in denial.
Your answer when someone asks you “So, what do you do?” will have to change. You always thought you’d stay in school forever, so to speak, and now you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do–who you “are”. You’re exploring something new. It would be GREAT ideally to go into this ‘stage’ of career transition with a more Nietzschean “Playful/child-like wonder” vibe (a la Zarathustra’s “3 metamorphoses”). Unfortunately, convention (read “capitalism”) puts way too much pressure on us to do that. Like it or not, we are identified by our career, by the 1-3 sentence cocktail-party response to “So, what do you do?”.
Q: How do you get to your first non-academic job?
Much like the infinite space between zero and one, there’s an infinite space between going from academic job(s) to your first non-academic jobs. (You’ll also come to see the truism that it’s always easier to get a (new) job when/while you have a job).
The mindset you have to go into this with is the playful/exploratory one I mentioned earlier. This is much, much easier said than done. I’m telling you this because it’s what I wish I would have done. I did the opposite, and was miserable the whole way through. If you can do this with any shred of ‘go with the flow’ and ‘childlike exploration’ you will make smarter decisions and you’ll be a LOT LESS insufferable to be around (and your friends and significant others will thank you for it). Honestly, I don’t know how my wife put up with me at this point in my life; I’m truly the luckiest man alive.
You can’t simply ‘brute force’ your way into finding a job. You’ll get new job alerts from LinkedIn, Indeed, Careerbuilder, etc. When seeing the job postings, you might be tempted to think “oh, this is easy, I can totally do this stuff. I’m perfect for the job. They should hire me for sure”, and send your resume out and a generic cover letter. If you’re the way I was, you’ll do this unthinkingly 20+ times a day….
I’m here to tell you: This is a complete waste of time and will only make you spiral further down into the abyss. You’ll start feeling like you’re not employable, and that you’ll never find a job. Part of this is true. If you just blindly apply to positions, you won’t get a job and you’ll get super depressed, because dealing with rejection sucks, and dealing with rejections from businesses that are ‘insultingly beneath you’ are even worse.
Take a deep breath. You will get a job. You just need more time to cook–i.e., more practice interviewing, networking, and lots and lots of ‘sweat equity’.
Once you crawl out of the unemployment doldrums, here’s what to work on next:
You’re going to need a tight 5. You can start forming Part 1 of this now by formulating lucid and concise (I can’t stress this enough, us academics have a horrible reputation for being verbose….cause most of us are (myself definitely included) and you’re going to need to work against this stereotype) answers to the following question(s):
“Why are you leaving academia?” (2-3 sentences)
The ‘tight 5’ is your opener. You’ll say it at the beginning of every job interview, every sad/desperate networking meetup thing you’ll go to, every informational linkedin message, every cover letter, and every initial email inquiry you send. It is your less than 1 minute (aiming for 30 seconds) response to the prompt “So, tell me about yourself...”
To do this: Draw a very high level, straight line between your deep/personal interests, what you did in academia, and what you’re aiming to do in non-academia. Then pepper in why you’re leaving academia, etc. Here’s an example:
“Hi, I’m Aaron. I’ve always been interested in the ways people engage with things/objects in the environment. I studied this closely in academia, developing an expertise in human experience and the body. While I enjoyed my work on academia, I wanted to make more of an impact on people’s lives by helping organizations develop useful, tangible things that people can engage with to improve their lives. So naturally, this brought me to User Experience (i.e., I have an expertise in Human Experience [aka phenomenology] which uniquely connected me User Experience).....”
This isn’t perfect, but you get the idea. Notice here how I’ve summed up my entire academic career in two sentences. This is jarring, humbling, and feels incredibly unnatural at first. (don’t worry, it gets easier)
The thing to remember here is to do the opposite of what we’re trained to do: Speak at a super high level about some pretty important and intense stuff, with little/no justification for your claims. Here’s why: If anyone actually cares about any of the claims that you’re making, they will simply just ask you for more detail. Then, all of a sudden you’re having a conversation. It’s pretty great.
This took me a long time to realize because I was constantly trying to set up grand and airtight arguments as to why I’m perfect for job X, but nobody cares about that. You lose them in the first 30 seconds. No one wants all the detail (at least at first blush). So keep it short and simple. The clarification questions will come later. In this respect it’s actually a LOT easier if you think about it. It’s less work, less words, and less argumentation.
Q: When you have a PhD it seems you are overqualified for the jobs you want to apply for outside of academia? How do you overcome that problem, particularly in how people who could hire you perceive you?
DUMB IT DOWN. Be chill. Have fun. Joke around. We’re overdetermined to be pedantic, hair-splitting, esoteric, pretentious, elbow-patch wearing, condescending professors. Like it or not, that’s what we have to react against. (Think about the student(s) you may have had that were completely checked out, and that you gave very low, barely passing marks to. Now say hi to them again as adults, cause they are the recruiter you're talking to, or the hiring manager).
The best way to overcome this is to demonstrate the following:
- You can explain things easily and quickly to any kind of audience (e.g., translating very complex stuff into very graspable stuff to non-specialists and novices)
- You are a personable, relatable, and positive presence in an organization
- You don’t take yourself too seriously. You’ve done a LOT of very serious academic work, this is intimidating to most people. They are already prepared to not understand you and think that you’ll be patronizing, especially to your potential team members.
Once you’re in, however, the “three letters” in your email signature do start to work in your favor, but that’s for another conversation.
Q: this question is not as well formed as I can get it but you get the gist, hopefully. In academia, career paths are usually quite rigid, as exemplified by few lateral moves, and by a PhD going "stale". Could you explain how non-academic careers might be different?
Most people have pretty linear career paths. You almost had one. I almost had one, but life gets in the way. And that’s completely fine. Most non-academic career paths (aside from things like medicine, or law) aren’t as linear as you might think. Lots of people change careers all the time...it’s just that most of them don’t come from academia with Philosophy PhDs.
Funny enough, for the first time, you are actually really experiencing the “freedom” the philosophers in the western canon have written so much about (in particular continental philosophers writing in the existentialist tradition). You’re creating your own career path. There are still plenty of conventions here, but it’s much more fluid. This is a blessing and a curse, but it becomes more fun once you have a few years of non-academic work under your belt.
There’s a lot of general advice (like the stuff I’ve just said), but the cool thing is, the content, and direction varies greatly. The conventions are things like resume writing, cover letters, linkedin stuff, and interview questions. From there, you’ll just have to explore and things will come in time. You’ll actually start to find that things can be very conventional from a hiring perspective, and most of this is pretty freaking transparent (and Google-able). For example, most of the hiring process, interview questions, and even the job role leveling (e.g., junior vs senior vs director) in most tech companies are the same….like exactly the same. (I recently moved from one FAANG [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google] to another and most of my interview questions were verbatim).
However, on the surface most of your colleagues will seem to have come from a very linear career path. That’s because their resumes and LinkedIn profiles are set up to look this way. You’re just looking at the polished, framed, and finished product; you’re not looking at the draft. (Think about your dissertations, of all the words you wrote, the articles you read, and the proposals you wrote, how much of it actually ended up in your finished dissertation?...if you’re anything like me, maybe about 15-20%).
Everyone else will seem like they had a pretty linear career path, and many of them do. You don’t and that’s what makes you special (and also hard to employ at first).
Thanks for this interview--I'm always interested in and appreciate alt-ac advice, especially from those who have managed to make the transition.
I'd like to hear more about the "Why are you leaving academia?" thing.
Suppose the truth is something like: I really like philosophy, but the academic market is horrible and so the only jobs I'd be likely enough to get would involve too much sacrifice in other aspects of my life (like not being able to live in a place I want to live, having to move from country to country, or whatever).
Is it best in this case to simply lie or at least heavily bullshit? Does one need to spin a narrative according to which I should leave academia for an entry-level position even if I were to get a TT offer from NYU?
I guess I wouldn't find that too surprising, but it does seem a little strange. What do the recruiters care why I can't get a good enough academic job? I take it they wouldn't be assuming it's probably because I'm dumb, disorganized, disagreeable, or whatever. So why do they need the success narrative? I ask mainly out of curiosity, but the answer might also be useful for making sure one's narrative is doing the right thing.
In any case, assuming that the narrative is needed, I'd also be interested in advice about strategies for finding one (or making one up). This might be easy enough to do if one works in certain areas and is transitioning to certain kinds of roles. But if you're applying for web development jobs but have worked on consciousness or Kant or the ethics of self-defense or whatever, any ideas about how to spin something like that?
Posted by: M | 09/03/2021 at 01:02 PM
M, it isn't so much that the inability to secure an academic job reads to them as a defect. Say you apply to jobs A and B. For whatever reason, you substantially prefer job A to job B, but before interviewing for job B, you receive a rejection from job A. If your only reason for taking job B would be "well, I couldn't get job A, which was what I really wanted, and this is my only other option", even if it's the truth, what reason would job B have to hire you over another candidate, who not only has the skills and experience for the job, but also really wants it as their first choice, and not just as a plan b for something that didn't work out?
Think of it this way: if an employer is going to spend time and money interviewing, training, and hiring you, they don't want to be a plan b and have you jump ship when an academic job crops up and you happen to get it (regardless of how unlikely it is to happen). They want their investment to pay off in the form of a colleague who either intends to stay at that job or will go on to make waves elsewhere in the same industry (and that way they can say that they got their start at company A!) Besides, have you ever worked with someone who doesn't really want to be there? It sucks.
I really loved this blog post, by the way. In the vein of a lot of the honest, practical advice here, I highly recommend Chris Caterine's recent book 'Leaving Academia'. There, he also explains that these kinds of stories are a chance at a first impression, and if you do end up endlessly droning on about the horrible, unfair academic job market as the reason why you're leaving, it's not the inability to secure an academic job that paints you in a bad light, but the venting about how much your life sucks to a stranger (instead of taking the opportunity to create a positive view of who you are and what's important to you).
I suspect it gets a lot easier and more natural once you're less attached to academia and you have a better idea of what else you can and want to do. It's really hard when you're still in the thick of it, and still committed to making it as a professor somewhere to feel positive about anything (much less to fake enthusiasm about applying for a job you don't want and feel forced into).
In terms of a strategy for coming up with a story when your research doesn't obviously connect up with any non-academic roles, it can help a lot to reflect on things you did as a grad student that weren't directly related to your research. For example, if you were on a grad council, maybe you did some policy analysis as a part of that and you realized you wanted more involvement in bigger policy decisions. If you organized some conferences, you did some admin work, project management, etc. and perhaps found that it was rewarding. If you've taught (and especially if you've taught online), then you've done some content development work. Career centres on campus often have resources for helping you navigate this.
Posted by: not OP | 09/03/2021 at 03:25 PM
To M's point (if I can interject): I think it helps to think of the first interview as a first date. You want to be sincere, but you don't want to overshare. Your date isn't *looking* for intensely personal details; they're just trying to feel you out as a person. The details will come later.
If you're applying for non-academic jobs, academia is your ex. And no one really wants to hear about their first date's ex; even if they misguidedly ask the question, they'll wish they bailed once you start rolling. And whether your broke up with your ex ("I couldn't stand the academic grind anymore"), your ex broke your heart ("I still wish I could be a professor"), or (worst of all) you can't stop trashing your ex ("Academia didn't deserve me"), there's really no good way to talk about your ex.
The best way you can ease out of that awkward conversation (imo) is with a script like this: "I wanted X, but I found that academia couldn't give me X. But I think you might have what I'm looking for. Now let's talk about *you*."
Posted by: Samuel Kampa | 09/03/2021 at 06:18 PM
To answer M above (at least from my perspective as someone who made the transition from academia to alt-ac) -- People have lots of assumptions about PhD's. Some of them are super positive (people assumed I was smart!), and some are really awful (people assumed I was a total ass who couldn't work with others).
They don't care that you "can't get" an academic job - they care that you'll genuinely be interested in the work that they're doing, and that you'll be happy (at least most of the time) to do it. They don't want someone who shows up everyday bitter and sad that they're not an academic (even if that's what you feel on the inside).
So the purpose of the narrative is to get ahead of those possibly negative assumptions (you're a pompous jerk) and to get ahead of those legitimate concerns (that you may resent your work b/c it's not academia).
So the right thing to do is really try to find an at least partially genuine story about what you're interested in doing outside of academia. It's okay for some of that to be super practical, "The market in academia demanded more compromise than I was open to, and I'm really excited about your company's commitment to work-life balance, etc." But ideally you would include something that demonstrates a real interest in some content or skill the role asks for: "Academia didn't provide me with the chances I was most excited about, to tackle nuanced problems with significance."
Sure, academia didn't provide you those b/c there just wasn't a job, but they don't have to know that. All they need to hear is: "I like doing X, I'm great at it, and I'm excited about being able to do it with you."
And honestly, I've never met an academic without at least a couple grievances about the academy. Maybe it's that you didn't like the catty atmosphere, or you didn't like working alone all of the time, or you just wish some of your tasks were easier. Pick one of those and really play it up/flesh it out.
There is a little bit of bullshitting to this, yes. But I also think it's really helpful for you psychologically to begin telling yourself a story that is somewhat meaningful about why a non-academic life could be good.
Posted by: Alyssa | 09/03/2021 at 06:19 PM
Apologies, should have included this in my last comment, but final thing about this:
Treat that question not as a command to explain yourself, or make up a fake story about why you're thrilled to leave the academia, and instead treat it as a chance to give the interviewer/person you're networking with an opportunity to know more about what you value.
Do you value working with others? Do you value the concrete chance to make a difference (which can sometimes be tough in academia)? Do you value working on the toughest problem you can find, and not stopping until you get it solved? Etc.
Expect to both really minimize the specific content of your research (most people don't know who Kant is -- and explain it like you would to a high schooler), and to get pretty expansive in terms of how you think about a particular alt-ac job and what it can offer you/give you the opportunity to do.
Posted by: Alyssa | 09/03/2021 at 06:25 PM
Thanks everyone for these comments. To condense the suggestions so far, as I understand them, what a recruiter/hiring manager might be looking for in asking why I'm leaving academia is something that indicates that I...
(1) won't jump ship (for academia),
(2) will be interested in and happy with the new work rather than bitter and sad,
(3) am not a pompous jerk, and/or
(4) that my values will make me beneficial to the company.
Let me know if I'm misinterpreting or missed anything. And I'd still be interested if others have other suggestions that don't fall under these.
If these are all, though, I still wonder if one really does need a nice narrative linking one's academic career with the new one. Like would it be a problem to say the following? "I really like doing Kant interpretation, but that didn't work out as a career, and so now will have to be just a weekend thing. But I also really like programming (see my portfolio for all my cool projects), and so would be excited to work for your company doing that."
(Perhaps this is along the lines of Samuel Kampa's suggestion, except leaving the X that I wanted but could not get from academia unspecified. Suppose X is in fact "a stable living situation".)
It seems to me that something like the blunt (but non-mopey) answer would give about as much support for (1)-(4) as would a narrative taking something that web development and Kant interpretation have in common and saying that's what I really cared about all along. So perhaps it's fine to go with the blunt answer at least in some cases, but I may well also be missing some reason why the recruiters would prefer more of a story making a connection.
I should also say that though I find it interesting and potentially helpful to think about why they would want that, I'm also totally open to hearing that having some such narrative is just a convention that one should conform to and, at least as far as job applicants should be concerned, there's not much more useful to be said about it.
Posted by: M | 09/03/2021 at 11:47 PM
Here's a worry about this:
"I really like doing Kant interpretation, but that didn't work out as a career, and so now will have to be just a weekend thing. But I also really like programming (see my portfolio for all my cool projects), and so would be excited to work for your company doing that."
Your future employer might worry that if Kant interpretation ever could work out as a career, you'd bail.
Maybe to extend the analogy to dating that Samuel Kampa gives above, how would you take it if a first date said that their long-term goals with their ex didn't work out, and it had to be just an occasional fling, but that they like you and could see being with you too?
The analogy fails in all kinds of ways, of course, but the point is this: why mention that you're still seeing Kant on the weekends and that academia "didn't work out"? Instead, focus on what Kant couldn't give you that this new job can. It's your business if you still want to see him on the side, since, unlike dating under monogamous expectations, there's no deceit in continuing to read philosophy while having an industry job.
As Alyssa says, your potential future employer isn't really asking about how much you loved Kant, but reasons why you want to be with them. It doesn't need to be that Kant has something in common with web development. But what about web development do you like, value, etc., that you couldn't get in academia?
Revised attempt:
"I really like [thing I value present in new job], but that [why I wasn't able to get it] and so now [I am looking for opportunities]. I like programming (see my portfolio for all my cool projects), and so would be excited to work for your company doing that."
Thoughts?
Posted by: Malcolm | 09/04/2021 at 12:06 PM
Here's another angle. The person doing the hiring isn't just deciding whether *you* are good for the job. They're deciding whether you're *better* than everyone else interviewing. If you were hiring an undergrad RA and were deciding between a super bright physics student who only applied because they couldn't get a physics RA spot and a super bright philosophy student who checks all the boxes, who'd you hire?
I thought Aaron's answers were great. I'll just emphasize:
“You need to start thinking from the perspective of a hiring manager and the organization.”
“I have no easy answers here. We’ve got to remember that there’s a huge shift in personal identity happening right now. This is painful. If it is not, then either you are much better than me at life or you’re in denial. … Your answer when someone asks you “So, what do you do?” will have to change.”
These strike me as things philosophers struggle to do: genuinely take the perspective of those outside academics, and navigate the shift in personal identity. The latter is hard just because it's intrinsically hard. It takes time and emotional work to authentically change who you are. If you insist on being "a philosopher" who happens to work a normal 9-5 job, you probably won't ever come off well to hiring managers. Even if you embrace the change of identity and want to leave philosophy, it's going to take a lot of time (just like it took a lot of time to fully inculcate into philosophy).
It is painful.
Posted by: Mike Barkasi | 09/06/2021 at 08:37 AM