#12: How to tell a convincing career transition story
How do you tell a compelling story to interviewers about your move from academia to industry?
If you don’t get this right, you will seem too risky to interviewers and recruiters. You won’t seem like a sensible fit for the job.
Today I’m going to show you how I told a specific type of career story — and landed a job in tech.
I was a specialist in late 18th and early 19th-century British history.
How did I explain that I was jumping to cloud computing?
I avoided 2 mistakes and did 3 things.
Don’t:- Dwell on why you’re leaving academia
- Keep highlighting that this is a big jump or change
- Focus on what is pulling your forward into industry
- Highlight the threads woven through your career
- Present irrefutable evidence to back up your story
Don’t dwell on why you’re leaving academia
Why you are leaving academia is a complicated, often painful story.
You’re trying to make sense of it yourself.
You likely feel the need to justify the decision to others — mentors, peers, and even family who have built up expectations.
But the interviewers and recruiter are none of these people.
They probably don’t understand academia at all. You don’t need to “justify” your decision to them. It will miss the point of their questions.
(If they do have a PhD, they will already know what’s up).
If you dive into a long story about the woes of academia, you’re not giving them any evidence about why you are a fit for the current role.
You may spark some sympathy from them. But you will also be bringing up themes of toxic behavior, grim job situations, low morale, dreams gone awry, etc.
You need be truthful - but you can do that while reframing your narrative.
Ideally, your answer should connect to THEM and the role.
So what do you do?
Focus on what is pulling your forward into industry
A fake, overly-positive answer won’t be convincing either.
Adrienne Posner has a lovely blog post on exactly this dilemma. I read this post early on in my career pivot. It influenced my strategy and shaped this newsletter issue, too.
Adrienne recommends focusing on the good things that you’re going after (while acknowledging the bad that you’re leaving behind).
Interviewers can read between the lines and still see your career story as one of growth and development.
So for me, I didn’t dwell on how academia made me feel like a flake and how I struggled with work life balance and was never as productive as I wanted to be and honestly was kind of lonely in the day to work and and and … etc., etc., etc.
I highlighted what I was looking for: career growth and learning new areas, a job with clearer impact, and working in an environment with more teamwork and feedback.
I highlighted the things that made me excited to be stepping into a new life.
How do you want your life to change? Talk about that!
This approach will:
- Show your values (in a positive way!)
- Show your fit with the role at hand
Don’t highlight how big the career jump is
Sure, it’s fine to acknowledge that you’re moving fields.
But the more you emphasize a narrative of “take a shot on me”, the riskier you seem.
Transitioning academics will often undercut themselves in both tiny and big ways.
Subtle digs at academia or the obscurity of your research may seem appropriately humble. But it just plants doubt in others’ minds.
Your research was hard work. Own it. You’re skilled. Own that, too.
Self-effacing comments feel “safe” because you may feel like it pre-empts criticisms. It helps you avoid feeling foolish, overconfident, etc. You're trying to protect yourself.
But those comments do not help your interviewers piece together why you’re a great fit for the role.
Likewise, a willingness to learn new things is a great asset. But don’t make your main story be that you’re willing to learn “anything” - without showing that you’re already doing it!
Your interviewers would prefer to hire someone who isn’t starting at absolute zero.
You want to seem like you’re already making (or have made!) the jump. Not that you’re willing to jump only if someone offers you a role.
Highlight the threads woven through your career
The key is to make connections between where you’ve been and where you’re going.
For my first industry role in instructional design, I talked about my interest in learning theory. I gave examples of how I had already applied learning theories commonly used in instructional design.
Then emphasized that I wanted to lean into this topic by exploring it in an industry setting (with more impact, faster timelines, etc. as mentioned above).
I wasn’t leaping wildly from the Victorian era to cloud tech. Rather, I was further developing my passion for learning experience design.
Maybe you’re making a truly big jump? I’ve seen people go from humanities PhDs to being software developers.
But even then, there are threads of connection — threads related to working out logic problems, or persistence, or satisfaction from iteration, or even using code to address tasks and problems in one’s humanities domain.
Chances are that you haven’t randomly chosen a non-academic field. There’s a reason.
What makes you tick? Spend time reflecting about underlying connections between your past work and future work.
Those threads are a central part of your story. They make your career trajectory understandable to someone meeting you for the first time.
Note that these threads do NOT have to have been the central theme of your previous academic career.
What matters is that the connections exist. Now they can play a central role in your story.
Present irrefutable evidence to back up your story
All of this can still feel a bit wishy-washy.
Are you just painting a thin industry veneer over your academic experience?
This is where side projects or a portfolio come in as a supporting pillar of your narrative. They also answer a variety of doubts.
I built an eLearning portfolio. It required learning some very basic visual design plus learning a completely new tool (along with additional instructional design theory in order to have convincing projects).
This portfolio became the ace up my sleeve.
Why? Because now I had proof to back up my words.
Was I actually interested in learning design as other instructional designers understood it? Go look at the portfolio and see.
Had I learned about my new field (instead of just being willing to)? Go see.
Was I actually excited about my new field? Go see.
I ended up doing the same thing a year and a half later when I transitioned to UX Research. I conducted my own research projects that would become the evidence for my story.
Give your story a real foundation. Then "leaving" becomes your "journey forward."
Telling a compelling story
In sum:
- Identify what is pulling your forward into industry, not just what you’re running from. Briefly acknowledge academia's drawbacks while focusing on how your new field gives you what you've been missing.
- Find the threads that connect past interests and career with your future one.
- Back all this up by means of projects, deliverables, or experiences that are recognizable to your new field.
- Now your story is not “why am I leaving?”
Now your story is “this is why I’m excited for what’s ahead and I’m already moving toward it.”
That is a narrative that is useful to your interviewers. (And you).