#2 Translate your academic skills to industry
How to translate your academic skills to industry
Figuring out how to translate your academic experience to industry is overwhelming.
“Where do I start?”
Today I’ll give you a basic game plan to kick off the process.
Be warned that it may still feel discouraging at first. But I can promise you one thing:
It will become less daunting and confusing with time. You will learn to recognize your own value, even if the process is messy.
Getting started is the key, no matter how uncomfortable. Iteration will take care of the rest.
Here’s the basic game plan:
- Start a self inventory
- Study the “basic qualifications” in job ads
- Further revise your skills list and identify gaps
- Craft strong statements about your skills
- Triangulate your translation through coffee chats
- TLDR at the end :)
Start a self inventory
Take an open-minded inventory of yourself.
Write down all your skills, responsibilities, and achievements. Don’t limit yourself to what’s on your CV.
Also don’t limit yourself to what “counts” as valuable work in academia. Industry rewards skills and experiences that academia takes for granted.
Consider your “service” and extracurricular activities, not just teaching and research. This includes committees, conference work, campus programs and initiatives, grad student organizations, running a lab, etc.
Think about the methods you use and your tool skills and technical skills.
This brain dump doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get it on the page. But spend time on the exercise!
You now have some building blocks that you can re-arrange and elaborate on later.
Study the “basic qualifications” in job ads
The “basic qualifications” in job ads will give you a roadmap for what you have and what you need. These are called BQs by many recruiters.
Find 10 job ads for a given type of role that interests you.
Pull out all the BQs from your 10 ads into one list.
Sort and arrange them by the frequency that they occur. Don’t get too distracted by a weird requirement in one job that doesn’t appear in the others.
Put each BQ that you already meet into a separate list. Later you’ll make sure that all of these are on your resume somewhere.
If there are BQs that you don’t fully understand, that is a sign that you still need to do some coffee chats with people in your targeted field.
For BQs that you do not meet, study them carefully. Assess whether you meet them partially.
For instance, instructional design jobs will often list “eLearning, instructional videos, and job aids.” Most PhDs will have some experience with video and job aids post-Covid, even if they haven’t created formal eLearning.
We might view “job aids” as just a small piece of our teaching or of the help we provide to grad students, new faculty, etc. But depending on the role, it may actually be something to highlight.
For other BQs that you do not meet, ask yourself what the underlying skills are. Have you used similar skills in your current wor-k? What are the shared foundations of your skillsets and the BQs?
List those shared foundations in your skills brain dump. These are bridges between your current role and the next.
For a jump start, check out LinkedIn’s keyword/skill resource.
It’s not a substitute for studying the actual BQs, which will give you more context. But it’s informative to see LinkedIn’s view of a role’s skills list based on their own massive data.
Revise your skills list
Return to your initial brain dump. Place the job ads and your brainstormed skill list side by side. This will help you to refine your skills list and see your gaps.
Add items that you realized you already have after studying the BQs. Again, don’t word smith and don’t look for a 100% match.
Maybe a BQ talks about making presentations to leadership and influencing their decisions.
That reminds you that you’ve actually swayed your dean on one or two things. Or maybe you successfully lobbied your PhD program’s director or department chair on an issue related to grad students.
For now, just write down “herded the dean.” You'll perfect this later.
Arrange your skills that match the BQs, or share foundations with them, to the top of your draft skill list. These are ones to target first for further honing.
Key point: Be confident about the places where you think you fulfill the BQs. Don’t be timid and downplay yourself. That’s your academic training talking in your head and shutting you down.
You'll get feedback later about whether you're on target and can then further revise.
Identify your skill and experience gaps
A key step in translating your skills is identifying these areas where you need to make additions.
Were there certain BQs that reoccurred across job ads and that you lacked?
These are your upskilling and learning opportunities.
Academics sometimes resent having to upskill or further prove themselves. That makes sense. But if you want to make the leap to industry, you simply must close these gaps.
When I was transitioning to instructional design, I realized that I had most of the skills and experience in one form or another (even if a bit tenuous).
But I had never created eLearning and I was unfamiliar with the common eLearning authoring program Articulate Storyline. I also didn’t have a portfolio, which was mentioned in most job ads.
Once I learned Storyline and used it to create an eLearning portfolio, the rest of my “translated” skills suddenly helped to make me a competitive applicant.
Side note: One "tough" BQ can be the required years of experience. Don't be discouraged. Some jobs may be literal about this requirement. Oh well. You won't get those.
Others will be more flexible. I've gotten two industry positions so far without fulfilling the "years experience" requirements because I translated my actual experience and combined it with learning new, relevant skills.
Mixing newly acquired skills with translated skills makes those translated skills more convincing.
Upskilling goes hand in hand with translating. It should really be seen as part of the translation process.
Craft strong statements with quantification
Begin crafting your skills and achievements into strong statements that focus on your impact and, where possible, quantify what you did.
The language in the job ads that you have already studied should guide you. But don’t stick with broad descriptions of responsibilities.
“Taught introductory and advanced courses” vs. “Designed and delivered 10 hybrid and online courses to 300+ learners.”
Do you need examples of this process?
Triangulate through coffee chats
Through coffee chats, confirm that you’re pursuing the right skills.
Check that the way you’re translating your existing skills matches what’s expected in your new field.
You can get this feedback through applying to jobs, but it will take much longer and you will usually have to infer how well your translation is going.
Informational interviews and coffee chats are a short cut to figure out what’s actually necessary and how far along the journey you are.
TLDR:
- Start by taking an inventory of your skills and experiences.Don’t limit yourself to what’s on your CV. Consider all of your work, including teaching, research, service, and extracurricular activities. Think about the methods and tools you use.
- Study the “basic qualifications” in job ads. This will give you a roadmap for what you have and what you need. It will also remind you of skills that you overlooked in your brain dump.
- Revise your brain dump. Place job ads and your brainstormed skill list side by side to help you to refine your skills list and see your gaps. Add items that you realized you already have after studying the BQs.
- Identify your skill and experience gaps. A key step in translating your skills is identifying these areas where you need to make additions. Were there certain BQs that reoccurred across job ads and that you lacked? These are your upskilling and learning opportunities.
- Craft strong statements with quantification. Begin crafting your skills and achievements into strong statements that focus on your impact and, where possible, quantify what you did.
- Triangulate through coffee chats. Through coffee chats, confirm that you’re pursuing the right skills. Check that the way you’re translating your existing skills matches what’s expected in your new field.