Breaking the status quo on recruiting models: hiring PhDs for industry positions
Why you need to expand your search to target PhDs (and not just for research roles)
By Andrew Cusick, ProPhounD Co-Founder
“PhDs are great for scientific or technical knowledge, but we need someone with business experience for this role.”
“We already have a talent pipeline with research universities”.
“We aren’t hiring research roles right now, so aren’t looking for PhDs.”
“Their resume only lists academic research experience and they would need too much training for our open industry roles.”
These are just a few of the common stereotypes and misconceptions plaguing the hiring market and creating a major roadblock between the organizations that are striving to create worldwide impact through technological innovation, and PhD talent fully-equipped and eagerly seeking roles to drive meaningful change. Simply stated, most organizations are missing an incredibly valuable talent pool because they do not know how to attract and retain this talent.
As a society, there is a misconception that all PhDs are found buried in books and data, dressed in lab coats, working with beakers or studying samples under a microscope or documenting the behaviors of lab rats. And while that might be the case for some (only a tiny percentage of PhDs will become professors at research institutes), the more accurate stereotype we should assign to PhDs is this:
PhDs have a proven track record of being so passionate about their speciality that they invest in an education that allows them to understand the topic to its maximum capacity. All with the intention of seeking out a career that allows them to apply that knowledge to drive actionable change and see the impact of the work they are doing on the world.
They are the people who can see the possibilities and actually know how to make them a reality.
Most of the PhDs applying for industry roles are frustrated with the slow pace of academia. They’ve done the research, they understand the solution, they know how to make it happen, and they find an industry role that allows them to do just that.
Doesn’t this sound like the exact kind of candidate you want working for you?
So, where is the mismatch happening between PhDs and hiring managers?
Unfortunately, there is a mismatch almost every step along the way that makes it extremely hard for the worlds of academia and industry to meet. But when they do, it’s absolute magic!
Step one: recruiting. If you are seeking PhD candidates and can’t seem to find the right match, it’s probably because PhD talent is often not showing up in the same places you are accustomed to recruiting. The typical career fair or job board might not reach the specialized PhD talent pool. ProPhounD regularly works with hiring partners seeking PhD talent to curate events specifically designed to reach a wider scope of applicants with expertise specific to the roles you’re hiring for. If you are only recruiting PhDs for research and development roles, you are missing out on an incredibly capable and intrinsically motivated group.
Step two: the resume. When a PhD candidate with an entirely academic career sends their resume across to a hiring manager looking to fill an industry role, it can be hard to decipher how the experience is applicable. PhDs need to be better about tailoring their resume and cover letter to communicate how their experience is relevant to the expectations of the role listed.
Step three: interviews. Often hiring managers and candidates alike walk away from the interview with a sense of incompatibility. PhD candidates carry a degree of imposter syndrome when it comes to industry jobs, holding on to an immense amount of knowledge and experience but lacking the confidence to demonstrate how it applies to an industry role since it is still the path less traveled in their field. And on the other side, hiring managers are often asking the same questions they would any other candidate, when an alternate line of questioning based on a PhD’s unique background might reveal why they are the right person for the job.
Step four: salary expectations. One common stereotype we hear from hiring managers is they don’t look at PhDs for certain roles because the salary is too low and PhDs have high salary demands. Under the new stereotype we detailed above, PhDs are driven by a deep passion for their industry and a desire to have an impact. Don’t count them out based on salary just yet!
Step five: onboarding and training. Even if a PhD candidate finds a job listing, successfully applies and gets an interview, has a great engagement with the hiring manager and is comfortable with the salary, we still see hesitations from hiring managers who believe they might require more training on business operations to be successful. Based on what we’ve seen with PhDs making the jump to industry, they bring the same intellectual curiosity to learn those skills as they do in every other area of their lives, and quickly bridge the gap to develop the business acumen needed for industry roles.
Where do PhDs fill a unique void on your team?
You might still be wondering if it’s worth breaking hiring norms to start collecting PhD talent in these out-of-the-box roles. Here are just a few ways they round out your team in a unique way.
PhD talent brings with them deep scientific and technical knowledge. There is a far smaller learning curve on the technical side for PhDs to understand the inner workings of technology, the science behind it, how it is differentiated in the market and why it's relevant for practical application. More than that, they can then communicate these immensely complex topics in a digestible way that, say, a patient or customer can better understand. Or rework the language to demonstrate the unique market value to an investor. They can also communicate in an intellectually credible way with a more advanced audience, for example a doctor who has specific questions about the clinical trial process and how the research reads at various stages. Even having the PhD title next to their name might bring a sense of credibility to certain audiences you’ve previously struggled to connect with.
And in a similar vein, many of these candidates will bring with them a unique network of colleagues who have also fled academia and work at various industry organizations you’re interested in collaborating with in the future.
Turnover is another high concern we hear from our hiring manager partners. Many flag a trend of entry-level and middle-management roles putting in 2-3 years and then leaving for the next opportunity. A unique aspect of the PhD talent pool we’ve noticed is that because the motivation is largely focused on seeing the impact of their work on the world, and because they are often seeking out roles aligned with the specialty areas they are passionate about, they are in it for the long haul. This unique segment of the market doesn’t view their work as “just a paycheck”. They are passionate about what they do and echo a common sentiment of wanting to find an industry role that allows them to put that passion into practice.
In fact, some PhDs have been so determined to make the jump from academia to industry we’ve seen examples of them launching their own startups to build out the science or the technology they’ve long been itching to create. Many of those startups are acquired by major corporations later on to adopt the solutions for their own products. So again, why wouldn’t you want to grab them straight out of academia to do all of this from the inside?
Where are we already seeing PhDs making major changes for corporations?
While PhDs leaping from academia to industry is far from new, it’s still a bit uncharted and many organizations haven’t figured out how to reach this talent pool. There are quite a few organizations who are getting an aggressive jump on grabbing the PhDs from academia before the rest of the industry adapts.
Arena Bioworks stole newspaper headlines after it offered seven-figure paydays to lure highly credentialed university professors to work on the next generation of therapies and drugs, without the roadblocks that slow down the research in academia. A clear focus to pull scientists directly from academia to work under their roof.
ExxonMobil is another example of a major corporation that looked to academic researchers when it began filling out ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences Inc. (EMBSI), a team of in-house experts who support ExxonMobil in meeting the world’s energy needs while keeping people and the planet safe. It’s led by a group of EMBSI’s scientists passionate about sustainability and now making a difference in one of the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies. You can read more about the scientists behind the sustainability efforts at our past ProPhounD events here.
Understanding this is new turf for a lot of talent teams in industry, ProPhounD is here to help! We have a network of over 650+ PhDs and a founding team with experience bridging the gap between academia and industry. We work with organizations to create custom programs to help you find the right people for these roles and to personalize onboarding programs to make sure these PhD candidates walk in trained and ready to go. If you’re interested in chatting more about how this works, reach out and we’d love to hear about your hiring needs.
About the Author: Andrew (Andy) Cusick is the Co-Founder of ProPhounD, an organization focused on connecting PhDs to organizations outside of academia to solve the world's big problems. He has over 30 years of career development experience working with leading academic institutions, private enterprises and nonprofits. Andy founded ProPhounD with a very specific mission in mind: to bridge the gap between the underutilized workforce of PhDs and the organizations who need them.