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The "Ninety Per Cent" factor: Part 2. In search of Plan B
25 May 2010
By Andy Humphrey
OK, so what about the 90% of us who, according to my RSC careers advisor, are never going to find an academic post? Assuming we give our research careers the best possible chance, there’s still a high risk that sooner or later the funding will run out. Whether we want it or not, and no matter how much we’ve enjoyed our time in research, we may be forced to find something else to do to pay the bills. What options are open to those of us who may have dedicated years to our specialised subject (to say nothing of the time it took us to get the doctorate in the first place) and have never contemplated doing anything else?
This is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot recently.
The good news for researchers is that we are a highly skilled workforce, rich in transferable skills. The same aptitudes that have driven us into research are ones that other employers find really desirable in their staff. So I’ll just pluck a few out of thin air, and invite others to add their own suggestions.
To begin with, research is surely one of the most pernicketty jobs you can have. Researchers have to develop a careful attention to fine detail, whether it means tracking down obscure references (and appreciating their significance) or simply making sure that you don’t accidentally burn the lab down. If you need someone who can unearth obscure information, draft meticulous documents or pull apart somebody else’s meticulous documents, then somebody with experience of life in research is your man. Or woman. These are exactly the sort of skills required in law, accountancy and banking. They may not be the most glamorous of fields – personally the thought of a life in accountancy makes my blood run cold – but if you’re looking for job security after years of short-term contracts, they might be worth investigating.
Alongside the pernicketty streak there has to be a certain creative flair. Researchers as a class tend to be people who are fascinated by unusual connections, and ingenious in finding ways of making apparently un-linked information connect up. Also a vital prerequisite in the legal field, and invaluable if you have an interest in consultancy, crime detection, politics or international development, to name a few. Researchers generally are self-motivated, good at organising their own time, and able to respond to deadlines – so they’ll fit in in any high pressure environment. These skills are also essential in any management roles, whether or not you’ve had previous experience of supervising Ph.D. or project students.
And then there’s all the specialist knowledge. Organic chemists and life scientists have a head start in moving into the health profession; a good friend and former lab-mate of mine is now a clinical trials co-ordinator, and is loving every minute of it. Even with George Osborne’s axe looming, the civil service will always need economists and social scientists. And only a couple of days ago I caught the tail end of a Radio 4 documentary about Goldman Sachs, explaining how at the height of the bank’s success they ran an aggressive campaign to recruit physicists. Why physicists? Most of them spend their lives creating complex mathematical models – exactly the skills needed to disentangle the global financial markets.
What other skills do you bring to the mix – and where do you imagine they could be applied?
Nathan Ryder25 May 2010 at 02:18 PM
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Great post Andy: paragraph five sums up for me exactly why I love doing training workshops with PGRs - it's a great opportunity to work with such highly skilled individuals.
George Whale25 May 2010 at 08:25 PM
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Good to be reminded of these skills Andy, but unfortunately most British employers couldn't give a toss: just watch their eyes glaze over when you tell them all about your Ph.D. Also, the problem with changing "career" at 40 or 50 is that you will probably have to start near the bottom again, working like a dog for a pittance of a salary, competing with and taking orders from 20-year-olds. It is a wonderful thing to be able to do research, but for most it will never be the basis of a meaningful career. We need to be more honest about this, especially with new researchers, who should understand the possibility that 10 or 20 years down the line they may be struggling to find work.
Andy Humphrey28 May 2010 at 12:38 PM
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I can't help feeling that you're missing the point of my post, George. If you're marketing on the basis of what is in your Ph.D., then it's not going to be relevant to any employer outside a fairly narrow academic field. But if you're marketing yourself on the basis that YOU HAVE COMPLETED A Ph.D., then that says a great deal about your intellect, your work ethic and your ability to process and interpret information, that's another matter entirely. You need to focus on the skills that the Ph.D. and the research career have given you, not the detail of the Ph.D. itself. The other thing I'm trying to stress is that for long-term career researchers (like me, I'm now 13 years since qualification) it's not such a barmy notion to consider re-training. Researchers have the aptitude to pick up the new skills, and the intellect to be able to assimilate the required knowledge. In academia at least, research is relatively well-paid these days too. It's true that re-training is likely to mean some financial investment, but by the time people have been 10 years or so in research many of us (not all, I realise, but many) actually have the financial capacity to be able to suffer that for a few years. It can be regarded as a long-term investment, because the professions that require re-training tend to be pretty well paid after you've worked in them for a few years. That's why, even in credit crunch times, banks are still willing to give out re-training loans. It's perfectly reasonable to see a fnancial outlay on training fees, etc., as a long-term investment that will pay for itself in the fulness of time - probably much sooner than, say, your mortgage! I don't really see why taking orders from younger members of staff should be such a cross to bear, either. In academia I've already been doing this for years! It's far more important that a senior colleague earns your respect than what his or her age is. If you're the sort who can't take direction from anyone younger then I concede that this may be a problem, but can I tentatively suggest that this might be an issue that a counsellor could deal with more effectively than a careers advisor? George does bring up an interesting point, though, about motivation. Some of us may be forced into re-training, but I believe it's really important to make an informed choice about what to re-train for. Those who have loved research, but been forced to leave it behind, will struggle if they're not able to love their new area of work in the same way. That's why I suggest a close look at your aptitudes, interests and the factors that motivate you, before taking a decision with such long-term implications. It would be awful to re-train, go through probation and struggle up the career ladder only to find in another 5 years' time that you are somewhere you really don't want to be any more.
Blanka Sengerová07 July 2010 at 12:21 PM
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I'm not sure where this fits in best, but RSC have just published an article which toucher very closely on the issue we've discussed here countless of time - i.e. what about those who would like to remain researchers (on the bench) without becoming managers (group leaders): http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/July/02071001.asp