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).
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