Today’s guest post comes from Katie DePalma, a classicist-turned-editor who left grad school after getting her MA (you can check out her latest blog post at QuidQuid QuidQuid, to read more about her decision-making process). She’s got some great tips here, both for getting over academia and getting over the idea that your degree makes you different from other job-seekers.
So, you’ve decided to leave academia behind!
Maybe you’re disgruntled by the pay or the politics or the posturing. Maybe the terrible economy has left you jobless. Or maybe you’ve realized that it just isn’t for you.
Whatever your story, congratulations! You’re free! Things are about to start getting interesting for you. The world is your very own big, delicious oyster. Go slurp it up!
Unfortunately, eventually you’re probably going to have to get a job. Like a real job. Or at least a real enough job that it pays
money.
This is a difficult time for anyone to find a job. It’s even tougher when you’re a person with tons of academic cred but not much
experience outside academe. So how’s an academic defector supposed to find their way in this crazy, mixed-up job market? As someone who has passed on to the Other side and lived to tell the tale, I have some advice for you.
#1: Let go of your idea of the Other.
There is a feeling among academics that there are only two kinds of jobs: academic jobs and Other jobs. These Other jobs are boring and repetitive and require an impossible 9am-5pm schedule. They bear close resemblance to the movie Office Space. Excellence an Other job might look something like this:
The greatest lie academia ever told you is that Other jobs can’t be satisfying. No one likes a TPS report, it’s true. But there are of jobs out there that are just as intellectually stimulating as teaching at the college level. If you can believe it, some are even more so.
#2: Think about what you like to do. Broadly.
What are you interested in? If you’re a veteran academic, you probably have a canned answer to this that sounds something like Modes of alienation in early Kiswahili coming-of-age folktales. This kind of answer is not going to get you a job anywhere doing anything.
It’s time to take about a hundred giant steps back and think about the big, big picture. What do you really like to do? What are you naturally good at? When I dared to ask myself this question, I realized that I loved my study of ancient poetry and drama because they’re all about the two things that really interest me: words and people. I love people and all the things they say to each other. I love words and all the endless ways we can share them. An interest in ancient poetry and drama doesn’t give a person a lot of job options. An interest in words and people could lead to any of a thousand exciting, creative jobs.
#3: Keep your eyes and ears wide open.
When I decided to leave grad school, I had no idea what kind of job I’d want to look for on the other side. It never even occurred
to me that books came from anywhere before they got to the bookstore until I stumbled into a department-sponsored brown-bag seminar one day. The editor of a university press was there to talk with students and faculty about the process of getting one’s manuscript published. I thought hey, I bet I could edit books! That thought was the beginning of my career.
Opportunities are everywhere you look if you’re looking for them.
#4: Take stock of what you have done and what you can do. Then work it shamelessly.
Your education and teaching experience will take up about half a page of your résumé. What are you going to say about yourself to fill up the other half? Don’t make the mistake of listing the titles of your conference papers or academic publications. This is not your CV.
What can you actually do? Your years in the academy have prepped you for an Other job in a million different ways. You can read
anything, write anything, teach anything, and research anything. You’re familiar with a wide variety of languages and computer programs and style manuals. You can coordinate and organize a project as massive as a thesis/dissertation. You can deal with the full spectrum of dysfunctional personalities. This stuff is part of the job of being an academic. But don’t assume that the person reading your résumé knows any of this if you don’t tell them explicitly. Tell them everything you can do and tell them exactly how awesome you are at it.
#5: Turn up.
Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
I don’t remember what made me buy Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, a truly strange and wonderful little book by Paul Arden that’s full of insane, brilliant career advice. Whatever it was, I’m glad I did, because this book contains probably the most valuable career advice of all time.
I would feel bad about posting pages scanned from this book if the book did not explicitly advise that I should do exactly that
sort of thing. Paul Arden would undoubtedly approve.
This advice seems a little insane but it is 100% true. Flip the traditional job search on its head. Instead of starting with job
listings, start with companies. Make a list of 20 places you’d love to work, and then do some research. Who do you know who works there or knows someone who works there? What’s the name and contact info for the person who currently has the job you’d like to have? Reach out and set up an informational interview. Do anything to wedge your little toe in the door. Then, if you have to, offer to work for them a little for free. A mini internship. Come in a few hours a week and make copies or coffee or whatever anyone needs. One day they’ll need more than copies and coffee and you will save the day and then you’re in. Once you’re in, they’ll see how wonderful you are and won’t be able to live without you. This sounds fully insane to most people but I got both of my first two jobs in publishing exactly this way. Maybe it will work for you too!
It’s a big Other world out there, y’all! I hope my words have offered some encouragement and I wish all of my fellow defectors the best of luck in finding their way through it all.
Signed,
quidquid quidquid
disgruntled former classicist / present-day children’s book editor
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Great tips. I’m working hard at employing them myself.
The only thing I might add is once you decide to leave academia, start building your network immediately! I’m amazed at how few people I know outside of the ivory tower. Because of the time suck academia requires, there just isn’t time to socialize with folks outside our “hallowed” walls. That has made networking difficult. Start early!
You are so, so right about networking. Getting a great job can be all about who you know!
Good luck out there!
Wow, I’m cool! That was meant to be a reply to Michael. WordPress, you are so wily with your nesting comments.
Great tips, Katie. Even for those of us who never ventured into (or out of) grad school but are still in the “omg what now” phase.
Hope you found it ~inspiring~!!
thanks for the post. good, positive tips. i’ve been coming to the same sort of realization about how my academic interests would fit with publishing. as a wanna-be intellectual historian, i really like to think about who reads what, for what reasons, and what they get out of it. so publishing feels like a good fit for me.
that said, would you mind sharing more specifically how you got your foot in the door in publishing? it seems that the big companies have very structured hiring practices (internships during college, then entry-level workers hired from this pool, and so on). so while i believe you that “just showing up” was the key to your success, i’m curious how you infiltrated the system, so to speak. surely you were already in NYC and ready to schmooze, no?
Actually, no! I’m a publishing anomaly–I’ve now had three publishing jobs, none of which have been in New York.
After my a-ha moment at the brown bag lunch, I found out that another disgruntled former classicist from my department was an editor at my university’s University Press. I met with him and he put me in touch with the managing editor, and that’s when I volunteered to spend a few hours a week hanging around the department and getting my feet wet. They were probably a little weirded out but couldn’t refuse free help. What I didn’t know was that one editor was about to leave on maternity leave and another was out of the office a lot with health issues. It turned out they needed a ton of help and I was right there to help them! Within a week they were training me to proof indexes and collate artwork and other editorial tasks. When it came time to chose the next year’s [paid] University Press Fellows, I was one of two picked from the zillions of applicants, most of whom were probably more qualified than I was. They knew my face and knew that they could trust me to get important stuff done, and that ended up mattering the most, apparently!
When I left Texas to follow my husband to Atlanta for school, I asked my higher-ups at UT Press to email a few editors (whose info I’d found online) in ATL for me, just saying that one of their former editors was headed to town and that they should consider having me in for an informational interview. This yielded me a not-very-enticing offer to answer phones for a children’s book company for 7 hours a week. Foot in door! On my first day, I asked if I was allowed to work more than 7 hours a week if I was busy enough to have to. They said yes. So I got busy! It turns out almost no one can refuse eager help. I was there all day every day within a few weeks, and eventually went from Front Desk Peon to Editorial and Marketing Coordinator (ie Editorial Peon).
Confession time: I believe that, to this day, everyone at that company in ATL believes that someone actually officially hired me to work more than 7 hours a week. It never happened. This is borderline Krameresque of me, I realize.
Thanks for sharing your story Katie! I’m always talking with the grad students I advise about how looking for jobs outside the academy requires changing your mindset (looking at the big picture, taking advantage of opportunities, making opportunities happen) and this illustrates it so well.
Thank you very much! Feel free to send those grad students over here the next time they start asking questions
Yet, your approach is what I call a “wife’s” approach–only possible if one has an earning spouse in the background. For the rest of us, this is not possible. But I agree with you–it’s good to network and to “show up”, just not always so doable. And in Europe, for instance, being open about one’s career when entering academia is considered a plus, here: not so much.
Not so. I was supporting myself financially throughout those two jobs. I started volunteering at the UP when I was still in grad school and living off my TAship. When I was working few hours at my job in ATL, I supplemented it with a job stuffing envelopes until I had enough hours at my job to support myself.
It can be done!
in fact, in Atlanta, I was supporting my husband through grad school.
Agreed, I’m interning and showing up and happily spouse-free. But I take Jane’s point, too; I think not having a second income to depend on makes transitioning scarier — and for Pete’s sake, I would really like it if the gov’t etc. would stop assuming dual income families were a) the norm (not so much anymore) or b) the ones who need all the tax breaks. Ha. Might have to blog about the transition/spouse thing at some point.
Absolutely–a second household income is an incredible safety net.
Oh yeah! Great article. “Other” jobs can be plenty satisfying … some more than others. But getting one of the “Other” jobs is not a sign of failure or a sign of stepping down from the tower.
A sad side effect of increased education is that it might narrow your horizons instead of expanding them. Sure, lots of articles for those looking for “Other” jobs will tell you to specialize and then specialize some more, but you still need to be able to look at the bigger picture … and getting a PhD isn’t always about that. The people who seem to succeed the most after getting a PhD are the ones who have a good balance of academic skills and non-academic skills.
The people who seem to succeed the most after getting a PhD are the ones who have a good balance of academic skills and non-academic skills.
This is so true. What’s sad is that many academic skills ARE non-academic skills too, but people forget that and start to think they can’t do anything outside of academia.
It’s all in your perspective!!
Thanks for reading.
Seems like good advice to me, especially the “question what you think you know about jobs outside of academia.” The choice is not between professor or cube monkey. This weekend, I met a 30-something guy in a coffee shop whose job it is to make rainstorms and blow things up and make bullet holes appear in cars for TV shows. And I thought, “Yeah — somebody has to do that, don’t they? Coool….” Which is to say, there’s probably a world of stuff out there you never even thought of.
(With the caveat, of course, that not all of it’s going to make you rich. That’s a priority that seriously narrows your options.)
Exactly!! It’s a false dichotomy between academic and Other.
The crazy Paul Arden book I mentioned recommends looking for jobs that pay well because it keeps you honest. I don’t know about all that! But I do know people have gotten rich doing all kinds of nonsense, so there’s hope for all of us.
I second the absolute crazy diversity of what people get paid for…now that I’m post-academic I drive by the Eastern Arts meditation center or the eyebrow waxing shack or whatever and I think, Huh, well I guess there are a lot of different ways to make money in the world.
Great article Katie. And I like your style! WoPro finds the good peeps. I just hopped over to quidquidquidquid and will check out some more. I didn’t get to read this post yesterday, but it dovetails nicely with my piece today about what people would do if they knew they couldn’t fail.
I’m gonna have to take myself over to your blog and check that out!
Thanks for reading!
Wow, I feel like you were writing that directly to me. I am finishing up my PhD at the moment, and I feel like the walls are closing in on me. I do not want my supervisor’s life.
But you are right, there’s a big wide world out there for me. Now my next challenge is figuring out how to change a dream I’ve had for 10 years, and being happy with the outcome…
This is the fun part!!
Hit me up on twitter (@quidquidkatie) to keep me posted on your journey. I really love being able to commiserate with others who have leapt from the ivory tower and survived the fall.
Great! I especially loved your bit about “words and people.” The whole trying to figure out what’s at the heart of an esoteric passion is something I’ve been doing for about two years now. I haven’t exactly gotten to “it” but I’d be lost if I wasn’t trying!
~It’s the journey, not the destination~
or something
Totally good advice! I totally agree…the point is to get your foot in the door by hook or by crook. Try things out ..and volunteering for a short period time can help you do. Sometimes its even possible to do this through a temping agency which specialises in the types of places that you’re interested in. Above all..its important to think out of the box!
Oooh yes, I forgot temping! Definitely an excellent way to get a foot in the door.
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