At a recent job interview, the interviewer asked about my PhD. He was in the process of getting one himself, so at least he wasn’t freaked out by it, but we had an amusing (to me) interaction when I told him I wasn’t planning on doing any more teaching.
“So you’re not going to use your PhD at all?” he said, incredulously.
In the next few seconds, many thoughts drifted through my head. Like, Why is teaching the only thing you can do with a PhD? And, Obviously, you don’t think it’s about the journey, then. And, Oh, that’s cute, you still think higher ed is about teaching. And, I wonder what would happen if I told him what I’d really done with that dumb piece of paper?
Not being an idiot, I did not say any of these things aloud. But I still wasn’t sure what to say. So I just smiled and said, “I use it every day.” Wanly, with just a touch of world-weary mystery, like Bette Davis. I added a few standard pieces of evidence (analytical skills, problem-solving etc.) — but I don’t think the interviewer was much pleased. I mean, however you framed it, I was essentially refusing to support his hypothesis that a PhD was centered around/aiming towards/all about the teaching.
But I know from experience that a) that’s not true and b) I am a terrible liar. So really, my options were limited.
Peanut gallery, whaddya say? How do you answer tricky interview questions about “not using” your degree?
I don’t know if it’s a PhD thing as much as it is a “humanities in general” thing. My father has a PhD, for example, but it’s in the hard sciences, and no one is surprised at all to hear that he’s not an academic. In fact, his PhD thesis research saves his company a lot of money in ways I cannot explain further because they’ve been classified a trade secret. (I am not making this up)
Meanwhile I have just a bachelor’s and once went on a job interview where the guy asked me why I majored in history and then asked, incredulously, if I’d really be happy in a job that didn’t involve reading about early modern Europe all day. (Me: Actually, I prefer to read about early modern Europe in my free time.) And I get asked all the time if I want to be a teacher. So it’s not just you guys, if that makes you feel any better.
That’s true, it seems the humanities are targeted as “teaching-only” or “caring about narrow subject only” more than other disciplines. But the question remains — how do you disabuse people of this notion without pissing them off? Generally I’ve found that people take it pretty poorly when you force them to rethink an assumption. I don’t generally care, to be frank, but of course in an interview you don’t want to piss off the potential employer.
I think I mostly try to liken it to a hobby – I play the clarinet, too, but no one asks me if I want to be a professional musician – and then point out all the other stuff that I can do. I don’t really like downgrading my historyness to “She can do the job, and she’ll also be able to tell an occasional fun story about Catherine de Medicis,” but you do what you have to, I guess.
There are some downsides to my having an EdD vs. a Phd, e.g., I’m not eligible for some post-docs even though I am post-doc. But an upside is that a lot of people don’t know what an EdD is, much less what they think I should be doing with one.
(and I work in research so I’m more surrounded by PhDs who don’t teach than by those who do, and that’s a nice bubble to live in)
Bafflement can be a good thing — at least you can take the opportunity to “clarify” without having to argue against pre-conceived notions? Maybe?
Exactly, and I should note that plenty of people assume I do have a PhD, so I have had the awkward moment of explaining I don’t, and then realizing they don’t really care.
But usually I sum up my non-teaching career path by saying I had really amazing mentors who encouraged me to explore how my skills and education could be used in a more applied setting, and that I like the more direct results-based aspects of working outside the classroom.
Or I tell them I hate students.
Yeah, that doesn’t go over so well…not that I’ve accidentally said something very similar.
Mostly I get this question from my mother. “So you’re not going to use your degree?” Then she sighs, like it’s the worst thing in the world that I left academe. I don’t even really know what “using your PhD” is supposed to mean. If I had stayed working as an underpaid adjunct slave, I suppose THAT would be “using my PhD.” I think that’s why people stay in the game so long when they have little chance of ever getting a real job or making a living. “But I have to USE MY DEGREE!” Gah. Get over it. It’s a piece of paper in the end.
The “so you’re not going to use your degree???” question is ultimately based on the sunk costs fallacy: you’ve put umpteen years into becoming the world expert in Catherine de Medici’s gynecological troubles, so it’s a travesty if you don’t utilize that knowledge on a daily basis, right?
But, as any first-year management studies undergrad from a third-tier institution would be able to tell you, they call it the sunk costs FALLACY for a reason. It’s a notoriously terrible way to make any business decision.
I’m going to butt in to add that I love that Catherine got two shout-outs in these comments.
You know, in this particular situation it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to use the words “economic fallacy.” I’ll have to keep that in mind next time…
I agree, of course, but when the interviewer’s in grad school it’s probably not the best argument!
I’ve actually been in not one but two job interviews for non-academic jobs, at the end of which the interviewer has sent me on my way with a list of contacts at fancy private boarding schools. Because, obviously, teaching at a place like Groton is the only thing I would have wanted to do/been qualified to do with a PhD in history, besides teach in a college.
Needless to say, I did not get any of those jobs.
As for the question, however, the only way I’ve been able to get around it is to make an argument about fit. Don’t even try to challenge the deeply-held assumption that PhDs are only for creating teacher-researchers, preferably at the college level. Just observe that it wasn’t the right place for you.
It’s a cop-out, of course, given that in truth I think that PhD training does have *some* wider applicability (though not, perhaps, as much as some like to think) and I also believe that the academic workplace is an objectively yucky place, and that there’s a certain false consciousness that keeps a lot of academics thinking it’s the bestest.
Oh, dear. I think I’d find it hard to control myself if a non-academic interviewer tried to push me towards a fancy-ass prep school. Of course I also doubt my ability to control myself if I have to start talking about “fit”, for exactly the reasons you describe!
My husband and I both have PhDs. We received some mail addressed to Dr. and Dr. Last Name. My four-year-old daughter asked what it said and we told her. She just about fell over laughing: “That’s so silly. You and Daddy aren’t really Doctors! Why did they write that?”
Even a four-year-old can see the ridiculousness of a PhD. This has little to do with your post, but I wanted to share the adorable and humiliating little anecdote.
And if I ever do anything other than teach, I’ll let you know… I know my husband does social sciences, so he does government and think-tank work. You know, “consulting,” the ultimate money-making scheme and question killer. It’s like asking anyone who works for Convergys what it is they actually do.
That’s what I mean about this PhD/humanities business. Why do other fields get a free pass if say the magic word, “consulting”? And where’s our think tank? Boo!
I tell my students that the practice of historical analysis hones your bullshit detector, and that’s a valuable life skill.
But I doubt I’d ever say it in a job interview. Even though it’s straight-up Truth.
Maybe if you said “BS” instead of “bullshit”, you could get away with it. Hell, maybe it would make you look like a straight-shooting candidate. If you’re already stuck between a rock and a hard place, it’s worth a try!
One strategy that may or may not work based on the age of the interviewer: ask them what they majored in, their current job, and the relation between the two. In my experience, by the time someone is thirty many B.A. and B.S. holders aren’t directly employed in their field, through in the good cases there is some correlation, either in subject matter or meta-skills. Sometimes getting them to apply their logic to their own life does the trick – though, of course, sometimes not.
I think that’s a good suggestion. I’m not sure it would have worked here, only because the interviewer’s degree was pretty related to the field (I’d done my research). But I think in most cases, you’re right, that would be a good parallel to point out.
“the practice of historical analysis hones your bullshit detector.”
Saying that on Monday.
To my students.
Whom I adore and continue to find endlessly fascinating.
I have a very good batch this year.
But keep in mind, my husband is the primary bread winner. The money I make still stinks, no matter how you slice it. And he is a real doctor. A super-specialized one, even. So, I have the luxury of just being able to enjoy my work. Or take a semester off — like I did last spring, after all that plagiarism ordeal.
Maybe this should be the new motto of historians/teachers everywhere! And kudos to you for being honest about the money.
Good article in Sunday (October 2) American Statesmen (Austin’s paper)about “doctor” as a tittle used by just about anyone who wants to (like optometrists who are craftsmen). Nurses are getting doctorates in nursing and that piss off MD’s when they want to be called doctor. I think schools are offering this doctorate programs as value added for students and getting more profit for keeping students longer in school. I know this only marginally relates to your post, just wanted to let you know about the article. I love reading your posts Amanda and the discussions that follow.
Thanks! Hope you’ll come back often, and feel free to pass along the link — I couldn’t find it by searching.
This article sounds similar: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/health/policy/02docs.html
Ah, okay, I see. Hmm, I think this is a problematic example because there’s such a lot of gender/power baggage in it — historically, men have taken themselves way more seriously and so become the titled Drs., tailors, and chefs to women’s nurses, seamstresses, and cooks. Also, it’s hard for me to stomach people who are obsessed with “entitlement” to be called Dr. If that’s why you’re going to school, I think you have the potential to be a really bad person. That said, I think we need to stop over-credentialing, and charging people for titles, whether it be Dr. or MBA or World’s Bestest Optometrist.
I would just like to point out that optometrists are, in fact, doctors. They treat your eyes in the same way dentists treat your teeth.
Hmmm. My instinct is to go for the redirect, moving the conversation back to why you want this job.
I suspect in the particular instance you describe, there is an additional layer which is that the interviewer is worried that he’s wasting his time and effort. You don’t really want to go there.
But we all grow and change over our lifetimes. When you registered for a PhD you were a different person that you are now. You wanted to do it for particular reasons that made sense at the time. And you learned stuff along the way. Some of it was stuff you wanted to learn about your field. Other stuff was about the environment and whether you wanted to continue in an academic career.
Much of that is stuff you can’t learn without trying it. Who knows if they will do their best work in the kind of environment that academia is until they try it? You get the job, you do the work, you are unhappy, you figure out what isn’t working and you look for a job that’s a better fit.
Or, you talk about the crappy job market AND that you’ve moved on. You couldn’t get an academic job and weren’t prepared to do the insecure, poorly paid work in that sector that you could get so you looked for other options and developed some of your other skills. Now you have discovered other things that you really like doing and you really have no desire to go back and try that, even if the job market had improved (which it hasn’t).
I guess the key thing is to figure out why the interviewer is asking. If it seems that they are worried you are going to leave if a “teaching” job comes up, then reassure them that you aren’t even looking in that area anymore. Probably the bit about I learned in the process that teaching in a university is not as rewarding as I thought it was going to be. Followed by something from other parts of your background that supports what you have decided is a more rewarding direction and reassures that this job is the kind of thing you are really interested in doing.
In this sense, the PhD is like any job you’ve held previously that is really different from the direction you are now going in. Also, you could play up the fact that you finished. “I discovered as I was doing the PhD that an academic career (or “teaching”) wasn’t really a good fit for me. I decided to finish the degree anyway. And then did x, y, and z to ensure that I could take those research and analytic skills and apply them in a company like yours.”
If the interviewer is looking for evidence of specific skills, then ask for clarification and offer specific examples that reassure them. Of if they are worried that you have a lot of book learning but no experience, flesh out what doing the PhD (and any academic jobs you did have) actually involved in terms of experience. Remember that teaching looks really different from the perspective of the student than it does from the perspective of the teacher. Also, if you did anything to apply your book learning in the Real World ™, highlight that.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. You’re right, in this case, there was an added layer of weirdness/anxiety, and while I agree it’s never a good idea to go there, I think it was too late inasmuch as there was no way I was going to soothe said anxiety. So maybe best to avoid interviewers in the midst of degree programs altogether?
You make a good point about fear of leaving for a teaching post– (as though that’s going happen, but I do know plenty of academics who are very divided on that count, and might be tempted if there was an offer. The trick is getting across that I’m not one of them, without entering into the above-mentioned territory.
I dislike that question “you’re not going to use your degree???” I have to admit that I can feel myself getting annoyed and I have to tell myself to calm down. I think that it really means that the interviewer doesn’t really grasp that why I might have done in the first place, that I did it for particular reasons at a specific time, that it in reality was an opportunity to learn a bunch of new skills in conjunction with a really interesting body of knowledge.
However, I think that there’s an underlying issue here – the interview is really worried that he/she is waiting his time and I, the potential job, person will leave whenever an academic job comes up that I like. I think that really the tactic is to move the conversation back to why you want this job.
However, I think that parts of the PhD training have some wider applicability but the hard task is identifying which skills etc can be redeployed in the work environment. It would be great if we’d had someone tell us which skills might be reployed and how (but a voice in my head says – when is this gonna happen!). I think that at the moment (also based on what friends tell me who are in it) that the academic workplace isn’t a very pleasant place to work and that there is definitely a belief amongst academics that it’s the greatest place to work in.
I know, right? Getting pissed off is a big interview no-no, but at a certain point you just gotta push back on these assumptions.
Did you see this? One of my old professors just linked to it on Facebook. I always thought Anthony Grafton’s books were funny, but now I like him even more.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/03/leaders_of_history_association_call_for_new_view_of_the_job_market
Also, happy World Teachers’ Day! I know you aren’t a teacher anymore, but you should still take it as an excuse to have a drink and a cupcake.
I’m glad someone’s calling these folks out on the carpet. While we’re at it, can we please stop acting like librarianships — or other jobs still kinda related to academia somehow — are “alternate” careers?
And thanks, I will indeed celebrate in monstrous style!
i intend to get my ph. d. because it seems to be the next logical step. like many members of my species, i live my life in a step-wise manner and all. what would i do with it afterwards? well, one option is to teach (spelled preach) harder
nice blog!
This is all part of what I call the humanities bias and it gets encountered in various ways both inside and outside the academy.
Your interview story reminds me of my undergraduate days when certain members of my family would look at me incredulously when I stated that I was a philosophy major. From the expressions on their faces, you would have thought that I told them my lifelong goal was to spread syphilis to the masses. “Look Ma! No protection!”
Most thought I should get a degree in something practical. Of course, they did not mean something practical like HVAC or becoming an electrician. No no. They meant management or accounting or something of that nature. As an aside, I find it interesting that the ‘trades’ that don’t require a bachelor’s degree get such a bad rap from people who end up working in ‘trades’ that do require a bachelor’s degree.
They changed their tunes, however, when I was about the only person who was able to see the writing on the wall in a number of industries and was able to switch jobs, and occupations, and careers. Other members of my family were unprepared and or unwilling to see the cultural and economic shifts happening around us. They all spent decent periods on the unemployment line because they could not “see,” which really means they couldn’t take what was happening around them and make needed adjustments, aka they never learned how to think. They were looking around stunned, eyes wide with that “WTF just happened?” look on their faces.
When I was working in publishing in the early 1990’s I could see a sea change. Lots of consolidation. A big drop in the number of books published. I got out and went to work for Kinko’s in computer design. Again, I could see the trends changing. The internet. The ability for people to buy computers on the cheap. To me these trends all spelled the eventual death knell of the computer services departments at Kinko’s. I jumped ship and went to work in information technology. Same thing in IT as I began to see computer services outsourcing – first a trickle and then a downpour. Being able to “see” saved my ass time and time again.
That shitty useless philosophy degree helped me do that.
When I was in IT, I recognized that all these technological savants would come back from EDUCASE and other idiotic technology conferences and try to move everything online. I decided to become a proffie because I recognized that while some things can be memorized and taught online and someone needs to know how to do proffer the asinine ‘banking system’ of education that online course often engender.
However, I also realized the opposite: that huge and continued push for online learning also meant that some specific classes and specific learning was going to have to remain in the through co-creation, co-construction and co-presence, particularly relating to public speaking, presenting, emergent and situational leadership. Hence why I went into the communication field. Plus my students LOVE the fact that I ‘worked for a living’ and bring that experience into the classroom. (And yes, I know full well that academic freedom really means the freedom to work all the time. And yes, sometimes I miss being able to clock out at 5 and say “Alrghty, that shit’s over for the day!”
That shitty useless philosophy degree helped me understand these things.
I was able to recognize that Apple stock was completely undervalued at $12 per share in 1997, even though they only owned 1% of the market share. I was able to recognize shifts in markets that others didn’t see and make some other great investment choices.
That shitty useless philosophy degree helped me do that.
Of course peers look at me askew sometimes when I say I love investigating companies and investing in them. I can only assume that this comes from a humanities bias as well. After all, we are supposed to love wisdom for wisdom’s sake and love learning for learning sake and practicality be damned. Of course that is rose-coloured glasses bullshit. I find eating a more pressing and pragmatic issue than the ‘purity’ of investigating which of Kant’s categories might or might not be true.
My main research is based on interviews and ethnography, so I can take those out and work for various organizations if I wanted to. However, I am not as interested in helping organizations and their bottom lines as I am in getting the next generation to make some sort of difference. I could and maybe will do that kind of research and BANK.
That shitty useless philosophy degree helped me recognize that.
Having an education is much more than “Hey I learned this and I am going to use this skill for this purpose.” Its being able to see evidence, take data, look around, examine and then make smart choices about the future. My point is that shitty useless philosophy degree helped me in more ways than a degree in accounting or management ever could have.
Apologies if I seem rantish. I’m just passionate.
And remember no matter what the rest of degree has on it, one of those lines is “Doctor of Philosophy.”
I’ve been thinking about these kinds of questions a lot as I contemplate leaving academia. However, even though I currently teach, what I teach doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the field my degree is in. I have a degree in literature, but the bulk of my teaching appointment requires teaching Spanish language classes. This happens to be to my liking, as I’d rather teach grammar than literary theory any day, but I’m effectively still doing a job I was apparently qualified to do as a first-year MA student. Not sure how that counts as “using” my degree, either.
Still working on a pithy, non-bitter way of explaining this to people, though.
The non-bitter part is really hard, especially since people are quite sentimental when it comes to teaching. If you figure out anything pithy, do share!