Dealing with conflict between interest and hireability

[deltavenus]

So, in interest of privacy, I'll just say that I'm in a discipline where developing an entire dissertation research project from scratch is the norm. And I've found myself interested in a sub field in which no recent job posting are calling for expertise in. I know academia is full of idealist, and I'm no different, which is why I'm bringing this discussion to the forum instead of my closest colleagues. And, I know that the academic job market is at best super competitive no matter what. It just seems that if I follow through with my interest in rural such and such where I have found a good amount of support that I will hardly be able to even throw my hat in the job search ring in a few years...

Has anyone else found themselves in a subfield of their discipline that seems undesirable on the already competitive job market?

Edited September 1, 2014 by deltavenus

[TakeruK]

In my opinion, deciding my research interest/PhD thesis topic is mostly determined by (in this order): 1) what will get me hired, 2) what I am good at, and finally 3) what I don't hate doing. To me, I definitely separate work and play in the sense that my main research interests/work does not have to be related to my number one academic interest at all. This is the advice I get from most professors too. You don't have to love your research topic--just don't hate it and have it make you miserable. It's hard to stay in love with a topic after literally spending 5+ years finding out every ugly detail and trying to prove yourself wrong over and over again until you are convinced you are right.

 

So, choosing my work is a practical decision. I didn't go into grad school so that I can be underpaid and study my interests/hobbies. Instead, I went to grad school to develop skills that will get me a job. Obviously, I do love my field (otherwise there are a lot of other things I could do to make more money) but I approach grad school as practical job training, not a pursuit of my hobbies. I pursue my hobbies in my spare time! 

 

To answer the question at the end of the post...yes. My original interest in my field came from some of my first research experience. While I did enjoy doing the work, I realised that there is not much interest from other people on this topic. So, I modified my research interests and tried to re-direct my graduate school work to move towards more employable work. I've talked to people from my old field and they have confirmed my fears--a lot of very talented people are finding themselves without job offers since very few departments are hiring in these subfields. I also notice this trend in the job postings that appear too. Of course, there is probably some confirmation bias here, though.

Edited September 1, 2014 by TakeruK

[fuzzylogician]

Along the lines of what TakeruK says, I think you need to find a way to combine your interests with things that are marketable/desirable. This is somewhat tricky because no one can guarantee that what's sexy now will still be what people are looking to hire 2-5 years from now, or even next year. That said, there are trends and there are usually areas of concentration where there are routinely more jobs. You can tell e.g. from specialized workshops or conferences on particular themes, as well as from job ads. I think it would be naive to ignore that and choose a project based solely on what you are interested in. Your dissertation does not have to be the ultimate project, or the place where you solve all of the major problems that interest you. It serves as a springboard to start a research program that will define your post-dissertation work and what you study as a researcher/professor. I think it's healthier to think about it this way. You want to find a problem that will teach you some useful skills or expose you to some literature that you can then use to define a whole set of questions of interest. What you choose needs to connect with what other people find interesting and exciting, so that you can communicate why they should care about your work. It would be good if it is also something that develops skills that are useful for a variety of questions, or that will allow you to teach courses that routinely need teaching, as those things too are appealing to search committees. The dissertation is a means to an end, not really a goal in and of itself. 

 

I've personally never encountered the question you raised because fairly early on (=in the summer after my first year) I started picking up skills that are currently trendy in my field. There are some things that don't interest me and I didn't choose to specialize in them, but I learned that there are others that I'm actually good at and that I enjoy. These are skills that I had never intended to study before starting school, based solely on my interests at the time. However, having expanded my research area and technical expertise, it's become easier for me to craft research statements that have a broad appeal, and therefore to have relevant expertise for more jobs than most of my peers who graduated in the same year as I did (or, in fact, my friends who graduated 1-3 years ahead of me). I've gone out of my way to learn these skills and integrate them in my work. This is partly because I've discovered it actually interests me, but in all honestly it's also because I know it's beneficial to do this. I am still studying questions that interest me, but my dissertation project was just the first chapter in a larger research program, and the questions I asked are only a part of what I hope to study in later years. There were questions that I chose not to address, even though it would have taken the project in directions I would have enjoyed, for practical reasons of time and access to data (and because some questions I just couldn't solve in the time that I had!). And there are parts that are there because they demonstrate my technical skills and the breadth of my research, more than anything else.

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

I have a related question though: what would you consider a "useful skill"?

 

Is it a skill that can be used across multiple industries and are very broad, such as optics, electronics and programming?

 

Or is it learning how to use a specific instrumentation/technique that has some specific types of jobs associated with it, but is confined to only a single type of industry?

Edited September 1, 2014 by SymmetryOfImperfection

[TakeruK]

I think a "useful skill" is something that future employers will seek. I think it also depends on your expertise with that skill. One of the profs in my program told me that during my time in grad school, I should cultivate one particular thing and become "the" expert on it. It could be an instrumentation skill (e.g. knowing how to fully maximize results from a particular instrument/experiment) or some kind of analysis skill (e.g. knowing how to properly treat data to get the maximum amount of information about it). Basically, at the end of the PhD, you want to get to the point where other researchers in your field think of your name when they think of this technique/experiment/analysis/problem. I think this is really the point of the PhD--your dissertation is just the project you work on to get to this point (i.e. as fuzzy said, a means to an end). The above advice may apply more to an academic job than an industry job though. My field is not very useful in industry so I have not received much advice on how to do well in the industry job market, unfortunately.

[juilletmercredi]

^Yeah, this.  As odd as it may sound, I think you should treat the grad school process like an apprenticeship period/vocational training program, in a sense.  You're doing all of these things to make yourself more marketable, and able to get a tenure-track job (or a think tank position or whatever).  Therefore, you need to pick up marketable skills.  Not flash in the pan trendy fad skills or interests, but things that will be long-term useful.  As you do more reading and immerse yourself in the conversation with scholars, you begin to identify the difference between fads and longer-running trends.

 

I saw my dissertation as a learning project.  I'm not sure what field you are in, but in my field we don't write books.  We write articles.  Therefore, the idea of writing this monograph was patently absurd, because no one was ever going to read it.  But as I got closer it became clear to me that that's not the point; the dissertation is intended for you to learn how to manage a large project all by yourself; it's intended for you to learn some new skill or area; and it's intended for you to dig really deep into a specific area so that you have a foundation upon which to launch the beginning of your research career.  It's also so that you learn how to learn - aka, when you need to do something that requires Skill A but you don't know Skill A, how do you go about acquiring that information?

 

Once I figured that out, the project became long instead of difficult.  I selected a moderately interesting topic that wasn't *exactly* what I want to do for the rest of my life, but rather was in the same general area - so that I could mine the literature review for future papers for a while, and so that I would be pretty much up-to-date on the lit in this field and really just adding new stuff.  I selected a statistical method I didn't know how to use yet so that I could teach it to myself (and I also ended up teaching myself a new stats package, too).  BUT I also chose a project that was more or less the culmination of work I had done earlier in my graduate career. I don't think you're ever really starting from scratch - even if it's the norm for you to pick something that perhaps you haven't already done research/scholarship on, surely you're not expected to pick something you've never read a book about or written a seminar paper on?  You can build upon the work you've done in courses and comprehensive exams.  This also shortens your time to degree!

 

I didn't really have this issue either...or, maybe I kind of did?  It's hard to remember, because it's a chicken and egg thing.  I'm a practical person and came to get the PhD because I wanted a job, so from the beginning I was very attuned to practical aspects.  I already had interests in research methods and statistics, and I also had interests in a specific broad area.  I already liked these things, but I liked them even more when I realized that they were in high demand in my field - and a demand that didn't seem to be going away.  The substantive area is a relatively new area of inquiry and the NIH is just brimming with RFAs for it so it looks like it's fine, although in the next 10 years or so I will need to use innovative ways to study this area.  That's where the methods and statistics part comes in; but in my field, that is ALWAYS going to be in demand.  They're always going to need someone to teach the intro-majors-research methods and stats classes, and that is totally my wheelhouse.

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

^Yeah, this.  As odd as it may sound, I think you should treat the grad school process like an apprenticeship period/vocational training program, in a sense.  You're doing all of these things to make yourself more marketable, and able to get a tenure-track job (or a think tank position or whatever).  Therefore, you need to pick up marketable skills.  Not flash in the pan trendy fad skills or interests, but things that will be long-term useful.  As you do more reading and immerse yourself in the conversation with scholars, you begin to identify the difference between fads and longer-running trends.

 

I saw my dissertation as a learning project.  I'm not sure what field you are in, but in my field we don't write books.  We write articles.  Therefore, the idea of writing this monograph was patently absurd, because no one was ever going to read it.  But as I got closer it became clear to me that that's not the point; the dissertation is intended for you to learn how to manage a large project all by yourself; it's intended for you to learn some new skill or area; and it's intended for you to dig really deep into a specific area so that you have a foundation upon which to launch the beginning of your research career.  It's also so that you learn how to learn - aka, when you need to do something that requires Skill A but you don't know Skill A, how do you go about acquiring that information?

 

Once I figured that out, the project became long instead of difficult.  I selected a moderately interesting topic that wasn't *exactly* what I want to do for the rest of my life, but rather was in the same general area - so that I could mine the literature review for future papers for a while, and so that I would be pretty much up-to-date on the lit in this field and really just adding new stuff.  I selected a statistical method I didn't know how to use yet so that I could teach it to myself (and I also ended up teaching myself a new stats package, too).  BUT I also chose a project that was more or less the culmination of work I had done earlier in my graduate career. I don't think you're ever really starting from scratch - even if it's the norm for you to pick something that perhaps you haven't already done research/scholarship on, surely you're not expected to pick something you've never read a book about or written a seminar paper on?  You can build upon the work you've done in courses and comprehensive exams.  This also shortens your time to degree!

 

I didn't really have this issue either...or, maybe I kind of did?  It's hard to remember, because it's a chicken and egg thing.  I'm a practical person and came to get the PhD because I wanted a job, so from the beginning I was very attuned to practical aspects.  I already had interests in research methods and statistics, and I also had interests in a specific broad area.  I already liked these things, but I liked them even more when I realized that they were in high demand in my field - and a demand that didn't seem to be going away.  The substantive area is a relatively new area of inquiry and the NIH is just brimming with RFAs for it so it looks like it's fine, although in the next 10 years or so I will need to use innovative ways to study this area.  That's where the methods and statistics part comes in; but in my field, that is ALWAYS going to be in demand.  They're always going to need someone to teach the intro-majors-research methods and stats classes, and that is totally my wheelhouse.

 

The problem is that social sciences and STEM have different ideas of what employable is. From what I hear from senior students, its more like:

 

Social science employable: oh, I know some general statistics, I'm employable.

 

STEM: You know basic statistics? Don't care, you have to be a Sigma 6 black belt with a thesis on the applications of Lebesgue integration to machine learning or something before they let you anywhere near statistics.

 

Would you have spent your PHD working on a single employable skill that's used in a single industry (and literally nothing else) that you thought was merely "ok" to do? However, if you got that skill, you're almost guaranteed to get that single job in that single industry.

Edited September 4, 2014 by SymmetryOfImperfection

[TakeruK]

I saw my dissertation as a learning project.  I'm not sure what field you are in, but in my field we don't write books.  We write articles.  Therefore, the idea of writing this monograph was patently absurd, because no one was ever going to read it.  But as I got closer it became clear to me that that's not the point; the dissertation is intended for you to learn how to manage a large project all by yourself; it's intended for you to learn some new skill or area; and it's intended for you to dig really deep into a specific area so that you have a foundation upon which to launch the beginning of your research career.  It's also so that you learn how to learn - aka, when you need to do something that requires Skill A but you don't know Skill A, how do you go about acquiring that information?

 

Agreed! In addition, because we write articles rather than books, dissertations in my field are usually just 3-5 articles "stapled" together (i.e. copied verbatim into thesis format) and then a little bit of filler/introductory material in between. No one reads the theses besides the committee and maybe the next grad student that picks up your project. One recent graduate put a sentence near the end that said "If you read this, tell me and I'll buy you a 6-pack" to see which committee members actually read the whole thing.

 

Would you have spent your PHD working on a single employable skill that's used in a single industry (and literally nothing else) that you thought was merely "ok" to do? However, if you got that skill, you're almost guaranteed to get that single job in that single industry.

 

For me, the answer to that question would be the same as asking if I wanted to get that single job in that single industry. If I felt that the job had all the things I wanted (some job security, well-paying, mentally stimulating, able to live where I want) then sure, I would definitely go do that and know that I have a very secure chance of a job at the end of my PhD. (However, is that ever true? I don't think very many jobs are a sure thing in today's market!)

[SymmetryOfImperfection]

Agreed! In addition, because we write articles rather than books, dissertations in my field are usually just 3-5 articles "stapled" together (i.e. copied verbatim into thesis format) and then a little bit of filler/introductory material in between. No one reads the theses besides the committee and maybe the next grad student that picks up your project. One recent graduate put a sentence near the end that said "If you read this, tell me and I'll buy you a 6-pack" to see which committee members actually read the whole thing.

 

 

For me, the answer to that question would be the same as asking if I wanted to get that single job in that single industry. If I felt that the job had all the things I wanted (some job security, well-paying, mentally stimulating, able to live where I want) then sure, I would definitely go do that and know that I have a very secure chance of a job at the end of my PhD. (However, is that ever true? I don't think very many jobs are a sure thing in today's market!)

 

The problem with STEM careers, at least in industry, is that they are extremely specific. You are right about the risk of finding a job, which makes STEM graduate degrees even more risky - you either train for one job in one industry doing one thing, or you train with a flexible skillset that no one will ever hire you for since they can get people who did exactly what they want in their graduate degrees. Academia is more flexible, but the flexibility is a tradeoff for even higher risk.

 

Social science graduate students face very different problems than we do.

Edited September 4, 2014 by SymmetryOfImperfection

[TakeruK]

The problem with STEM careers, at least in industry, is that they are extremely specific. You are right about the risk of finding a job, which makes STEM graduate degrees even more risky - you either train for one job in one industry doing one thing, or you train with a flexible skillset that no one will ever hire you for since they can get people who did exactly what they want in their graduate degrees. Academia is more flexible, but the flexibility is a tradeoff for even higher risk.

 

Social science graduate students face very different problems than we do.

 

You're right. The way I see it is that you can't really know what the future will hold, so whether you go for the flexible skillset or the specific one thing, you're taking a risk! So, I don't think there is an easy way to know what choice to make, and it would really depend on each person. However, I do think it's important to make that choice early on in your PhD so that you don't end up somewhere in between (i.e. not quite flexible skillset but your specific skill is also not deep enough for expertise). 

 

I agree that social sciences grad students may have different problems but my main interactions with grad students outside of STEM mostly comes from my 2 years in my MSc program (and mostly only in the last year when I volunteered with campus-wide organizations and got to know them). Unfortunately, in my current school, there are no social sciences or humanities programs at all. Well, there is one single all-encompassing program called "Humanities and Social Sciences" that does have a graduate program. However, most of the grad students I've met in this program do economics (and when I asked further, it turns out they basically do applied mathematics). I do wish we have more balance here, but that's the way it is I guess.

[juilletmercredi]

I don't disagree that social scientists have different non-academic employability issues than natural/physical scientists.

 

But I still don't understand the point of the question

 

Would you have spent your PHD working on a single employable skill that's used in a single industry (and literally nothing else) that you thought was merely "ok" to do? However, if you got that skill, you're almost guaranteed to get that single job in that single industry.

 

 

 

The answer is no, I would not personally.  But I think it depends very much on what kind of non-academic jobs we are talking about.  Being, say, the Lebesgue integration to machine learning expert on a team of six computer scientists at a tech firm is a very different position with different specialization requirements than being the generalist computer science and technology policy advisor to a Congress member.  Or, being the statistician on a cutting-edge longitudinal genomics project that requires the development of new software and tools is different than being an in-house statistician at a pharmaceutical company that mostly does different flavors of randomized controlled trials (which are relatively simple to analyze).  That's true regardless of your field.

 

I also think that - in the statistics example - neither is universally true.  There are jobs in which a knowledge of general statistics along with other things can make a person employable (aka, a market research analyst position that wants someone who can design and analyze both very simple survey research and qualitative focus group research).  And there are other jobs that require very advanced knowledge of statistics and some cognate fields like programming and mathematical modeling before they let you near the job.  There are a very, very many jobs in between - that both social scientists and STEM scientists do.  

 

STEM careers don't have to be highly specific.

[maelia8]

To be honest, I'm in a field that just isn't really that hirable or trendy no matter WHAT subfield you're in (although some subfields are slightly more likely to be hired than others, it's a very small leg up), and at least in the humanities, I see it as kind of necessary to being doing what interests you, because if you do something that doesn't interest you and then still don't get hired (a likely possibility), you'll feel like you wasted your time doing the Ph.D. period. I'd like to say that I enjoyed the 6-8 years of my life that I spent researching something, no matter how esoteric and unrelated to what i might eventually end up doing, because at least then I will feel like I did something worthwhile. You are expected to specialize highly for your dissertation, and if you have to spend 3-5 years writing a book, it better be on something that really, really interests you.

[danieleWrites]

My major tends to slide on and off of the "worst degrees to get, ever!!" lists. I think it spends its time off that list because of the assumption that one can always spend a couple of semesters picking up a BSEd to go with that English BA. English MAs can find work in schools. But, I'm hanging out in what a lot of people think as "a waste of time" and "a waste of money" and "useless degree" because it doesn't have "any real world skills" to get some "ROI".

 

I'm still doing it. Moreover, I'm doing work that has people in my field tilting their head and wondering WTF?! because it don't look like literature papers. Still, I believe that my research interest has larger social value, so I'm pursuing it.

 

That said, my research interest is flexible. My dissertation, should it happen the way I envision (I can already hear future cries of "more close reading!") rather than what my professors usually write, will have a variety of "skills" on display: survey creation, quantitative social science methods, qualitative work, linguistics, blah blah blah. Should search committees read my writing samples and stare at me via Skype with the same horror my current professoriate uses, I can trot my happy self on down to a variety of non-academic places and push the literature stuff aside and focus on how it shows I can solve problems with my mad mixed methods skillz.

 

This doesn't have to be an either-or situation. Sure, your little known corner of your field might be full of chirping crickets rather than professional interest. But does it have to be that way? What theories, methods, or work is pretty shiny right now? Are there ways you can bring the shiny in your field together with your interest? Instead of looking at the oh-so-rural by itself, contextualize it in a larger fashion. Rural issues tend to crop up in some urban settings. A food desert (no grocery stores) isn't just a high poverty urban problem. It's also a high poverty rural problem. For example. Be creative with your thinking.