How to Add *Impact* to Your Post-Phd Industry Resume

There’s a couple reasons my current resume is way better than my initial one. Those reasons include:

• More than one bullet per job (easier to read)

• Fewer words (easier to read)

• Included more jobs (PS: standard guidance is to include roughly the last decade of work)

• Nice color accents (color isn’t always good - the expected format of your resume will vary by industry)

But the real reason why this resume is much better is that it clearly shows the measurable impact I had on the organizations in which I worked.

And not just in words but in numbers.

Show Your Impact With Numbers

What is more convincing?

1. Engaged in technical report writing (old resume)

2. Created 50+ technical reports for leadership (new resume)

Clearly, the second tells a much clearer story of the impact that I had on that organization.

All readers tend to want two things:

• to read less

• to think less

This certainly applies to recruiters who are going to look at your resume for an average of (*checks notes*) six to sevens seconds.

That’s right - do you think my ungodly paragraphs of text in my first resume even got read by 5% of recruiters? Probably not.

Tell your story quickly and efficiently - less words, more numbers.

What Kind of Numbers to Include in Your Resume

If you are a grad student or academic (probably are if you’re reading this), then you need to think about some numbers that you could include in your industry resume.

These numbers are going to go under the job heading(s) that signifies the time when you were in academia as a grad student (and perhaps beyond).

I have two job positions from my time in academia that I list on my (new) resume:

• Research Scientist (2018-2020)

  • This is when I was a research scientist at a university.

• Research & Lab Coordinator (2014-2018)

  • This is when I was a grad student in my doctoral program.

Under the sections for your relevant academic positions (hint: “grad student” is not a position; “graduate research assistant” is), let’s add some numbers.

What Academic Numbers to Add to Your Industry Resume

Here are a few examples for graduate students of common ways to number-itize(?) the two common domains of university work (i.e., teaching and research) for our industry resumes:

• Teaching

  • Number of classes you’ve taught

  • Number of new courses you’ve prepped

  • Number of students you’ve taught in those classes

  • Number of hours you’ve spent teaching (don’t forget office hours!)

  • Bonus example that I learned from podcast guest Ashley Ruba, PhD:

    • Actual monetary value (to the university) of the teaching that you delivered

      • e.g., number of students X tuition cost per student X number of classes

      • It’ll probably be a big number! Make sure to put a dollar sign on it in your resume. Big numbers with dollar signs catch attention.

• Research

  • Number of studies you’ve conducted

  • Number of participants (or samples) you’ve collected data from

  • Amount of grant/research award money that you’ve been provided

    • Note: Grant/award dollars can also be reported in a “awards/honors” section near the bottom of your resume if that makes more sense.

  • Number of researchers (undergrads, grad students, etc) that you managed (if applicable)

  • Number of research presentations (and posters! a poster is a presentation - that’s why it’s called a “poster presentation”)

  • Number of publications, technical reports, and other manuscripts that you’ve written

    • If you have a strong number of first-author publications, then highlight the first-author ones most.

Remove some text and add some numbers! Numbers tell a stronger story.

 

Will Your Industry Resume Show the Impact You Had as a Grad Student?

To close and emphasize for one last time how numbers (and brevity) are key, here is a direct comparison of the grad student part of my resume’s Experiences section - the old versus the new.

Here’s what I had in my old resume as my responsibilities as a grad student:

• Conducted research project management activities including collection and cleaning of data, analyzing data, training new research staff, building out workflows and systems for new projects, maintaining quality of data collection, and managing research budgets

Here’s what I have now in my new resume for that same grad student position:

• Led all aspects of 5+ studies on human behavior, emotions, and health with a total of 1,000+ participants

• Coauthored 14 published papers and 25+ conference presentations with data from interviews, surveys, experiments, and biometric observations

Not only is it much easier to read but I would actually care about that second guy (if I was a recruiter)! Looks like he got a lot done.

Wait, they’re the same guy? Well, the second one is still better…

If you want to get a job in industry, you are going to have to pitch to recruiters that the experiences you had in academic are of value and will have an impact on the bottom line for the business.

Make sure your resume has impact!

Don’t let your resume be just a bunch of boring text that no one will read.

The time you spent getting your PhD most likely does have value to industry. But you have to the be one to make sure that value is clearly communicated.

Good luck, grad student!

-Matt