Matt: Hey folks, and welcome to the Grad School Sucks podcast. The show for academics and PhDs who want to take their career from academia to industry. I have got a great episode for you today. I'm interviewing Dr. Tori Wobber. You may know her from her popular Twitter account, Academic Exit. Tori got her PhD in human evolutionary biology before she jumped ship from academia and went to industry.
Matt: She worked at Facebook and Google, and along the way, she mentored PhDs in making a similar transition. And several years ago, she decided to go full time into career coaching, and that is what she does today. We talk about a variety of topics, including but not limited to when she knew in her academic job search process that she was done with academia, How she used informational interviewing to gather the knowledge she needed to go industry where PhDs typically get tripped up in their job search.
Matt: How submitting a cold job application is a lot like dating online. How to transition to industry by only putting in 10 hours a week. And how to deal with the issue of not having any money. I've been following Tori for a long time, and I really appreciate her content and the energy that she brings to this space.
Matt: And I think you're going to get a lot out of this interview, and I think many of you are actually going to listen to this more than once. So get ready to be inspired, take some notes, and learn from Dr. Tori. Tori Waer, be sure to check out the description for links to everything that we talk about. And if you like this episode, please leave me a rating and review or a thumbs up on YouTube.
Matt: Without further ado, let's get to the interview. Well, Tori, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. Uh, if you would, you know, I already know you, but if you'd introduce to listeners just a brief snippet of who you are and how you got to this place.
Tory: Sure. So, my name is Tori Wobber. I run my own business as a coaching consultant.
Tory: A lot of my work is with PhDs. You may know me from Online Presence as Academic Exit, where I help PhDs land six figure jobs in industry. I actually made that journey myself. I have a PhD in human evolutionary biology. And leverage that PhD to go get a postdoc position, uh, at Harvard, move from there to being a data scientist at Facebook.
Tory: And so from that postdoc was able to make the leap into something pretty different. I then, as I was working in the tech industry was helping PhDs make that scene leap. And realize that that was the work I enjoyed doing most. So in 2020, I started my own business as a coaching consultant so that I could focus full time on empowering people to find careers and work that they love.
Tory: So I've made my own journey. I've made a number of sort of unconventional career moves. I enjoy helping folks make the career choices that are going to fulfill them and allow them to live the life they want. And I get to do that every day. It's pretty
Matt: awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And I love chatting with people like there's going to be a lot to talk about.
Matt: I think the thing for me is like that, that journey from going from academia to industry, what was the turning point? If there was one where you said, all right, I'm, I'm going this way now. Yeah,
Tory: I can remember the exact turning point. It's funny. I was at a conference in Cancun with coworkers at the time with colleagues in academia, and I remember saying to a close friend, I'm going to give academics one more year, I'm going to go on the faculty job market one more year, and if nothing works out, I'm leaving.
Tory: Voicing that to her out loud made it real. It wasn't just a fear in my head anymore. It was actually real. I had said it to someone, it was actually happening. And so I went through that year on the job market, got my last non job offer, non job offer, my last rejection in March from the faculty positions.
Tory: And by June, I had an offer from Facebook. So once I had made the choice, I then gave myself permission to do the work. And then after that last non offer, which was from my graduate department, so it hurt, it was particularly sticky. I then went to work and within three months had another role. So it took me probably more than a year to make the choice.
Tory: But once I started doing the work, only a matter of months to find a
Matt: job. Absolutely. And three months feels like a pretty quick turnaround time. Was that, do you feel like that was common at the time or were you particularly positioned or how do you, how do you think that occurred? Yeah,
Tory: I work with folks now and, and what I can say that I did was I, I made job searching probably most of my jobs.
Tory: So if I look at that last few months of my postdoc, sorry to my postdoc advisor, but I was probably spending about 80 percent of my week job searching. What I find is that many folks only give it around 10 to 20 percent of their bandwidth. And so with that, it can take sort of six months because they're not spending as much time.
Tory: But for me, I think I conducted about 40 informational interviews in a month. I was just getting on calls with anyone who had talked to me. And because of that, I was able to make connections on what was going to click for me and really hone in on target roles by April so that I could start applying with focus and, and so I accelerated a process that I see.
Tory: Take many months for some folks. But if you're really putting hours into it, you can make happen in four to six weeks. And so my strong motivation to leave potentially accelerated my timeline relative to what I've seen for other folks.
Matt: Absolutely. I feel like what you just said is something that every PhD should rewind.
Matt: You did 40 informational interviews, 40. And what did you feel like the value was of doing those informational interviews?
Tory: At that time, and this sounds a little silly, I had no idea what other jobs were available. I had moved to graduate school and I didn't really do the career fair as an undergrad because I knew what I wanted to do.
Tory: I knew I wanted to go to grad school. And so I was doing that exploration that many folks might do at 20 years old, right? Looking at jobs. And so for me, some of those conversations were just, what's possible? I was talking to, I talked to like a friend's mom who was an NSF program officer. I talked to folks in consulting.
Tory: I talked to folks in tech and financial services, all over the map. And at the beginning, it was really to say what is out there, such that then as I started to get some idea of clicks, it was then, where can my skills be of service? And so I took those phases of just what is possible, then what is possible for me, then how do I actually position my skills as relevant.
Tory: And I did that very quickly. And by about four weeks in, I identified that data science was going to be an area of interest. And a former classmate of mine who was doing that said, go learn SQL. And so by April, I was already learning SQL having identified that that was going to be my path. But I started off very broad, just talking to anyone who
Matt: would speak to me.
Matt: That, that, uh, this feels so similar and I think, um, or so familiar. And I think so many. PhDs stop at the broad and apply broadly and don't like really narrow down and go niche and what for you were like the indicators as you were doing these informational interviews of like this is the right path or like this is not the right path like what helped what helped gain focus?
Matt: I think for
Tory: me data science at the time and this is data science of 10 years ago so some of the things I will say here no longer apply when I was talking to folks about data science I was recognizing, hey, I can do this. They have different terminology. They have different, uh, topics. But I was hearing folks talk about experiments.
Tory: And I was like, I've done experiments. Hearing folks talk about moving around data to run regressions. Hey, I've done that. And so it was hearing the click with things I knew I was skilled at and that I enjoyed doing. I actually liked the data analysis part of my PhD. And so the opportunity to do something I was fairly good at, that it sounded like they needed and that I enjoyed was, was just what was clicking.
Tory: UX research was probably my backup because that also sounded similar, but at that time, the data field was just hiring like crazy. And so both the market opportunity and me hearing that I had relevant skills. Uh, encouraged me to move forward with that as well as just some friends and colleagues who said, no, you can do this who didn't even know they weren't PhDs, but they gave me the confidence that it would be possible.
Tory: So I think that was what led me to that path.
Matt: Yeah. That, that makes so much sense. And apologies if you answered this just a second ago, did you do any upskilling as you were like getting into applying?
Tory: So this is an interesting one. PhDs tend to like to go take like another course or do another PhD. And I don't recommend applying for roles where you have to do a lot of upskilling more where like you're at 80 and you want to get to 85%.
Tory: And so for me, I would say I had the vast majority of the skills just from the statistics, probability experience. I had an R from my PhD. I learned SQL and I learned SQL in about six weeks. And I think about six weeks in, I was already interviewing for the Facebook role. My knowledge of sequel was very light.
Tory: Like I was actually asking questions how to do things in my interview. But I was fortunate that at the time they were hungry enough. And they said, she's smart. She'll pick this up. And so they, they took a little bit of a shot on me in terms of my not knowing very much SQL. Uh, it's much tougher to get into data science now, but there are still other fields where if their desire is strong enough, they will be willing to let you upscale a little bit on the job if you show that you're already on the trajectory of upscaling.
Tory: But it's important not to view that as starting from zero. If you want to apply to a job where you need to start from zero, that's just going to be a longer path. Then if you find one where it's getting from 80 to 85 percent instead of going from zero to, if that makes sense.
Matt: Absolutely. No, that makes a ton of sense.
Matt: Okay. So let's maybe fast forward a little bit. You, you get into your career. Uh, you're working at, at Google. You, you climbed the ladder a little bit at Google. Is that right? And what lessons did you learn from that journey, particularly about like the differences between academia and industry and whether it's like a culture shift or anything like
Tory: that?
Tory: Yeah, well, I managed to get promoted at both Facebook and Google, and what I recognized having done that was the importance of self advocacy. I don't think in academics we're culturally taught to do it. I think some folks still know how, and they do very well as a result. But especially in a large company like Facebook or Google, if you're not speaking up for yourself on behalf of your work, you will get lost, you will get forgotten.
Tory: And so learning that skill of articulating. The impact that you're having and where that matters to the business. It's something you do in your resume and it's something that then you need to keep doing through your career. And so I think I really perfected that. And by the end of my time at Google, I was helping other people get promoted.
Tory: Even if they weren't in my field, I was helping like software engineers get promoted just because I had learned that skill of self advocacy and could help other folks upscale there. And so I think that skill as well as learning to build relationships I didn't have either of those in place for academia, but they were critical to large company work and they were things I only learned over several years.
Tory: To be honest, it took me a little while to
Matt: At some point, I remember before we had talked about, you started to get people that were being sent to you, specifically PhDs who couldn't find the faculty job or didn't want to stay in academia and they were sent to you on the premise of you kind of mentoring and helping them through that whole thing.
Matt: What was that process like of, uh, of starting that?
Tory: Yeah, well, it's funny. So after I left, I think I was probably one of the first people from my graduate department to leave With flourish, if you will, other folks would sort of drift away from academia, but I very pointedly said like, Oh, okay. You're not giving me a job by.
Tory: And from that, I think a lot of folks knew that I had left. And so I would get outreach from folks in my former network saying, Hey, this person's thinking about leaving. Tori's done it. Let me connect them with Tori. I was, I was often the only exemplar of someone who they knew. This is not as common now.
Tory: Now more folks are leaving more publicly, but 10 years ago in my graduate department, it really wasn't common. And so I think I got sent a lot of folks simply because I was the only exemplar that folks could come up with. And I talked with folks at that point because I wanted to pay it forward. So many folks had spoken with me during informational interviews, so I felt it was only reasonable to be that resource for other folks searching.
Tory: And I think the exact number when I decided I had paid it forward was after I had done 39 of these conversations. I thought, and actually, if you think about the 40 informational interviews I had, and I then said, one, I think I've paid it forward to, I really enjoy these conversations. I feel like I'm empowering folks to see where they're going with their future.
Tory: With just a 45 minute call, which is kind of incredible. But as I've done it over and over and over, I know that I can do that for folks. And so the fact that now that's something I charge for in a strategy call comes from the fact that I have so much practice that I can structure the conversation in such a way.
Tory: That folks will walk away feeling optimistic with a clear set of action items. And so it comes from the fact that I've practiced that format so many times that I enjoy it and that I know that I can help folks in that format. So I think that, that fact that folks passed me conversations was actually fortunate because it was building the skill that I use in
Matt: my work now.
Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, uh, for the folks at home, Tori, you and I met, I think it was, was it two months ago at this point? Yeah. Maybe. It might have been two months ago, um, to chat and I was frankly surprised to, to learn that you didn't have a clinical background because in our conversation you just carried yourself with such like a, I would call it like a clinical presence or kind of like a clinical way of doing like a conversation.
Matt: Um, it just really stuck out to me when we were talking. Skills I've
Tory: acquired along the way, I suppose.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the, one of the things. I think would be helpful for folks listening is whether we're talking about the people you initially, you know, contacted with, or the people who reached out to contact you for the informational interviews or the people you're working with today.
Matt: What are the common places where people get tripped up PhDs who want to go industry, but they're just not doing some things quite right.
Tory: Yeah. I think one of them is the topic you mentioned earlier, which is not making a focused choice. So there's a temptation for PhDs to know that they have to turn their CV into a resume.
Tory: And so they start there and they start and say, I'm going to get the perfect document. Okay, now this document is perfect. I'm going to send it everywhere. The problem is there is no one perfect resume. The best resume is the one that conveys your skills as a fit for the job you're applying for. And so if it's a sort of one size fits all resume, it's generalized.
Tory: And even if it has a lot of the good hygiene components, it's. It's not going to get picked up in many places. And so before doing a resume, taking the time to do the research using your doctoral training, right? You know how to do research to go out there and gather information on the market, on where your skills fit, on how you can position your skills.
Tory: Then once you have that, if you're preparing a resume, it will be much more tailored. And so if we think about my journey, I 40 conversations Down to a focused role within about a month. And because I had a focused role, I could go do the work I needed to, to close on a data science offer. And so I think the most common mistake I see is the spray and pray approach where folks just send a resume everywhere without doing the research on what jobs are available and where they fit.
Tory: And without tailoring their story on their resume to that target role.
Matt: I want to interrupt my conversation with Torrey for a brief moment to let you know, when I first went on the industry job market. It was a bloodbath. Things did not go well. I didn't do all of the right steps that I needed to truly be competitive.
Matt: And it took me quite a bit of networking and researching to realize that getting your first job in industry is a lot like getting into a graduate program. You have to be focused and you have to take the right steps in the right order to really position yourself to be an attractive candidate. And this is not just something that I've learned from my own experience, but from talking with PhDs like Tori on the podcast, as well as just in regular coffee chats.
Matt: There's a series of steps, a couple tasks that you need to make sure that you get right. If you want to make your job search as effective as possible, I've compiled all these steps in an easy to use checklist that grad students can use in their search for going industry. And if you want to download that checklist, simply go to six week checklist.
Matt: com or click the link that I'll leave in the description of this episode. Now back to my conversation with Tori. Absolutely. That makes so much sense. Once someone has really done the research and focused on a specific job title, and they've got that target in mind, how many jobs do you think people need to be applying to?
Matt: Like, what is the, you know, a range or a frame of reference that you think about?
Tory: I smile because there are almost two different approaches to take here, and probably, Many others, but two main approaches that I see. One are cold applications. Applications you send via a job site where you don't know everyone.
Tory: With those, with a tailored, uh, resume, the numbers I see from other PhDs is you'll probably move forward with 1 in 20. Processes that you send out. And so if you're sending a hundred applications and you're getting five, uh, that actually move forward, that's successful. But I actually don't recommend using that one as much because I recommend warm applications, which is where instead of sending a resume to a job site, you're talking to someone about their team, about their company, and they say, Hey, based on what you're doing, it sounds like you're a fit over here.
Tory: Let me connect you with this manager who's hiring. And from those. Vast majority are going to move through to a hiring process, right? Probably 80 percent of those are going to have you move forward and do an interview. You will have many fewer of those, but say if you're having only 10 of those conversations and 8 of them move you forward to interview processes, you're doing a lot better than with that 100 cold application strategy.
Tory: And so I encourage folks not just to think about volume, but almost to think about the quality of the connection that is formed. And going out there and connecting with folks, folks are scared of networking, but I only know a few PhDs who have gotten jobs without it. And so being ready to talk to people and make connections that way can go a long way in terms of improving your conversion rate per opportunities.
Tory: And I personally, I did not submit a single cold application. All of my interview processes from my PhD were via connections. So I only probably did. You know, I probably submitted maybe four applications, did four interview processes and got a job from
Matt: that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Different process.
Matt: Yeah. And it's different than my experience. And I think, I think there's, there's really no, um, there's really no substitute for those like warm leads or warm connections.
Tory: It's, it's a little bit like dating online versus dating via introductions. Right? If you're going online, you're scrolling through a lot of folks and you may find a match.
Tory: I know people, I'm in a relationship off of an online forum. It's possible, but it's so different if your friends are introducing you, right? If you have mutual friends who say, Hey, we know you and we know you, we think you'd be a great match. If you can have that type of setting, you're going to have a better first date because you've almost been pre qualified.
Tory: And so if for jobs, you can take some of that same energy of. What do my friends recommend for me? What do they know of me? How can they connect me to places? How can folks who I haven't spoken to in a long time, forge connections for me that are warmer than what I found online. And so it's, it's definitely still possible via the cold applications or the online dating apps to find folks.
Tory: But when we have that third party who can make connections for us. Those connections are often of higher
Matt: quality. It makes so much sense. So let's, let's maybe zoom out for just a second and say there's a listener at home. They're finishing up their PhD. They already know they want to go industry. They're working, let's say like 25 to 30 hours a week on all that work.
Matt: And so they can carve out potentially 10 to 15 hours a week for their transition to industry. How would you recommend people think about using those 10 to 15 hours a week?
Tory: So first thing I would recommend folks do, and this is a little unconventional, but it's actually doing a little reflection on what they want, right?
Tory: So taking one or two of those hours and saying, what do I want from work? What do I like about work? What do I not like? How do I want to have work show up in my life? And what do I want to do? And doing that before spending a second exploring the market, really to check in with yourself and then update that as you start to explore externally.
Tory: But to make sure you just start with that self reflection. And then with the 10 to 15 hours a week, I recommend connecting with folks via conversations wherever possible. It's going to give you more insight onto what jobs are really like than reading a job description. I also, for folks who are right at the beginning, recommend that they watch some of these career panels where they can hear folks speak to experiences in jobs or things like podcasts like this, where folks are actually speaking to real experiences.
Tory: Because getting that context, whether one on one or whether hearing someone talk about it on a podcast or in a panel, you're going to start to hear clicks of what sounds familiar and interesting to you, and it will be so much more likely to find it there than scrolling job descriptions, because they are this stilted way of describing work.
Tory: And so exploring what you want and then going out and exploring the market through those conversational forums. That's how I'd recommend folks spend their first month of 10 to 15 hours,
Matt: to be honest. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just from like, maybe like a bird's eye view, we could speak to the social scientists because that's both the fields that we come from.
Matt: What are maybe like the kinds of buckets of job titles that you think social scientists should consider in industry?
Tory: So alongside the titles, which can vary a lot, I'll speak to the family of job responsibilities. Which are basically influencing decision makers with research insights. So social scientists often have the capacity to conduct research in many different forms.
Tory: They might be on the more qualitative side where they go out and do interviews, that sort of less quantitative work. They might have experience in running quantitative analyses. But either of those are forms to get insight on an unstructured problem or question. And so often your family of responsibilities, whatever the job title, whether it's data scientists, whether it's UX researcher, whether it's research manager, whether it's market insights manager, your task is to take something where there's an internal question inside of business, do some sort of data gathering, whether talking to customers, whether looking at customer databases, and then make a recommendation to folks in the business based on what you're finding.
Tory: And that sort of envelope is very familiar to social scientists, other than the making a recommendation part, right? Like, usually we publish a paper and that's sort of the end, but if you have experience taking a question, formulate it into a hypothesis, doing some data gathering, and summarizing findings, You have that whole process already taken care of.
Tory: And so for social scientists that sort of research influencer or insights influencer role within an organization Is very easy. I have also seen social scientists go on to program management where they're coordinating work where they want to You know Actually be that point person for decision making and research or work coordination.
Tory: I've also seen some social scientists go and be software engineers, right? Where they really loved the Python pipeline in their, in their data analysis. So they went and wanted to be full time sort of builders, but I would say the most common is that researcher insights, influencer, family responsibilities, which has a number of different titles associated with it, but it's also possible to go into that product management.
Tory: Or builder engineer role, if one chooses to
Matt: do so. Absolutely. And something I hear quite often is, but I don't have any real experience. And, and I hear that from PhDs who are like, they, they want to get out of academia, but they're like, this is just a pie in the sky dream to go industry. And my belief, and I think your belief is that much of what we do in academia is actually.
Matt: synergistic or parallel to what's done in industry, if not the downright same thing. What would you say to people who hear your pitch about like, let's say these kind of like insights and research oriented, data oriented jobs and they say, but I don't have any real skills or I don't have any real experience.
Tory: My favorite answer to that is to use myself. Because my PhD was on chimpanzee cognitive development. That is a niche, and that is a niche that has no relevance to business. Sorry, broader impact section of my NSF. Really, the relevance is very limited. And yet, I was able to go in and with these skills I had, Convince folks that my skills were relevant, even though the topic was very different.
Tory: Now, I also made a little joke in my interviews of like, well, chimpanzees, Facebook users can't be that different. Right. And so like that was, it was almost the topic became a punchline, but the skills, the fact that I could write scripts in R and make data do what I wanted to do. To clean it up. If there was funny data and be able to look for missing values or anything where we had to impute or clean up a data set, those skills were incredibly relevant.
Tory: I had to learn to talk about them in skills focused language and use a bit more business jargon. And so that's part of the process when you're doing these informational interviews and career panels is listening for the new jargon and adopting that when you speak about your own work. So there is a little bit of upskilling in your job search skills.
Tory: But the skills you have from your work are already very relevant, particularly for those quantitative folks, but also I've worked with folks who've done interviews, done more qualitative research, and have found places where that lands in industry as well from that social science background. So you don't have to be a quant, but because I was a quant, I was able to parlay that into a new set of opportunities.
Matt: Absolutely. So what would you say is like, if you could summarize it, this simply the current state of the job market, like let's say here in the U S.
Tory: Yeah. Folks are definitely more concerned about it this year in 2023, uh, moving into 2024 than they have been in the past. I think because big tech has laid off folks this year, it's been much less in a growth phase than it was in prior years.
Tory: Right. But it's funny, I've still placed folks in jobs this year, a number of different places. I just haven't placed them in big tech. So, big firms in other industries have been happy to take the talent that would have otherwise been gobbled away by big tech. Mid sized tech, many firms still hiring and growing, and they have enough stability to be able to join them and get solid salaries and interesting work, because they are growing and need to be hiring and again are happy to pick up that talent that's not in big tech.
Tory: And so even though I made the jump to big tech and have helped a number of people make that move, there are so many other different directions you can go. And this year I've been actually learning about new ones, right? New paths that social scientists have taken that I hadn't encountered before, but that allow them to leverage their skills in an industry and job family where they're excited to have those social scientists on board.
Tory: And so what I would say is that even in a trickier job market, the work then is just to work a little harder to find your fit, right? Some of the usual suspects may not be hiring, but does that mean that someone with a social science PhD background can't get a job right now? Absolutely not.
Matt: So over the years that you've worked in industry, why do you think industry is a good place for PhDs to land? It can
Tory: be a good place for PhDs to land, If their internal wants are as follows, right, if they do the following reflection, if they say to themselves, I want to do work in a team that has real world impact, that pays me a good wage and allows me to live where I want to live.
Tory: Industry allows that, right? You're doing interesting work with interesting people. They're paying you well, you have more locational flexibility than you do in academics. If you're saying to yourself, I want to have an impact on society. I want to go out and write wrongs that we have in our, in our world.
Tory: And I want to go lobby or do research on some specific topic. Okay. That might not fit as well in a for profit company might be that you go work for a nonprofit. That's not a university. And so the place that you go really depends on your wants, your goals, your strengths. But industry can be a great fit and a for profit company can be a great fit.
Tory: Because for me, for example, I now no longer work in a big company, but I can only run my own business because of the skills I got operating in that for profit company. If I had jumped straight from academia, I would be missing a number of the business skills that I now have. And so I was so grateful to be able to go into a for profit company and build those skills.
Tory: Even though it wasn't my lifelong path, I wouldn't have chosen anything differently. And so I feel totally comfortable helping folks make that leap because that transition opens a lot of different doors. Once you have those experience and just that salary, you can start to look a lot more at what you want to choose to do because moving straight from academia, you may have more limited options or just less business skills.
Tory: Uh, totally possible to go from academia to running your own business. I know folks who have done so, but for me, I'm really thankful that I had that time in a large organization to help myself build up the skills and the financial push.
Matt: Absolutely. What would you say to the sentiment that academia is kind of like the good guy doing the good fight and going industry is kind of like turning to the dark side?
Matt: Yeah,
Tory: that one's funny. Uh, I don't think most academics would consider themselves religious. Or many don't, but it almost comes down to like a religion or a cult like belief there, right? Academics are like, oh, we're very thoughtful about the world, but actually in that area, those beliefs are more dogmatic, right?
Tory: When you actually go out and gather the data, if you actually go out and talk to people in academia and in for profit companies, for example, when you talk to folks and you say, Is your work interesting? Is your work impactful? Do you feel like your work is selling your soul to the devil? You won't find that many folks in industry who say that there might be some who really feel like they need to do that to earn a salary, but most folks say no.
Tory: I feel like, like I'm doing interesting work. Like I have autonomy to choose my topics. Like I get to work with a team on interesting problems. And so I think academia can sometimes use those beliefs to demonize other work to almost scare people into saying. Where I would say, don't take those beliefs at face value, go investigate them, right?
Tory: Use your data skills, go have some conversations. If you go talk to folks in industry and you hear from them that they feel like they're selling their soul, okay, you validated that belief, but my guess is you won't hear that, right? My guess is that you will hear that it's a lot more gray than the black and white that academia likes to paint there.
Tory: And so I, I would invite folks to question that dogma.
Matt: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Tory, for the folks who are just. ready to go industry, whether they are graduating here in December or maybe in, in May, in about six months, what are three things that they should do after hearing this podcast? Like three things over the next week that you think they should do to take those first steps?
Tory: Yeah. So three things. One, go do that self reflection. I can't tell you how many folks skip that. They never ask themselves what they want, and it's a good season to do so, right? You have some time, you're just cozy, you're sitting around, do some journaling, take a long walk if you're in a warm climate, and just think about what you want from work, what you're not getting now, and what you need in your next opportunity.
Tory: So please take the time to check in with yourself. Second, Go watch a career panel or go check out a podcast with someone who has a career that interests you. And upfront doesn't matter how weird it seems, how irrelevant, whether you don't think your skills will, will fit there, just give yourself permission to explore for the sake of exploring.
Tory: What I really like to recommend folks do is start exploring broad and then funnel down. So for folks right at the beginning, explore anything that interests you. No matter how weird or strange it seems. And then the third thing I would do is, is to ask folks to put the pause button on applying. Give yourself at least a couple weeks, you know, if not four to six weeks, to go out and do that exploration and conversation, get to know the market, get to know yourself.
Tory: And so full permission, if you're thinking about leaving, to not apply yet. Because you think maybe you're going to get information from sending applications that that'll tell you whether your resume is clicking, but usually it just hands folks a scoop of rejection. And so what I would suggest is, as your first step, give yourself permission to not apply, to put a date on your calendar, maybe in about a month, right?
Tory: Where you say like, okay, that's when I'm going to have enough information to move forward. But to not spend your time in applications and job descriptions, and instead start with that exploration, both of yourself and FDMARC. How's that sound?
Matt: That sounds great. That sounds awesome to me. So you create content.
Matt: Let me just back up and start there. You create content. Where are the main places that you create content that you think people should go follow you?
Tory: Yeah. So my main content for academics. Comes via the academic exit account on Twitter. That's just Twitter at academic exit for at least as long as Twitter exists.
Tory: And there I share resources, insights. Normalization, I have, I start conversations among the PhDs who have left academia on Twitter so that we can help folks to see that this is a viable path and it's possible. For the folks who then want to go deeper, who are actually making this choice to move and want more insight on how to do so, my newsletter is a great resource.
Tory: I send things out that are specifically designed for PhD job seekers. So that folks can take that next step and feel well resourced to do so. I think we're gonna put the link to the newsletter hopefully in the description here so that folks can follow up there. I think it's also linked on my Twitter, but basically those are the places where if you're just checking this out, if you're just starting Twitter, I also have an Academic Exit YouTube where I've hosted a number of career panels.
Tory: And so if folks are really early stages, I would say checking out either the Academic Exit Twitter or YouTube is helpful. If you're at the point where you've chosen to move, and you're now looking to figure out how, places like my newsletter and my Academic Exit playbook are going to be a lot more useful, because they will help you get the tools and resources you need in order to move forward with your studies.
Tory: Moving from PhD to the non academic world.
Matt: Awesome. Awesome. And yeah, I'll have links for all of that in the description below, whether you're listening on the podcast or you're on YouTube, Tori, was there anything you wanted to talk about today that I didn't, uh, lead us to cover? No, I
Tory: mean, I think the only thing I will state for folks, and I think this has probably been implicit in what I'm saying, but I want to say it explicitly.
Tory: This move is possible. It's possible for whoever out there is listening. Take my example from chimpanzees as your example to heart that folks can make this happen. And so giving yourself permission to explore permission to make that move. Anyone who's telling you that it's impossible or that it's wrong, that your skills aren't going to apply and that you can't make that move.
Tory: They're just not looking at the data, right? I work with folks every day, every week, making this move. It's possible. You're allowed to make that choice. So take what we've talked about today and use it as resources, but I hope that folks at very least take away that they are allowed to leave academia.
Tory: It's okay. It will open doors and opportunities, and that their skills and expertise have value.
Matt: Absolutely. All right, Tori, last question for you. What is one thing you think grad students should do, whether it's fun or professional, before they finish grad school? Oof.
Tory: I mean, for me, it's just enjoy grad school, which is hard because a lot of folks don't.
Tory: But it is this protected time where you can research things that interest you, where you can have lunch and just chat with folks about random topics. Yeah. And so actually savoring that time. I know that many folks are in toxic environments in terms of advisors, etc. And so telling them to savor might sound really silly, but at least for me, I enjoyed my time in grad school and I don't think I gave myself Permission to enjoy it, nor permission to enjoy life outside of grad school.
Tory: As much as I should have, I probably worked more hours than I needed to. And so giving yourself permission, wherever you are to enjoy your work and enjoy your life outside of work, maybe that sounds a little sappy, but I guess that's what I would, well, I would ask for folks.
Matt: No, I love that. All right, Tori, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
Matt: It was great to talk with you. Yeah.
Tory: Great chatting with you, Matt.
Matt: It was a lot of fun. All right, folks. That was my conversation with Dr. Tori Wobbert. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. Again, please check out the description of this episode for links to everything that we talked about. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes like this and leave a rating or review or a thumbs up if you liked the episode.
Matt: Don't forget to share with a friend and I'll see you all next week.