How do I convince a hiring manager that I have “the right stuff”?

All communication is context dependent. For example, what does it mean if I have “caught the golden snitch”? Well, maybe I just scored my house 150 points and brought a rousing match of Quidditch to a close. Maybe the blonde haired person leaking information has just been soused out. Or maybe you look at me and wonder why I would even type something like that.

The same applies for communicating the skills and expertise that we have developed in graduate school. If I tell another polymer chemist that the Mn calculated from the NMR end-group analysis agrees well with the one determined from the SEC data, they may nod and go on with their day. My lawyer wife will ask me to stop talking mid-sentence because I am making no sense to her. But it isn’t just technical jargon and know-how that gets lost in translation when we talk about our PhD’s to people in different contexts.

Look at a job ad. Even a job ad for a position that requires the technical skills your degree gives you. What do you find? Are there bullet points about teamwork? Managing others and ensuring continual growth? One of the biggest challenges grad degree holders have is not just translating their technical knowledge, but learning how to articulate the skills they developed in an academic setting to a non-academic one. Here are some examples of how you might translate some of those skills.

  • “Incorporating collaborator edits” becomes “Addressing client/stake-holder concerns”
  • “Supervising undergraduate student research projects” becomes “Managing and promoting skills development in junior team members”
  • “authored literature review” becomes “Conducted exhaustive market research, identifying trends and competitive gaps”
  • Your group meeting presentations? That was you leading technical discussion to address potential roadblocks and develop actionable solutions.
  • All that instrument time you logged? “Leveraged state-of-the-art technology to accurately measure and control project development and identify new leads.”

Identify the keywords you use in your graduate degree, then find their equivalent in the position you are applying for. When you become able to articulate what you did to an audience that wants to know if you have the skills and characteristics they are looking for, you start to speak their language. Look at job ads, talk to people in the industry you want to be in. Learn to speak in the terms they use, and how to translate your graduate degree. That is one of the most important steps in getting your resume read, and someone asking for an interview with you.