How I use the skills acquired from my PhD, in my current job

Having read a lot of career-related blogs and comments written by PhDs/ABDs/adjuncts/academics in the past few months, I’ve been struck by the lack of confidence some folks have in their own skills and abilities. Typical comments I’ve seen include ‘Academic training hasn’t given me any skills I can use in the outside world’ or ‘I can’t turn my academic CV into a resume’, or other variations on these themes.

This kind of thinking is a real psychological barrier to getting a job outside of academia and I really want to do something to help. I already wrote a post on the 20+ transferable skills a PhD gives you. I appreciate though that it can sometimes be difficult to identify your own skills, and see how they can be put to work in non-academic job situations.

So to help to bring these skills to life for you, I’m going to tweet a post at the end of each day, when I feel I’ve used a skill in my day job which I learned when doing my PhD (these days I’m a project manager for a values-based bank). The tweet will contain a short description of the situation, identify the skill I used, and finish with the hashtag #phdlikeaboss, to make it easy to search for and archive. All in 140 characters! You can follow me @chrishumphrey.