How to Pitch Grad School for a Management Job

Ok, so you've finally decided to it's ok to quit your program, but you're freaking out about how you will put food on the table.  First, the good news is that as a graduate student you are very likely making under the federal poverty level, which means pretty much any job will pay better.  I still remember when my therapist asked me what was the worst thing possible that could happen if I quit, and I answered working at Starbucks.  Hello, working full-time at Starbucks provides more money and better health care than most graduate students receive, so don't worry--pretty much any job will be an improvement if it brings a pay check instead of more loans.

Second, don't underestimate the value of your graduate school training, no matter how worthless you feel your degree may be.  You basically went to college twice as long as most entry level employees, and you presumably picked up some analytical writing and critical reasoning skills that should come in quite handy. At the very least your learned to bullshit your way through discussions of long, boring articles you probably didn't read, which means you will be able to handle impromptu questions from customers and bosses with ease.

Most importantly, if you ever did research or managed a research team of undergraduates, you can easily claim management experience which is more than many of the bosses I have subsequently worked for ever did.  Guiding a group of people toward a common goal, ensuring everyone is coding consistently and keeping up with deadlines, facilitating research meetings, and writing up findings with a number of authors are all great resume worthy skills that you should be highlighting.  Because you may not have known it, but those are all management skills that you should be pitching in interviews.  While it helps to have managed paid staff, the secret is that any management, even of interns and free labor, can be considered when it comes to hiring.

I would also point out that escaped graduate students make some of the best employees.  We're highly motivated, smart,  but also practical enough to know when to call it quits, and generally desperate to get out there into the world and earn a paycheck.  Yes, sometimes we are an arrogant bunch, and we can be bored and under stimulated in many jobs.  But we write well, and quickly.  We love our 9-5 schedule. but don't shrink from deadlines, or have an issue with needing to put in more time and effort.  We survived harsh working conditions and miserable emotionally deadening slogs through material denser than anything you will ever encounter in the corporate world.  Departmental politics are a more than adequate training ground for office politics.

For a lot of managers, the secret in hiring is escaped graduate students.  And I can tell you from personal experience that a lot of the hiring managers are themselves students who bailed on the Ph.D. I always take a second look when I see a resume come across from someone that didn't finish.  Because sometimes the best person for the job is a non-traditional candidate who knew when to call it quits. 

The Decision Trap and Creativity

Every day we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the right decisions.  Eat healthy, save money, say the right thing.  As women we face the unrealistic societal expectation expressed by my boss' favorite comedian of going to work, taking care of the kids, and then coming home to cook a great meal, and be multiorgasmic.  Life is a series of decisions, and the unrelenting pressure we place on ourselves to make the best ones.

At least most life decisions are easier
than  solving this glittery rubik's cube

Yet research indicates the human brain eventually suffers from decision fatigue. Making good decisions  is easier when you can make fewer of them.  That's why Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg where the same outfit every day.   To paraphrase Barack Obama you don't want to have to worry about what you are eating or wearing when you have so many other decisions to make.   Smart women can do this, too.

I don't wear the same outfit every day, but to the extent possible, I've tried to automate the things I don't care about, and focus my energy and attention on the things that do.  I want a cleaner house, but I don't actually want to clean it so I read Living a Simple Life and The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and got rid of stuff.   My husband and I live where we can walk downtown so we get our exercise without having to motivate ourselves to get off our couch to do boring mindless laps around a suburban block.   I want to write and be creative, but I realized some months ago most of my creativity was going into cooking and choosing what to wear each day rather than my writing, so I made some adjustments.  When my life seems most off track, I will make a list of my values and priorities, then make a list of how I actually spend my time:  there is nothing like comparing the two to see where an adjustment is needed.

Seeing the results of how you spend your time and the life you live contrasted with the life you actually want for yourself, and the ways you currently spend your time can make achieving your dreams seem impossible.  How did you end up here?  Why should things be any different?  Maybe this is who you really are.  All of these thoughts make the life you want seems so far away.  But the reality is that you can use the fact that life is a series of decisions to your advantage, too:

Terence J. Tollaksen wrote that his purpose became clearer once he began to recognize the “decision trap”: “This trap is an amazingly consistent phenomena whereby ‘big’ decisions turn out to have much less impact on a life as a whole than the myriad of small seemingly insignificant ones.”

You don't get where you want to be by making one big choice.  Life is made up of the smaller choices we make every day.  So don't sweat it if you aren't where you want to be.  Spend some time thinking about where you are, and what you want.  Then start spending time doing what you want, and look for the small decisions that can help you get there.  All these little decisions will make it so when you do have a big decision to make, you'll be ready.  And if you are still overwhelmed, just remember the 85% rule:  You don't have to be 100% certain, or even 100% ready. In fact, you probably never will be;  content yourself with being 85% certain, and when you get to 85% give yourself permission to act.