dissertation transferable skills

• Posts for PhD students
• Visit LSE Careers’ website
• Visit CareerHub

Farah Chowdhury

June 15th, 2019, how to use your dissertation skills to market your employability.

2 comments | 15 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Many of you will be doing your dissertation right now (or have done one already) and might be wondering how to make it work for your applications. Thankfully, your dissertation will give you a whole set of skills and assets that will be attractive to employers. Listed here are just a small selection of the qualities you can develop by doing a dissertation, and how they relate to working in the real world.

Research skills

One thing that everyone has to do for their dissertation is research. This is a very important skill to have in the working world. Good research skills mean that you know what is and isn’t relevant to a project, and that you know how to apply information effectively to meet your needs.

You should also apply your research skills when looking for a job. Employers look for people that are knowledgeable about the company and the industry, as this means you may have more innovative and informed ideas about how to move forward. This also shows a dedication to the company and industry, which is also very attractive to employers.

Problem solving 

Problem solving can be a bit of a buzz term, but it’s so much more than that: it shows that you have initiative, you’re adaptable, and that you have critical thinking skills.

If you can show an employer an obstacle you came across during your dissertation and then demonstrate how you overcame that (and possibly what you’d do differently), then they will be able to see how you will react to issues that arise during your employment.

For instance, if you found your argument didn’t quite work and you had to reassess your methods, then that shows you know when to change your tactics and that you have the self-awareness to understand when you’re pursuing the wrong outcome.

Communication

Employers want to know that you can concisely communicate ideas and information, whether this is on paper or in person.

Writing a dissertation demonstrates that you can take a set of complex arguments and write them up in a way that is both understandable and convincing. This is something that will relate to all parts of your career, from report writing to persuading colleagues, employees, or managers of what the best course of action for the company is too.

Likewise, if you’ve done a dissertation you’ve probably discussed your ideas with your academic advisor, tutor, course mates, and others. If you can show you’ve taken advice from these people about your dissertation, then employers will know that you can be a team player and respect the opinions of others.

Specialist information

This may not be the case for everyone, but sometimes your dissertation topic will be on something that can be a starting point for your career and/or further study.

You can use your dissertation as a case study for your knowledge of the industry or work that you’re interested in pursuing after your course, and to show that you have a good sense of the kinds of issues that might arise when you’re in the job.

Numerical skills

A lot of companies request that you have numerical skills, so if you’ve dealt with large sets of data for your dissertation then you can unequivocally prove this.

Not only that, but if you’ve been using a software package like SPSS for your data analysis you can show that you also have strong computer skills and have data analysis experience. Don’t forget about programmes like Microsoft Excel too: if you know your way around a pivot table, make sure this is clear!

Calm under pressure

If you’ve managed to complete a large piece of work like a dissertation, then you can probably manage a company project. Completing your dissertation means that you can work under pressure and stay calm while managing multiple deadlines.

Whether or not you were in the library at 4am sobbing into your notes the day before it due is irrelevant: you completed a large project once, and so that shows you can absolutely do it again!

Project management

As mentioned briefly above, if you’ve managed completing a large piece of work like a dissertation, then you can manage a project at work. However this is more than just meeting deadlines and staying focused under pressure.

Project management is shorthand for a huge range of skills, including time management, working alone, team work, communication, and perseverance. If you can break down your project management skills into these individual abilities, and show how you have used them, then you will stand out to employers who will then know you know what they’re looking for.

Share this:

About the author

• Pingback: So you’ve handed in your dissertation…what next? | LSE Careers blog
• Pingback: How to market your MSc effectively to employers | LSE Careers blog

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Related Posts

“Go for it and work hard” – entrepreneurship roundtable with LSE alumni

October 28th, 2014.

Student blog: Making the most of LSE Careers as an undergraduate student

August 18th, 2023.

Writing a CV that works – top tips for marketing yourself

January 27th, 2020.

Young Trustee: Zulum Elumogo

August 11th, 2021.

Bad Behavior has blocked 1115 access attempts in the last 7 days.

10 PhD Transferable Skills You Can Use in Most Jobs

“No one wants to hire PhDs because they are overqualified and too independent!”

This is one thing PhDs are tired of hearing. How can your PhD be a liability to your career? Rather, recruiters prefer PhD candidates over others not just for their qualification but for their PhD transferable skills.

Table of Contents

What are PhD Transferable Skills?

PhD Transferable skills are exactly what the name suggests! These are skills other than technical skills that you develop in your academic program. Furthermore, these skills are so versatile that they can be used everywhere, irrespective of the designation or field. Transferable skills are desirable because if you already have them, your employer will not have to train you on them. Consequently, you can make positive contributions in any career with these skills.

Which are the PhD Transferable Skills that You Must Develop?

Considering that a doctorate degree is the highest degree in most fields, the skills that are required to excel in the same are impeccable. Undoubtedly, researchers pursuing their Ph.Ds. or postdocs develop technical skills related to their research. However, what they also need to develop is a host of research transferable skills they can use as they progress in their careers.

Which are 10 PhD Transferable Skills You Can Use in Most Jobs?

With the surge of jobs for PhD in STEM, recruiters struggle to fill those positions with talented candidates. They are always in need of trained professionals who know how to create information from scratch, and not just recreate it in a tinkering manner.

While your work experience and education during PhD is an asset, you’d be surprised to find out that employers in most sectors pay close attention to your skill set. According to a recently published survey report by LinkedIn, 57% of respondents identified soft transferable skills as more important than hard skills (technical knowledge).

Here, we list 10 significant PhD transferable skills students can use in most jobs.

1. Project Management

The most apparent thought that comes to anyone’s mind while thinking about PhD is “project management” skills. A successful research experience goes hand-in-hand with a well-planned project. As simple as it may sound, the management skills of a PhD graduate are not confined to his/her project. It starts right from ideation of the research project to final submission, which results in an ultimate success of the project. Different stages of a PhD’s journey demands customized planning and organizing to ensure that deadlines are met and projects are completed efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, a PhD makes sure that all plans are duly incorporated. Employers seek candidates with PhD transferable skills as they want someone who can not only see a task through, but can visualize what needs to happen on a project from start to finish.

2. Accelerated Learning

As a doctor of philosophy, the ability to ascertain knowledge runs thick in the veins of a PhD researcher. An inquisitive mind and quick comprehension of technical things is interlinked to your accelerated learning ability. Moreover, being a PhD, you attend conferences and read papers to stay on top of the latest trends in your field. Consequently, PhD transferable skills ensure employers of your ability to understand technical procedures, protocols, and methodologies.

3. Time Management

Time waits for none! The key to a tension-free and smooth workflow is effective time management . While planning is important, defining your deadlines, setting realistic and achievable goals, and adhering to them takes you a long way! At a job, every moment spent on an unfocused or frivolous task, is a waste of money. Contradictorily, time management may not be viewed similarly in academia. However, as a PhD your motive has been to complete your program in time. This acts as a serious motivation to develop excellent time management skills.

4. Attention to Detail

One of the essential core skills of a PhD is paying attention to the details. To the best of your experience as a researcher, you are aware that mistakes can be missed in the bat of an eye. Therefore, it is a known fact that PhDs are one of the finest people to make sure that each project runs through a fine-tooth comb. As a result, employers can count on you for detail-oriented assignments that require critical assessment and corrections.

5. Ability to Collaborate

As stated earlier, PhDs are not new to working in groups to achieve common goals. Your significant contribution in research groups, as a researcher and author during your PhD program demonstrates your ability to collaborate . Employers seek candidates who are team players making positive contributions to the success of a group.

6. Writing Proficiency

Given the nature of modern technology, writing may not be a primary task of most job profiles. However, it sure is an essential element for academic and allied knowledge dissemination careers. In due course of pursuing a PhD, you come across countless reading material from authors all around the world. This subsequently stocks up your bank of vocabulary and enhances your writing skills for an unambiguous conveyance of messages and information.

7. Leadership Skills

Leadership skills aren’t only your ability to supervise and manage a team, but to take the lead on a project and get a team to follow through and achieve goals. As a PhD you’re the “lead” for your project. While it doesn’t necessarily involve leading other people, it still means being responsible for major decisions to accomplish targets. Additionally, it is common for PhD students to work in research groups and collaborate on shared projects. Nonetheless, they also demonstrate leadership while organizing conferences and seminars for their department or university. PhDs are also seen showing leadership skills while advising students and mentoring peers.

8. Critical Thinking and Analysis

As a PhD, it’s a given that you are able to analyze data and provide logical reasoning to it. Throughout your program, you collect data, analyze it, and draw conclusions. The ability of a PhD to critically examine everything and deliver logical reasoning behind it is not new to anyone. A PhD is well versed with 360-degree logical thinking without being biased. Employers seek these research transferable skill of a PhD to consider alternative solutions to a problem and suggest next steps for efficient functioning.

9. Communication Skills

This is the master of PhD transferable skills. Even if you decide to step into a career that is a 180-degree sweep from your PhD, you’d still need to communicate! Your ability to communicate efficiently is developed right from preparing for your PhD interview, presenting papers and posters at academic conferences, defending your thesis, etc. As verbal communication affects your ability to work with your peers, it is one of the most sought after research transferable skills by employers.

10. Adaptability

A PhD isn’t only about specialization. Rather, it’s about the ability to specialize. During your PhD you learn to tackle a new topic, solve it, and move on to the next problem. Almost all careers require employees to focus on specific topics and projects in detail to achieve a specific goal. Your ability of in-depth specialization in academic research project demonstrates adaptability and flexibility —quite literally!

So the next time you are asked, “What skills do you bring to this position?”, you certainly know how to answer that! Brush up your PhD transferable skills to help you make the right career switch. Remember that your PhD isn’t a liability after all. In fact, it’s an asset! Let us know how you acquired these valuable skills that are highly sought after by employers today.

Rate this article Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Enago Academy's Most Popular Articles

• Reporting Research

Choosing the Right Analytical Approach: Thematic analysis vs. content analysis for data interpretation

In research, choosing the right approach to understand data is crucial for deriving meaningful insights.…

Comparing Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Studies: 5 steps for choosing the right approach

The process of choosing the right research design can put ourselves at the crossroads of…

• Career Corner

Unlocking the Power of Networking in Academic Conferences

Embarking on your first academic conference experience? Fear not, we got you covered! Academic conferences…

Research Recommendations – Guiding policy-makers for evidence-based decision making

Research recommendations play a crucial role in guiding scholars and researchers toward fruitful avenues of…

• AI in Academia

Disclosing the Use of Generative AI: Best practices for authors in manuscript preparation

The rapid proliferation of generative and other AI-based tools in research writing has ignited an…

Mentoring for Change: Creating an inclusive academic landscape through support…

Intersectionality in Academia: Dealing with diverse perspectives

Meritocracy and Diversity in Science: Increasing inclusivity in STEM education

Sign-up to read more

Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:

• 2000+ blog articles
• 50+ Webinars
• 10+ Expert podcasts
• 50+ Infographics
• 10+ Checklists
• Research Guides

We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you.

I am looking for Editing/ Proofreading services for my manuscript Tentative date of next journal submission:

As a researcher, what do you consider most when choosing an image manipulation detector?

At home, abroad, working, interning?  Wherever you are this summer, contact OCS or make an appointment for a virtual advising session. We are available all summer! 

• Undergraduates
• Ph.Ds & Postdocs
• Prospective Students & Guests
• What is a Community?
• Student Athletes
• First Generation and/or Low Income Students
• International Students
• LGBTQ Students
• Students of Color
• Students with Disabilities
• Student Veterans
• Exploring Careers
• Advertising, Marketing & PR
• Finance, Insurance & Real Estate
• General Management & Leadership Development Programs
• Law & Legal Services
• Startups, Entrepreneurship & Freelance Work
• Environment, Sustainability & Energy
• Media & Communications
• Policy & Think Tanks
• Engineering
• Healthcare, Biotech & Global Public Health
• Life & Physical Sciences
• Programming & Data Science
• Graduate School
• Health Professions
• Business School
• Meet with OCS
• Student Organizations Workshop Request
• OCS Podcast Series
• Office of Fellowships
• Navigating AI in the Job Search Process
• Cover Letters & Correspondence
• Job Market Insights
• Professional Conduct & Etiquette
• Professional Online Identity
• Interview Preparation
• Resource Database
• Yale Career Link
• Jobs, Internships & Other Experiences
• Gap Year & Short-Term Opportunities
• Planning an International Internship
• Funding Your Experience
• Career Fairs/Networking Events
• On-Campus Recruiting
• Job Offers & Salary Negotiation
• Informational Interviewing
• Peer Networking Lists
• Building Your LinkedIn Profile
• YC First Destinations
• YC Four-Year Out
• GSAS Program Statistics
• Statistics & Reports
• Contact OCS
• OCS Mission & Policies
• Additional Yale Career Offices

PhD Transferable Skills

• Share This: Share PhD Transferable Skills on Facebook Share PhD Transferable Skills on LinkedIn Share PhD Transferable Skills on X

While at Yale, seek out additional experiences that develop these skills. They will benefit your future career, whatever course it takes. Note that to employers, relevant experience does not have to be a paid job. It can be any experience that develops skills that are important to their work.

The resources below can help you identify your particular skill set. These skills are a key input into the professional narrative that you will employ in your resume, cover letter, and interviews.

• Exploring Your Skills , Inside HigherEd
• PhD Transferable Skills (courtesy of the University of Michigan)
• Transferable Skills and How to Talk About Them , from Connected Academics (MLA)
• Making the most of your transferable skills , from CellPress

Looking for ways to enhance your transferable skill set while at Yale?  Below is a list that can get you started.

• Consider teaching a class or becoming a research or teaching assistant.
• Digital Humanities Lab
• Yale Center for Science and Social Science Information (CSSSI)
• Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM)
• Center for Engineering Innovation and Design
• Mentor students
• Manage lab supplies and equipment
• Take a leadership role in a GSAS student organization
• GSAS students are invited to become a McDougal Fellow  or GPE Fellow
• Seek out an internship or part-time opportunity either on or off campus
• Perform volunteer work
• Hone your writing skills
• Work on a consulting project through the Yale Graduate Consulting Club or Tsai CITY
• Improve your Excel skills, learn Python or master basic accounting by taking an online course! Check out the offerings on LinkedIn Learning  (free to Yale students, staff and faculty through this portal

Office of Career Strategy

Visiting yale.

The 7 Essential Transferable Skills All PhDs Have

During your PhD, you’re not just learning about your research topic. You’re also learning core skills that apply to jobs both in and out of academia. Most institutions don’t teach you to articulate these transferable skills in a way that aligns with how they’re described in the business world. Knowing your skills increases your value as a candidate.

Written Communication

It takes practice to become a good writer. Fortunately, as PhD student you have years of practice writing papers, conference abstracts, journal manuscripts, and of course your dissertation. The feedback you receive from your supervisor and peer reviewers will help improve your communication skills.

Research skills are valuable even in many fields outside of academia. As a trained researcher, you are able to determine the best approach to a question, find relevant data, design a way to analyze it, understand a large amount of data, and then synthesize your findings. You even know how to use research to persuade others and defend your conclusions.

Public Speaking                   

Strong oral communications skills are always valued, and PhD students get more public speaking opportunities than most. Through conference talks, poster presentations, and teaching, you will learn to feel comfortable in front of a larger audience, engage them, and present complex ideas in a straightforward way. Winning a teaching award or being recognized as the best speaker at a conference is a concrete way to prove your public speaking skills.

Project Management

Even if you’re not working as a project manager, every job requires some degree of project management. Fortunately, a PhD is an exercise in project management. Finishing your dissertation requires you to design a project, make a realistic timeline, overcome setbacks, and manage stakeholders. During this time, you will also have to manage long-term projects at the same time as short-term goals which requires strong organizational skills.

Mentoring and teaching are the two main way PhD student can learn leadership and management skills. As a teacher or mentor, you have to figure out how to motivate someone and help them accomplish a goal. You also get experience evaluating someone’s performance (grading) and giving constructive feedback.

Critical Thinking

Every PhD student learns critical thinking skills whether they realize it or not. You are trained to approach problems systematically, see the links between ideas, evaluate arguments, and analyze information to come up with your own conclusions. Any industry can benefit from someone who knows “how to think”.

Collaboration

Very few jobs require you to work completely independently, and academia isn’t one of them. Your dissertation is a solo project, but on a day to day basis you work with other people on your experiments or preparing a journal manuscript. Doing these tasks successfully requires knowing how to divide up a task, get along with others, communicate effectively, and resolve conflict.

Discover related jobs

Discover similar employers

Accelerate your academic career

The Nine Biggest Interview Mistakes

In order to guarantee you make a good impression, here are the nine bigg...

PhD, Postdoc, and Professor Salaries in the Netherlands

Interested in working in the Netherlands? Here's how much PhD students, ...

Don’t Fall Prey to Predatory Journals

These journals just want your money.

How to Write a PhD Elevator Pitch

How many times have you been asked, “What do you research?” only to draw...

The DOs and DON’Ts of Letters of Recommendation

To ensure you get strong letters of recommendation, follow these simple ...

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Impostor syndrome is a nagging feeling of self-doubt and unworthiness th...

Jobs by field

• Electrical Engineering 167
• Machine Learning 155
• Programming Languages 146
• Artificial Intelligence 142
• Molecular Biology 128
• Mechanical Engineering 128
• Cell Biology 117
• Materials Engineering 107
• Electronics 106
• Materials Chemistry 103

Jobs by type

• Postdoc 348
• Assistant / Associate Professor 139
• Researcher 123
• Professor 107
• Research assistant 97
• Engineer 81
• Lecturer / Senior Lecturer 66
• Management / Leadership 49
• Tenure Track 37

Jobs by country

• Belgium 308
• Netherlands 152
• Switzerland 116
• Morocco 116
• Luxembourg 60
• United Kingdom 48

Jobs by employer

• KU Leuven 118
• Mohammed VI Polytechnic Unive... 116
• Ghent University 76
• KTH Royal Institute of Techno... 65
• ETH Zürich 64
• University of Luxembourg 59
• University of Twente 48
• Eindhoven University of Techn... 41
• University of Antwerp 30

This website uses cookies

Graduate School

• Request Information
• Transferable Skills Checklist

Assess Your Transferable Skills

To identify academic and professional goals in your Individual Development Plan , you must first assess your skills. 

Why do we call them "transferable" skills? 

• They are skills that realistically reflect your strengths, abilities, and gaps no matter your field of study. 
• They correlate with competencies your future employers are looking for on a CV and/or resume.
• They are integral to every phase of your academic and professional development. 

Listen to the experts 

Featuring Sharolyn Kawakami-Shulz, PhD and Jenna Hicks PhD ( Medical School Office of Professional Development ), and doctoral candidate Chelsea Cervantes de Blois. Watch video here if you can't access YouTube. 

After this video, you'll remember: 

• Transferable Skills are applicable across a wide variety of sectors, careers, and position types.
• As a graduate student, you are already developing transferable skills; it should be your goal to apply them outside your current environment.
• On resume or in an interview, It is important to provide relevant and specific examples that demonstrate your skills.
• Speak the cultural language of the person or field in which you're communicating.
• Add transferable skills goals to your Individual Development Plan (IDP) .

+ Communication

Communication as a broad objective.

Skillfully express, transmit, and interpret knowledge and ideas.

Specific Skills

• Communicate across cultural backgrounds
• Communicate to a wide audience
• Communicate to a non-specialist audience
• Speak effectively
• Write concisely
• Listen attentively
• Express ideas
• Facilitate group discussion
• Provide appropriate feedback
• Perceive nonverbal messages
• Report information
• Describe feelings

+ Research & Planning

Research & planning as a broad objective.

Successfully search for specific knowledge and conceptualize future needs and solutions.

• Forecast, predict
• Create ideas
• Identify problems
• Imagine alternatives
• Identify resources
• Gather information
• Solve problems
• Extract information
• Define needs
• Develop evaluation strategies

+ Human Relations

Human relations as a broad objective.

Use interpersonal skills to resolve conflict, relate to, and help people.

• Develop rapport
• Be sensitive
• Convey feelings
• Provide support for others
• Share credit
• Delegate with respect
• Represent others
• Perceive feelings, situations

+ Management & Leadership

Management & leadership as a broad objective.

Supervise, direct, and guide individuals and groups to complete tasks and fulfill goals.

• Initiate new ideas
• Handle details
• Coordinate tasks
• Manage groups
• Delegate responsibility
• Promote change
• Sell ideas or products
• Make decisions with others
• Manage conflict

+ Work Survival

Work survival as a broad objective.

Use day-to-day skills to promote productivity and work satisfaction.

• Implement decisions
• Enforce policies
• Be punctual
• Manage time
• Attend to detail
• Enlist help
• Accept responsibility
• Set and meet deadlines
• Make decisions

Get Started!

Download a Transferable Skills Checklist

This Transferable Skills Checklist was first developed by the University of Minnesota Duluth's Career & Internship Services .

• About the Grad School
• Staff Directory
• Office Locations
• Our Campuses
• Twin Cities
• Mission & Values
• Strategic Plan
• Policies & Governance
• Graduate School Advisory Board
• Academic Freedom & Responsibility
• Academic & Career Support
• GEAR 1 Resource Hub
• GEAR+ Resource Hub
• Ask an Expert
• Graduate School Essentials for Humanities and Social Sciences PhDs
• Graduate School Essentials for STEM PhDs
• Grad InterCom
• First Gen Connect
• Advising & Mentoring
• Individual Development Plan (IDP)
• Three-Minute Thesis
• Application Instructions
• Application Fees
• Big 10 Academic Alliance Fee Waiver Program
• Application Status
• Official Transcripts & Credentials
• Unofficial Transcripts & Credentials
• Recommendation Letters
• International Student Resources
• Admissions Guide
• Change or Add a Degree Objective
• Readmission
• Explore Grad Programs
• Preparing for Graduate School
• Program Statistics
• Recruiting Calendar
• Funding Opportunities
• Prospective & Incoming Students
• Diversity of Views & Experience Fellowship (DOVE)
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
• Current Students
• Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
• Distinguished Master's Thesis Competition
• Diversity Predoctoral Teaching Fellowships
• Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
• Excellence in Teaching Award
• Fulbright U.S. Student Program
• Graduate SEED Awards
• Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship in Film Study
• Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship
• Judd Travel Grants
• Louise T. Dosdall Endowed Fellowship
• Mistletoe Fellowship
• Research Travel Grants
• Smithsonian Institute Fellowship
• Torske Klubben Fellowship
• Program Requests & Nominations
• Bridging Funds Program
• Best Dissertation Program
• Co-Sponsorship Grants Program
• Google Ph.D. Fellowship
• National Science Foundation Research Traineeship
• National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education Program
• Training Grant Matching Funds
• Fellowship Dates & Deadlines
• Information for Staff & Faculty
• About Graduate Diversity
• Diverse Student Organizations
• McNair Scholars Resources
• About the Community of Scholars Program
• Graduate Recruitment Ambassadors Program
• Community of Scholars Program Writing Initiative
• Faculty & Staff Resources
• Diversity Recruitment Toolkit
• Summer Institute
• Diversity Office Staff
• What's Happening
• E-Publications
• Submit Content
• News Overview
• Events Overview

Jump to navigation

Search form

The Graduate School

• Faculty/Staff Resources
• Programs of Study Browse the list of MSU Colleges, Departments, and Programs
• Graduate Degree List Graduate degrees offered by Michigan State University
• Research Integrity Guidelines that recognize the rights and responsibilities of researchers
• Online Programs Find all relevant pre-application information for all of MSU’s online and hybrid degree and certificate programs
• Graduate Specializations A subdivision of a major for specialized study which is indicated after the major on official transcripts
• Graduate Certificates Non-degree-granting programs to expand student knowledge and understanding about a key topic
• Interdisciplinary Graduate Study Curricular and co-curricular opportunities for advanced study that crosses disciplinary boundaries
• Theses and Dissertations Doctoral and Plan A document submission process
• Policies and Procedures important documents relating to graduate students, mentoring, research, and teaching
• Academic Programs Catalog Listing of academic programs, policies and related information
• Traveling Scholar Doctoral students pursue studies at other BTAA institutions
• Apply Now Graduate Departments review applicants based on their criteria and recommends admission to the Office of Admissions
• International Applicants Application information specific to international students
• PhD Public Data Ph.D. Program Admissions, Enrollments, Completions, Time to Degree, and Placement Data
• Costs of Graduate School Tools to estimate costs involved with graduate education
• Recruitment Awards Opportunities for departments to utilize recruitment funding
• Readmission When enrollment is interrupted for three or more consecutive terms
• Assistantships More than 3,000 assistantships are available to qualified graduate students
• Fellowships Financial support to pursue graduate studies
• Research Support Find funding for your research
• Travel Funding Find funding to travel and present your research
• External Funding Find funding outside of MSU sources
• Workshops/Events Find opportunities provided by The Graduate School and others
• Research Opportunities and programs for Research at MSU
• Career Development Programs to help you get the career you want
• Graduate Educator Advancement and Teaching Resources, workshops, and development opportunities to advance your preparation in teaching
• Cohort Fellowship Programs Spartans are stronger together!
• The Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society (BGHS) A national network society for students who have traditionally been underrepresented
• Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) A gateway to graduate education at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities
• Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) A community that supports retention, and graduation of underrepresented doctoral students
• Recruitment and Outreach Ongoing outreach activities by The Graduate School
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Funding Funding resources to recruit diverse students
• Graduate Student Organizations MSU has over 900 registered student organizations
• Grad School Office of Well-Being Collaborates with graduate students in their pursuit of their advanced degree and a well-balanced life
• Housing and Living in MI MSU has an on and off-campus housing site to help find the perfect place to stay
• Mental Health Support MSU has several offices and systems to provide students with the mental health support that they need
• Spouse and Family Resources MSU recognizes that students with families have responsibilities that present challenges unique to this population
• Health Insurance Health insurance info for graduate student assistants and students in general at MSU
• Safety and Security MSU is committed to cultivating a safe and inclusive campus community characterized by a culture of safety and respect
• Why Mentoring Matters To Promote Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education at MSU
• Guidelines Guidelines and tools intended to foster faculty-graduate student relationships
• Toolkit A set of resources for support units, faculty and graduate students
• Workshops Workshops covering important topics related to mentor professional development
• About the Graduate School We support graduate students in every program at MSU
• Strategic Plan Our Vision, Values, Mission, and Goals
• Social Media Connect with the Graduate School!
• History Advancing Graduate Education at MSU for over 25 years
• Staff Directory
• Driving Directions

PhD Transferable Skills

Translating your skills and experiences.

Transferable skills are skills you acquire or learn in one setting that can be applied or translated to new and different settings, environments, and activities. Doctoral students often fall into the trap of seeing their skills as applicable in only one setting, thus do not recognize that they are qualified for a wide variety of career paths. Don’t let this happen to you! In the table below you will find a list of skills most sought after by employers. In the final column of the table are examples of activities that demonstrate these essential skills. For several of the skills you can also take online assessments to identify which areas you still need to develop.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS: Adaptability , Analytic skills , Balance & resilience , Communication skills ( oral and written ), Conflict resolution/negotiation , Cultural/Intercultural , Discipline-specific skills , Ethics & Integrity , Follow-through/Ability to get things done , Fundraising , Independent (self-starter), Intelligence , Inter-/Multi- disciplinary , Interpersonal skills , Leadership (program) , Leadership (personnel/management) , Networking & collaboration , Organization , Outreach , Project management , Research , Self-direction/Entrepreneurial skills , Supervision , Technical skills (information technology), Work ethic

Essential Skills and Competencies for Graduate Students 1 :

1 Contents of table are adapted from Blickley, et al. (2012). “Graduate Student’s Guide to Necessary Skills for Nonacademic Conservation Careers.” Conservation Biology, 27:1. 2 Winterton, Delamare - Le Deist, and Stringfellow (2006). “Typology of knowledge, skills and competences: clarification of the concept and prototype.”

Additional resources on transferable skills:

• Plan Your Work & Work Your Plan [PDF]
• Graduate Student Skills (UIUC) [PDF]

• Call us: (517) 353-3220
• Contact Information
• Privacy Statement
• Site Accessibility
• Call MSU: (517) 355-1855
• Visit: msu.edu
• MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer.
• Notice of Nondiscrimination
• Spartans Will.
• © Michigan State University

• Public Lectures
• Faculty & Staff Site >>

Advice Topic: Transferable Skills

Thinking about your own path and preparation.

In a typical year, our summer schedules often allow us some space to step back, reflect, and focus on our own professional development. We hope that as we continue to respond to and slowly recover from the current pandemic, you will find a little time to focus on yourself as you prepare for the future. While these are admittedly uncertain times, it’s clear that now more than ever, the world needs well-educated, reasoned and experienced thinkers and innovators to help guide us through the recovery and into the future – this sounds like a description of UW postdocs!

In the past, we’ve shared advice on  pursuing your passion projects ,  identifying your unique skills , and  crafting documents for a successful job application . Here, we’d like to share two exceptional resources which allow you to both explore and enhance your skills and professional development: LinkedIn Learning and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Intramural Training & Education (OITE).

LinkedIn Learning : The UW Career and Internship Center has purchased a license for full access to LinkedIn Learning . LinkedIn Learning is a collection of online videos to help you enhance and develop skills. Importantly, everyone with a UW NetID can access the resources. Spend some time exploring the site to get advice for your next career step, including:

• Writing a Resume , by Stacey Gordon;
• Informational Interviewing , by Barbara Bruno;
• Tips for Working Remotely , by Todd Dewett.

NIH OITE : The  NIH OITE  has responded to COVID-19 by making much of their internal professional development activities open to the public. While some admittedly have a scientific focus, many workshops on wellness and career and professional development are broadly applicable to the academic community (and beyond). Feel free to register (for free) for one of their upcoming workshops. We were particularly impressed with the following seminars:

• Essential Leadership Skills for Scientists , by Sharon Milgram, PhD;
• Strategies and Tools for Dealing with Stress During the Coronavirus Pandemic , by Laurie Chaikind McNulty;
• CVs, Resumes, and Cover Letters  – Essential Job Search Documents, by Amanda Langer;
• Industry Careers – Overview and Job Packages , by Brad Fackler.

As a postdoc, it is imperative that you carve out some time to focus on YOU: assess what skills you have already developed and focus on how best to promote them. Equally as important, take the time to determine which skills and experiences you still need to develop as you prepare for your next career step. We encourage you to explore both LinkedIn Learning and the NIH OITE resources in your own time. And as always, we, the  UW Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA) , continue to be available for consultation and support as you navigate these difficult times.

Career Advice for Beyond the End of The Road

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. – Joseph Campbell

Dr. Keith Micoli visited UW from NYU where he directs the postdoc office and has worked for a decade to support postdoc professional development. Dr. Micoli shared advice with UW postdocs at a workshop on October 16, and we share highlights with you here.  For anyone who has done any kind of endurance activity, you will recognize a theme within these tips, drawn from Dr. Micoli’s own science training career and long-distance hiking activities:

Lesson 1 – Commit to Your Goal

• Knowing your goals  will help you get through the inevitable tough moments, when you want to give up.  You can’t hike 130 miles all at one shot. 
• When something’s obviously not working, try something else.
• If you don’t know your goal, it’s a lot harder to accomplish anything.

Lesson 2 – Know the Difference Between Need and Want

• Rather than imagine what your faculty advisor is thinking about your path,  talk about it ; you may be surprised!
• Set a date that you are NOT going to be a postdoc anymore; start working on your end goals NOW.
• When identifying where you want to go next, think not just about the position or job title, but also your values and how they  fit the organization’s culture .  myIDP  and  Doug’s Guides  can give you some insights to explore further.

Lesson 3 – Know What Success Will Require of You

• What does it take to be a successful  tenure-track faculty  member? What does success look like in an alternative career?
• Are you willing to pay the price to  pursue a certain career ? If you are not, you shouldn’t be doing it.
• Use your postdoc time to develop your many  transferable skills , such as writing, teaching, counseling, organization, situation analysis, independence, meeting deadlines, negotiations, enlisting help, communication skills, course development, setting goals, supervising, coordinate, editing, research design, listening,  networking , time management, selling ideas, resourcefulness, attention to details, collaborating, giving feedback, data analysis, presentations, take risks, budgeting, decision-making, artistic/creative, conflict management delegating, facilitating discussion, interpersonal skills, prioritizing, giving feedback…and more.

Lesson 4 – Do Your Best with What You Have

• Focus on things and places where you can have an impact, not on the things you can’t do.
• Visualize the completion of a goal, and then go backwards to plan for a timeline and achievable sub-goals.
• Sometimes you need to put in more resources to finish on time; sometimes you need to extend the deadline and to be realistic.

Lesson 5 – Be Realistic and Opportunistic

• Why is your goal important, and why hasn’t it already been achieved?
• What is the most direct way to achieve it?
• What resources do you have, and what resources do you need?

Lesson 6 – Never Give Up

• You don’t have the benefit of knowing where the finishing line is. Just keep going and never give up.

Graduating soon, and what next?

“I am a fifth-year doctoral student and will be graduating soon. I’m at the point in my graduate education where I am thinking about possible careers. What are some simple steps I can take to start my career planning?” –Anonymous

Lucky you, grad student, you get two answers to your question! One is from Catherine Basl, career counselor with Career & Internship Services. Catherine manages the center’s programming for graduate students. Another is from the Core Programs team, who support personal and professional development of grad students at the UW. You know what they say, two heads are better than one!

Catherine Basl, career counselor, Career & Internship Services:

Leverage your research skills for career planning! Aim for a mix of independent reading about options and connecting with professionals in coffee chats or at events.

A few ideas for getting started:

• Talk to one alum of your graduate program who works outside of academia in an area of possible interest. Graduate Program Advisers could be a good resource for finding alumni.
• Attend an event on campus ( Core Programs and the Career & Internship Center host many) that is focused on employer connections or exploring options.
• Reflect on your time here at UW. Consider all of the roles you have held as a graduate student (TA, research assistant, mentor, tutor, lab manager, writer, coder, etc.). Looking at each role, what were the tasks and activities you enjoyed most? Least? See if patterns emerge across roles. For an example of this activity, see pages 8-10 in the Career Guide .
• Paula Di Rita Wishart’s article on Career Callings also provides some great activities for reflecting on your graduate school experience and next steps.
• LinkedIn’s Alumni tool shows you where actual UW alumni work and you can sort by location, employer, and field of study to see possible career paths.

Some notes:

• Looking at job postings when you aren’t sure what you want to do can be overwhelming. Job boards become much more navigable when you have established criteria for what you want in a position. The same goes for large career fairs.
• Gather multiple data points. That means talking to more than one person, reading about career options on more than one website, and testing out the information you hear.
• Realize career planning is like all research projects—sometimes things fall into place quickly and sometimes you encounter roadblocks along the way. If you feel stuck or would like someone to brainstorm with, consider booking an appointment with a career counselor and checking in with mentors.

A few more resources for exploring:

• Carpe Careers series on Inside Higher Education
• Science Magazine (for STEM PhDs)
• ImaginePhD (for humanities, social science PhDs, launching in October!)

Core Programs Team:

Dear UW Grad Student,

Thank you for reaching out! This is a great question, and one we hear frequently from graduate students who are further along in their degree programs and thinking through different career paths. Whether you are thinking about working in industry, non-profits, government, or academia, there are several resources that can help you do intentional career planning (many of which we’ve learned through collaborations with partners at the Career & Internship Center).

First step: do some self-assessment work. Where are you with your skills, strengths, interests, passions? Then, use a planning tool like an Individual Development Plan (link) to start to map out possible goals and steps you can take toward them in the next few months. You can also utilize this helpful career planning guide from the Career & Internship Center that provides several clear, proactive steps you can take towards finding that job you’re passionate about.

To explore and open your possibilities, do LinkedIn searches for professionals with jobs you’re interested in learning more about and set up informational interviews to hear more about their unique career trajectories.

Explore different career options within academia and/or job sectors outside of academia with the amazing resources on the Career Center website.

We totally get that you are 100% focused on your dissertation work and graduation – it’s a lot! And, we know that setting aside 1-2 hours per week (starting right now) to explore, research, draft, attend something that helps you refine your career search will really help you identify career options and opportunities for your next steps. It’s worth it – give it a try!

Core Programs Team #UWGradSuccess  

Translating Your Postdoc Experience into Practice

An academic journey is an interesting thing. After focusing on developing specialized knowledge in a field during your PhD and then digging deeper during your postdoc, it is understandable to wonder how you might use your specific expertise in different settings – whether inside or outside of academia.

A recent panel of Ph.D.s working in industry highlighted the importance of translating your doctoral and postdoc experience into broader terms. Taking an inventory of your skills, capabilities, and strengths can help you gain confidence as you begin to imagine you do have something remarkable to offer to a future employer or to leverage for success in your career.

Skills learned during graduate school and a postdoc fellowship have set you up to be a competitive applicant for most industry and start up jobs, in addition to the traditional academic track. By the completion of your training, you are highly intelligent, with an ability to learn and teach yourself “what you don’t know.” You are adept at gathering all the available information and making a good decision regarding what it means and what’s next. You have developed great analytical and logic-minded skills, which you can apply to move an issue, experiment or conversation forward. All it takes is stepping back, and reframing your experiences for a different audience.

Need some ideas about how your graduate and postdoc experiences have prepared you for a rewarding career inside or outside of academia? Check out this list from Peter Fiske’s keynote at the National Postdoc Association meeting 2017 (#NPA2017) to get you started:

• Ability to function in a variety of environments and roles
• Teaching skills; conceptualizing, explaining
• Counseling, interview skills
• Public speaking experience
• Ability to support a position/viewpoint with argumentation and logic
• Ability to conceive and design complex studies and projects
• Ability to implement and manage all phases of complex research projects and to follow them through to completion
• Knowledge of the scientific method to organize and test ideas
• Ability to organize and analyze data, to understand statistics and to generalize from data
• Ability to combine, integrate information from disparate sources
• Ability to evaluate critically
• Ability to investigate, using many different research methodologies
• Ability to problem-solve
• Ability to do advocacy work
• Ability to acknowledge many differing views of reality
• Ability to suspend judgment, to work with ambiguity
• Ability to make the best use of informed hunches

As you develop your own inventory, keep in mind that similar skills or capacities may be called different things in different sectors or fields. Do your research when you are targeting a job prospect and develop tailored versions of your CV or resume and cover letters to reflect the field specific terms.  You are prepared – it just takes a little translation to help others see it easily. We invite you to budget an hour or so a week to explore the references below for more tools and ideas.

• Peter Fiske, 2015 at UC – Berkeley – Put Your PhD to Work: Practical Career Advice for Grad students and Postdocs
• Try taking a self-assessment with these quick activities:  Dependable Career Strengths Exercises , UW Career & Internship Center
• Connect with other events, job listings, and online resources:  Beyond Academia: Jobs and Internships , UW Career & Internship Center
• Identifying Skills , Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Career Services at Brandeis University
• PhD Transferable Skills , Career Center at University of Michigan.

Beyond “Plan B”: Crafting Your Career Journey

With today’s careers, it is more common than ever before to change directions multiple times in your life. This can happen in the course of a graduate program where perhaps the career you came looking for now looks different to you as your experiences have grown.  We have an on-going theme in Core Programs of exploring diverse career trajectories.  Below, we emphasize a few lessons shared by Philosophy alums at a recent panel, who are working in very diverse sectors. * Whether or not you are in a Humanities, Social Sciences, or a STEM field, these insights may be of use to you:

Beyond Hoops .  We know there are many obligations and milestones to completing a graduate program.  Rather than (only) thinking of these requirements as hoops to jump through, take some time to reflect upon the career skills you will gain from them over time— transferable career skills you can utilize for many jobs inside and outside of academia.  For example, even when it’s not apparent to you at first, one skill set you develop when completing a thesis or dissertation are project management skills .   Skills under project management can include, organization (outlining and prioritizing tasks that need to be completed), time management (setting up and meeting deadlines that are realistic), synthesizing complex ideas and details succinctly (writing up your project), and communication (meeting with advisors to state, clarify, and/or revisit your goals and expectations).

Beyond Job Titles.  Instead of focusing solely on job titles during your job search, consider the kind of work you want to do and the kind of setting you would like to work within. What strengths do you have, and where are those best expressed? Recruiting expert Christian Lépolard offers these guiding questions to help you think expansively about your job search, “What is your ultimate career goal, inside and outside of your current organization?  What hard skills (practical and theoretical), knowledge, and soft skills do you need to possess in order to get there? What skills do you already have and which ones do you need to acquire?  What skills will this next role bring you?” Read more from Lépolard’s article .  We would also add, what kinds of tasks and projects fuel your passions? What contribution do you want to make? How do you prefer to spend your time? Reflecting on these questions can help you find a range of ways you might be able to do your best work, rather than limiting yourself to certain job titles.

Beyond a “Career Path.”  If we shift our thinking away from the idea of a “career path” (often imagined as linear) towards the notion of a career journey, then we open ourselves up to change, flexibility, and opportunity.  Sometimes you just need to get your foot in the door at an organization or institution.  Start out with a short-term internship (or in other instances, see if there are volunteer positions), as this experience will help you determine if you will enjoy working there and if the work and the workplace culture allow you to thrive. The right kind of entry-level position can open more doors quickly once you shine. It may not be a straight shot through to your dream job, but you increase your professional networks and get to showcase your talents along the way!  Also, think broadly about a range of jobs that match your technical and transferable skills.  Career strengths assessments such as this free one can help you do just that.

Spring can be a job search season for you, or perhaps a chance to line up more growth opportunities once summer arrives.  It can also be a time to consider making a 1-1 appointment with a UW career advisor who can help give you feedback on your resume or CV.  We are cheering for you – let us know how it is going!

Kelly, Jaye, and Ziyan

*Acknowledgements to panelists Summer Archarya, Dustyn Addington, Karen Emmerman, and Ann Owens from the Philosophy Branches Out event.  This event was held on February 28, 2017 at UW Seattle and was co-sponsored by the UW Philosophy Department, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and Core Programs in the Graduate School.

Exploring Career Paths: Strategic Steps Postdocs Can Take

In late May 2016, we have had the opportunity to hear from some exceptional speakers on campus who offered their perspective and insights to postdocs regarding exploration and preparation for careers that will be the best fit for YOU.  We excerpted out the following top tips shared during these workshops from guests Kelly Sullivan of the Pacific Northwest National Labs, Linette Demers from Life Science Washington, Matt O’Donnell, Professor and Dean Emeritus in Engineering, Sumit Basu and Hrvoje Benko from Microsoft Research.

• Prepare : “Career planning isn’t so much about planning.  But it is about preparing.” Having a clear roadmap won’t always help you, as it may limit you to opportunities or serendipity when something unexpected arises. Instead, invest in preparing for a range of possibilities – diversify your skill sets, cultivate curiosity, and build your networks.
• Assess your skills : What is academic research training you for? In part, academic research training is about asking important research questions, developing and pursuing methods to answer those questions, and using results to define outcomes and your next questions.  You are also learning how to work in teams, how to deliver results, and a full range of transferable skills . Learn to talk about your skills and interests in broader more generalizable terms than perhaps your specific, immediate research project may suggest.
• Assess your strengths, passion, work style : Talk with your mentor team, or those who have worked with you and know you, and ask: “what do you think I am uniquely good at?” “What do you see as my top contribution(s) to a team or project?” Use free assessments like those offered by Doug’s Guides to get a better sense of what kind of work environment will be the best fit for you.
• Explore what is out there : Your research training alone is not career preparation, even for academic positions.  You have to do something more proactive. Develop your “story” about who you are, what your passions are, and how you want to contribute. What opportunities exist? Ask people: I think your job sounds really interesting. How did you get here? Cultivate an opening question “I’m new to this industry/sector, can you tell me what you do?” Get involved with more than just building technical skills in your laboratory.
• Understand impact : Learn what is valued and expected in each kind of organization and work setting. Ask: “what does success or impact look like here in this sector, in this organization”? And then ask yourself – is that metric of success and impact meaningful for me.  Is this how I want to contribute, and where my strengths lie.
• Gain experience : All the guests discussed the importance of getting out “there” and developing experience and exposure in other sectors, even for a short stint: giving a talk, participating in seminars/sessions that are open to others outside the organization, doing a short 4-12 week internship. These conversations and experiences will both help you decide what sector feels like a good fit for you, and will help distinguish you if you apply for a job in that sector.

Closing tips from speakers :

• Do something you care about.
• Summarize who you are without using your technical expertise as a crutch.
• Let go of worrying about what you are going to “be” – focus more on problems you are passionate about. Follow your curiosity and passion.
• Spend 5% of your time looking for a new job, even while happy in your current one.
• Develop relationships. They will take you places and open doors, and make your career worthwhile.
• Be kind, and humble.  Be realistic about your limitations and acknowledge the contributions of others.

Power Skill of the Month : Pivot . Popularized in the start-up culture, “pivot” describes the ability to drop an unproductive direction or assess signs that suggest that the direction you are pursuing is not going to bear fruit.  Having the ability to pivot to a new direction, release a direction that isn’t panning out, and move on with greater energy and opportunity is key regardless of what field or sector you may work in.

Originally posted on June 2, 2016.

Exploring Careers the Non-Linear Way

Career pathways are often viewed as linear. An imagined life scenario goes something like this: You go to college, get your first job, earn a promotion, get a graduate degree, move up the ladder to your dream job, secure that dream job, then happily retire–all within a few decades and all within the same company or organization. However, industry trends and professionals in our networks have increasingly told us a different story: before, throughout and beyond graduate school, people are following career trajectories that are non-linear and often include, various work experiences and projects that not only enhance the skillsets they already had as graduate students, these experiences allowed them to acquire new sets of tools to pursue their passions.

As you plan ahead, we encourage to think expansively about your professional endeavors. Instead of asking yourself, “What job title do I want to have?,” ask yourself, “What work experiences do I want?”

Here a few tips to get you started:

Managing social expectations. Social messages can impact the career choices we make now and into the future. These messages have the potential to tell us who we “should” be and come from our families, peers, broader community, and an array of institutions around us–this even includes the UW. Sometimes external messages do resonate with our professional endeavors and that’s great! When the messages don’t align with your goals, it’s perfectly okay to take a step back and reflect on your values and strengths in order to switch gears and create roadmaps to do work that excites you, or at least piques your interest.

Flexibility. One skill you’re amazing at in graduate school is being flexible. You’re adept at juggling multiple campus, work and personal responsibilities. Take advantage of your ability to be flexible and remain open to opportunities that provide you with a range of professional experiences. (1) Volunteer a few hours a week (or per month) at a local non-profit and see if your passion lies there. (2) Learn more about a specific job or work culture by arranging a job shadow. (3) If internships or practicum aren’t part of your degree requirements, but you’d like (paid or unpaid) work experience, seek out internship opportunities that work with your schedule. All of these experiences have the potential to broaden your professional networks. And wider networks increase the likelihood of successful job searches and setting up interviews. Volunteering, interning and job shadowing can also help you rule-out options based on first-hand experience, and this frees you up to explore other paths.

Do versus be. Rather than focus on who you want to be (e.g. a person with a static job title), think of the contributions you want to make in your community, with your peers, to your family. How you work is also important. Can you bring your authentic self (values, strengths, ethics) to work? Are you able to start your day from a place of integrity–regardless of whether you’re in an entry-level position or higher? Does doing the work involve more positive stress than negative stress? Is there room to face challenges that will help you grow professionally? Focusing on contributions, rather than job titles, can help you think more broadly about how work can be meaningful to you.

Failing forward. Doing what you love is an iterative process, not without trial and error. Don’t be afraid to take risks, but don’t be careless about the risks you take. Have a new project idea? Share it with colleagues, especially if you notice gaps or issues not already being addressed in your field. Start with a soft launch, on a smaller scale. If your project doesn’t produce the results you imagined, ask yourself the following questions: What went well? What can I learn from this? What would I do differently? Focus on the process and then move forward, and keep challenging yourself to grow.

Kelly, Jaye & Ziyan Core Programs Team

Tips from Employers to Guide Your Career Search

A few weeks ago, Core Programs in the Graduate School, Career Center, and the Alumni Association sponsored an employer panel for graduate students and postdocs. We would like to share a few pearls from the terrific UW alums who sat on the panel and who also hosted conversations during the networking reception that followed.

The job search is about finding the right fit for your talents. Be creative about your career options, test out new ways to tell the story of your (deep) experience and skill set, and it is never too early to start exploring and building your network.

Getting Started

• Evolve your resume. Your resume should always be evolving and tailored to each job you are applying for. Also, describe examples of specific accomplishments, including those that came up during your education and training. What problems did you approach, how did you solve them, with what results? Find out more about building your resume here. If you’re interested in careers beyond academia, here are tips on how to revise your CV into resume format.
• Build your experience. Find out what key skills or top tools are used and needed in the field of interest, and learn them. Look at the whole picture of your experience, inside and outside of graduate education. Align your skill sets to particular positions or organizations. Use specific examples in your talking points and written materials with the goal of making yourself stand out from an applicant pool. Learn how to get internship and related experential skills as graduate students at this upcoming workshop.
• Demonstrate excellent communication skills (in writing and in person). Be able to discuss complex ideas in a simple, clear, concise fashion. Be ready to describe the research you are working on in 30 seconds or less–and in a way that anyone can understand.
• Consider entry-level positions. Don’t get discouraged by entry-level positions. It can be helpful to get your foot in the door, demonstrate your contribution and capability. Depending on the organization (check this out first), you can move up within 3-6 months.
• Find your passion. Pay attention to your energy and passion as those are the kinds of jobs you should be looking for (and not others!).
• Start early. It is never too early to start building and growing your network. Networking is possible even for those of us who initially shy away from it.
• Talk about your talent and passion. Practice. Get comfortable. Own it, but without arrogance. Do mock interviews.
• Set up networking meetings. Identify target companies to narrow your options, and then set up informational interviews.
• Use LinkedIn strategically. Start with classmates, alums, professors. Join LinkedIn groups in order to initiate professional connections and learn about new job postings.
• Attend receptions. Face-to-face conversations can spark interest and connections at these professional gatherings. Send a resume to those you’ve connected with as a follow up. Personal connections always move a resume up if it is already in the pool.
• Ask questions. You are interviewing the informant and the organization to determine fit as much as they are interviewing you. Show them you want to know what the work is like, that it matters to you (that is, you aren’t just looking for “a job”). Questions you can ask: What is your day-to-day work like? What is the best part of what you do? The most challenging? What is the culture like here? What would you change about your job (or the organization) if you could?

Interviewing

• Phone interview. Always prepare for this as you would an in-person interview, and follow up with a thank you email or note.
• Answering technical questions. If a potential employer asks you a technical question, or to solve a technical problem during the interview, how should you handle it? The interviewer mostly wants to know how you strategize solving a problem. It is important to show how you would approach the problem, what you’d consider, and why.
• Be relationally savvy. Organizations are looking for people who will be colleagues.
• Show resilience. You can’t always control what interviewers will ask or how they will behave. Show some resilience and keep your composure, as well as keeping things in perspective. If you don’t like how you were treated in an interview, chances are you don’t want to work there anyway!
• Not hearing back. You might not hear back. Be persistent. Keep honing your materials and learning from the process.

Best Wishes on Your Career Paths!

Kelly, Jaye, and Ziyan Core Programs Team

Finding the Right Fit for Your Talent

In late January 2016, the Graduate School co-hosted an annual Career Symposium for graduate students and postdocs. We wanted to share just a few pearls from the terrific UW alums who sat on the panel and also hosted conversations during the networking reception. Bottom line : the job search is about finding the right fit for your talent. Be creative about your career options, test out new ways to tell the story of your (deep) experience and skill set, and it is never too early to start exploring and building your network.

• Evolve your resume . Your resume should always be evolving.  Describe examples of specific accomplishments, including those that came up during your education and training.  What problems did you approach, how did you solve them, with what results?
• Build your experience . Find out what the key skills or top tools are used in the field of interest, and learn them. Look at the whole picture of your experience, inside and outside of graduate education.  Align your skill sets to particular positions or organizations. Use specific examples in your talking points and written materials with the goal of making yourself stand out from an applicant pool.
• Demonstrate excellent communication skills (in writing and in person) . Be able to discuss complex ideas in a simple, clear, concise fashion. Especially, be ready to describe what you are working on for your research in 30 seconds or less in a way that anyone can understand.
• Consider entry-level positions . Don’t get discouraged by entry-level positions.  It can be helpful to get your foot in the door, demonstrate your contribution and capability and depending on the organization (check this out first) you can move up within 3-6 months.
• Find your passion . Pay attention to your energy and passion as those are the kinds of jobs you should be looking for (and not others!).
• Start early . It is never too early to start building and growing your network.
• Talk about your talent and passion . Practice. Get comfortable. Own it, but without arrogance. Do mock interviews.
• Set up networking meetings – informational interviews . Identify target companies to start with to narrow your options.
• Use LinkedIn strategically . Start with classmates, alums, professors.  Join groups that might create good professional connections.
• Attend receptions . Send a resume to those you’ve connected with as a follow up. Personal connections always move a resume up if it is already in the pool. Face-to-face meetings spark interest and connection.
• Ask questions . You are interviewing the informant and the organization to determine fit as much as they are interviewing you.  Show them you want to know what the work is like, that it matters to you (that is, you aren’t just looking for “a job”). Questions you can ask: what is your day-to-day work like? What is the best part of what you do? The most challenging? What is the culture like here? What would you change about your job (or the organization) if you could?
• Phone interview . Phone interviews are important.  Always prepare as you would for an in-person, and follow up with a thank you email or note.
• Answering technical questions . If they ask you a technical question, or to solve a technical problem during the interview, how should you handle it?  The interviewers mostly want to know how you think rather than the answer to the problem.  It is important to show how you would approach the problem, what you’d consider, and why.
• Be relationally savvy . Organizations are looking for people who will be colleagues.
• Show resilience . You can’t always control what interviewers will ask or how they will behave.  Show some resilience and keep your composure, as well as keeping things in perspective.  If you don’t like how you were treated in an interview, chances are you don’t want to work there anyway!
• Not hearing back . You might not hear back. Have persistence. Keep honing your materials and learning from the process.

“ Interviews are helpful as I can tell right away if someone has the logic skills of a squirrel .” – Mike Bardaro (UW Chemistry alum), Senior Data Scientist AOL

Originally posted on January 28, 2016.

You’re Hired!

I feel behind my cohort in terms of applicable experience. I’ve applied to several internships/practicum experiences, but my financial situation dictates that I either need a paid internship or another job while I complete an unpaid internship. Because my classes are during the day, I’ve found the latter next to impossible. Additionally, I haven’t revived much interest in hiring due to my lack of experience. How do I find the right positions for this situation?      —Inexperienced

(This week’s answer is courtesy of Catherine Basl, Lead Career Counselor, Career Center .)

Thanks for sharing a bit about your situation. It can definitely feel discouraging when we aren’t having as much luck as we want in the job search and when we are faced with hard decisions about lackluster paid positions versus highly interesting unpaid positions. Below are some tips you might find helpful.

• Don’t worry! Most graduate cohorts are made up of students who have a range of applicable experience. If they accepted you into the program, they think you have enough experience to be successful! Though it can be difficult, try to stay positive and confident.
• Consider making a list of what you are looking for in a job or internship. Whether it includes a desired weekly schedule, skills, location, or something else, making a list and prioritizing it can help when mulling over possible options.
• Applicable experience is more than work experience. Consider your volunteer experience too! If you are within a few years of your undergraduate work you might also include relevant clubs and student activities on your resume. Don’t sell yourself short.
• Use your network! If you have only been looking online, consult with your graduate program adviser, departmental staff members and faculty about possible internships. Depending on your field, HuskyJobs might also be a good resource.
• Polish your resume and cover letter! Tailor your resume and cover letter for each position and consider getting them reviewed to ensure they are submission-ready. Sometimes tweaking your materials or doing a mock interview can make a world of difference in the job search.
• Feeling stuck? Schedule an appointment with a career counselor—we can help you with every step of the process from deciding what’s most important to you to helping you prep for the interview that will land you your dream internship.

Ask the Grad School Guru is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guru doesn’t know the answer, the guru will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guru is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.)  Submit a question for the column →

• Browse by collections
• Arts, Design, Entertainment + Communications
• Data, Analytics, Technology + Engineering
• Government, Law, International Affairs + Policy
• Healthcare, Public Health, Life + Lab Sciences
• Management, Sales, Consulting + Finance
• Nonprofit, Education + Social Impact
• BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color)
• International Students
• Neurodiverse & Students with Disabilities
• Proud to be first

10 Transferable Skills from Your PhD that Employers Want

• Share This: Share 10 Transferable Skills from Your PhD that Employers Want on Facebook Share 10 Transferable Skills from Your PhD that Employers Want on LinkedIn Share 10 Transferable Skills from Your PhD that Employers Want on X

Source: Beyond the Professoriate  

In a job interview, an employer may ask you:  “What skills do you bring to this position?”

Do you know how to answer this question?

You may be surprised to find out that your PhD may not be your most important asset. In addition to your work experience and education, employers in the private sector pay close attention to your core skill set.

The good news is that you have valuable skills as a PhD. You have transferable skills that employers want. A transferable skill is a skill you have used in one work context (in this case, in higher education), and that you can use in a different work context (e.g. in government, at a non-profit, in a corporate setting).

When speaking with employers or when crafting job documents, you need to clearly articulate your skills and illustrate how they are relevant to the specific role you are seeking.  You will be translating your academic experience using language that is familiar to the employer.

Here is a list of 10 transferable skills that you have developed during your PhD and that are valuable to employers:

1. Communication skills

Written and oral communication skills are extremely valuable in today’s workplace. Employers seek job candidates who can:

• adapt and clarify complex information for non-technical audiences
• communicate with clients effectively to manage expectations
• train other team members
• persuade others (e.g. sales and marketing)
• write a variety of content from social media posts to technical reports

Think about the ways in which you did this during your PhD.

You wrote business communications (so many emails!), recommendation letters, course syllabi and calendars, course assignments, lectures, slides, conference papers and posters, and/or grant proposals. Perhaps you ran your department’s social media, edited papers for publication, and wrote articles in the university newspaper. Don’t forget your book-length dissertation and the various articles you published in peer-reviewed journals.

In your free time, you may have volunteered at the university radio station, created blogs or podcasts, wrote poetry or novels, tutored, or performed in concerts or in plays.

2. Presentation and facilitation skills

Businesses are always on the lookout for people with storytelling skills who can take their customers or employees on a journey. They want candidates who can present ideas in a compelling format, in scenarios or case studies. They value applicants who can “think on their feet” while facilitating discussions.

As an instructor you practice presentation and facilitation skills every day in the classroom. You had to lead discussions and train members in your lab. You defended project proposals and your dissertation, you chaired sessions, gave guest lectures, and presented conference papers and posters to expert audiences.

3. Organizational skills

To function as a teaching assistant you needed to stay organized. You kept track of your students’ records, attendance, and grades. You also maintained a syllabus calendar and set deadlines for assignments and research projects. You kept a lab notebook. You took notes to organize your research materials and ideas. You certainly juggled multiple projects at once, perhaps teaching several courses while also conducting research projects and writing your dissertation.

In the fast-paced environment of industry jobs, employers seek candidates who can stay on top of their various projects while respecting deadlines.

Organizational skills are project management skills. To make this skill even more marketable, consider learning how to use a task management software (e.g. Trello, Asana) to manage your own projects.

4. Feedback and evaluation skills

As a PhD or faculty member, you are used to giving and to receiving feedback from students, advisors, colleagues, and reviewers. You know how to make appropriate changes to your work or processes after reviewing feedback.

In the age of online reviews, employers want to collect and monitor customer or client satisfaction feedback to make positive changes to their business. They want job candidates who know how to resolve conflict when clients or teammates are unhappy.

You certainly have exercised your feedback and evaluation skills numerous times during your PhD:

• when you had to explain to a student why they received a certain grade
• when you had to intervene to solve interpersonal issues during student group projects
• when you edited your manuscript after receiving reviewer comments
• when you made changes to your syllabus or teaching style after reading your teaching evaluations

Show the employer that you are adaptable.

5. Critical thinking skills

As a PhD, you know how to solve problems and how to analyze and interpret data. You are able to consider alternative solutions to a problem and suggest next steps.

Employers look for candidates who demonstrate 360-degree thinking, who can see a problem from various angles.

During interviews, employers evaluate your ability to think critically when asking certain behavioral questions. For example, they may ask you, “What was your most challenging job situation?” or “Tell me about a problem you solved at work.”

Brainstorm examples that you could share in an interview or conversation with an employer. Perhaps you coached a colleague who faced a difficult classroom situation or perhaps you had to help a student solve a problem with an assignment.

The employer will be paying attention to your decision-making process. Explain why you took each step. Choose an example with a positive outcome.

6. Leadership and mentoring skills

Today’s employers want to hire leaders and mentors, candidates who demonstrate empathy, patience, flexibility, and adaptability. They want candidates who know how to create and share a vision or plan, and who have guided employees through a process.

During your PhD, you have shown leadership and mentoring skills while advising students, holding office hours, and mentoring peers. You have created a vision for the semester with your syllabus, in which you outline the goals and outcomes for the course. You have guided your students through a 16-week process to meet their learning objectives.

You were flexible and adaptable when you had to adjust the course calendar to account for university closure on snow or ice days. If you had to conduct research internationally, you had to adapt to a new environment and perhaps even learn a new language.

7. Management and supervision skills

A manager and supervisor helps the team move towards a common goal by following up on the progress of a project and making adjustments when things get off course.

There are no grades in the corporate world, but you may be managing and supervising employees’ work.

During your PhD, perhaps you had to supervise a team of teaching assistants as a lead TA. As a faculty member, you likely acted as an advisor to a student club, supervised theses, coordinated course sections, and mentored teaching assistants. In the classroom and in extra-curricular activities, you have overseen work, supervised people, and kept them on task.

Employers seek candidates who are able to self-manage. If you wrote a dissertation, you had to manage your time and a project on your own.

8. Creativity and innovation skills

Employers look for creative and innovative candidates. Think of ways in which you taught in a creative, open-minded way. During your PhD, did you create a piece of art, invent something, write a piece of music? Perhaps you came up with a new process to solve problems, or an alternative approach to completing a task. Use these examples in your job documents and interviews. Demonstrate that you are not afraid to try new things.

9. Listening and reflection skills

Companies need to listen to their customers to stay in business, and many positions now pay attention to the “voice of the customer”. Companies struggle to keep their most talented employees and realize that they also need to pay attention to what their employees and team members are saying. They want employees who show empathy.

You refined these skills during your PhD since teaching is a customer-facing position. You have listened to feedback from your students and from your supervisor, and have reflected on what works and what doesn’t in the classroom. Thanks to your experience, you can tell if a student is frustrated by the way in which they ask questions. You have the skills to help solve problematic situations.

10. Learning skills

Your PhD proves that you are a master at learning.

Employers seek job candidates who are willing to learn and who are intellectually curious. If you go to networking events in your desired industry and ask questions, employers will take notice. Attend conferences and read industry papers to stay on top of the latest trends.

You want to show that you are not afraid to learn new things. You can sign up for day workshops to learn how to use software that is required for industry jobs. On LinkedIn Learning, you can take short courses and post these certificates of completion on your profile.

Employers want self-directed learners who can find resources to help solve a problem for the team and for the company. Show how you translate theory into practice in the examples you give the employer.

We use cookies on this site to enhance your experience

By clicking any link on this page you are giving your consent for us to set cookies.

A link to reset your password has been sent to your email.

Back to login

We need additional information from you. Please complete your profile first before placing your order.

Thank you. payment completed., you will receive an email from us to confirm your registration, please click the link in the email to activate your account., there was error during payment, orcid profile found in public registry, download history, how to develop transferable skills while studying for a phd.

• Charlesworth Author Services
• 06 August, 2021

You’re spending three years, or more, writing your PhD. And why? Hopefully, for the love of the subject. But then what?

At the end of our PhD, most of us hope to find work which relates to our research area. This might be in academia, either as a researcher or in teaching. Many of us will end up working in industry, or for a government or charity. On the other hand, you might be fed up with your research area and want to work outside it , or perhaps your research is in a field with few job opportunities, and working elsewhere is common.

The image of a PhD student can be someone working in a narrow field, gaining knowledge and learning techniques with limited application. But this isn’t true. As specific as your research questions may be, you are inevitably developing skills which are valued in the workplace, in or out of academia . And your time at university offers opportunities to gain additional experience and skills.

Which skills are employers looking for?

Some employers will be impressed that you have a doctorate. For many academic jobs, it’s an expectation. For many non-academic jobs, it may be regarded as inessential, or even as a waste of time. Whether you are trying to stand out from a crowd of other PhD-holders, or demonstrate that your time studying was valuable, you need to be able to point to the skills you have developed .

Job adverts usually set out essential and desirable skills. While these obviously vary by industry and by post, certain things are almost always valued: being able to manage your own workload or a whole project , being able to work with or manage others , being able to interpret and analyse information, good communication skills, and being able to work under pressure and to deadlines. If these sound familiar, it’s because they are skills you need to complete your PhD.

If you’re targeting a job in a particular position, or at a specific company, look at recent job adverts they’ve posted, and see how many of the skills they list you could confidently demonstrate. For those where you’re not sure, think about how you might get the experience through, or alongside, your PhD.

What transferable skills can you develop through conducting your research?

A PhD is a major undertaking: you conduct your research, then produce a lengthy thesis with limited supervision, meeting specific requirements, by a set deadline. You have to develop skills in project management, self-management and problem-solving. Depending on your research area, you might also develop specific skills which can be applied elsewhere, like the use of specific software , a strong understanding of the scientific method or interview techniques.

If you’re hoping to work in academic or industrial research, it’s clear how the skills you gain will be transferable. But almost any job will value your skills, if you describe them in the right way.

Every organisation wants to appoint someone reliable, someone who will show up to work and meet the expectations of their post, without requiring micro-management. If you have completed your PhD, where the expectations can be vague, there may be little pressure to show up to work on any particular day, and your deadline is years away, meeting the requirements of a regular job should be a breeze ! Similarly, whether you will be managing whole projects in the job you’re applying for, a group of people, or just your own workload, the experience from your PhD will be invaluable. And regardless of what sort of problems might crop up in a post, your experience of analysing problems and solving them is transferable.

What transferable skills can you develop through writing your thesis?

Your thesis is a long and complicated document, in which you are describing and presenting your research and your contribution to your field. You might also get the opportunity to write journal articles, or even news articles. By the end, you have proven that you have strong skills in written English, in communication and presentation , and in project management. You can produce work which meets some very specific requirements, but which also conforms to fairly vague expectations.

While you might never again write anything quite like your thesis, you will have plenty of transferable skills. Being able to write to a high standard is vital in academic research and expected in academic teaching, but is also necessary in a wide range of other jobs. In some cases, you might need to convince prospective employers that your experience is in writing clearly , not using complex and impenetrable language. You could do this by pointing to things you’ve written for a general audience, or even just producing a great cover letter which uses straightforward language to show how your skills and experience meet all the requirements of the job.

If you’ve not yet had a chance to write anything other than sections of your thesis, it’s worth looking at opportunities to do so. Is there a student-run journal at your institution? You could write a short article for LinkedIn, or an academic blog in your area, or pitch something to a news organisation, like The Conversation. (If that’s of interest, take a look here .)

What transferable skills can you develop through presenting your work?

As a PhD student, you will almost certainly be asked to present your work. It might be to a panel of advisers, to a departmental seminar or at a conference . Wherever it is, you are developing presentation skills . You can explain a complex subject in a clear way, for a variety of audiences . You can put together a slideshow, or a poster, using graphics and text together to communicate your ideas in an appealing and well-structured manner.

If you are hoping to go into academic research, good presentation skills will be invaluable. But the same is true of many other jobs. If you are confident at presenting, you can communicate your ideas to your colleagues, or you can sell your ideas to stakeholders . Even your job interview is a type of presentation; with your experience, you can be that bit more confident than those applicants without your presentation skills.

If you’re not yet feeling confident in this area, start small. Take up the offer to present to fellow PhD students, or look for opportunities through your institution to get training. If you have a chance to present to the public, perhaps through events like A Pint of Science, TEDx, or the Three Minute Thesis, be brave and say yes to them.

What transferable skills can you develop through teaching?

There are lots of voluntary activities you can get involved with while at university, and teaching is one of the most valuable. If you can teach, not only do you have experience of presenting, but you also show that you can work with people, often from diverse backgrounds. You can understand people’s needs, and you can engage and inspire people.

If you’re hoping to go into academic teaching, getting this experience while you’re doing your PhD is invaluable. Some people love teaching, and others don’t, and now is the time to find out how you feel about it . But even if you don’t love teaching, the people skills you gain will be useful in any job where you work with trainees, with colleagues who might want to learn from you, or even with the public in general.

If you’ve not yet done any teaching, give it a go. Find out what opportunities there are in your department; these might range from demonstrating or assisting in a lecture, to leading a seminar or a lecture, or even developing your own course for your institution’s outreach programme. Even if you don’t love it, you’ll have a great new skill to add to your resume.

You are picking up and developing useful skills simply by conducting your research and writing your thesis. There are also great opportunities to gain additional skills by undertaking some voluntary activities. We’ve discussed chances to write, present and teach, but there are more. You could get involved with running a student journal or seminar series, get some relevant work experience, make connections with people in your field at conferences or through your research, or undertake voluntary work which builds on your research or interests.

Gaining skills so that you can have the career you want after your PhD needn’t feel like hard work. Find out what opportunities there are at your institution, or online, think about what would interest you, and what would help meet the requirements of the job you want, and then just give things a go. Your PhD is the perfect time to try some new things and gain skills which will benefit you in the future.

Charlesworth Author Services , a trusted brand supporting the world’s leading academic publishers, institutions and authors since 1928. 

To know more about our services, visit:  Our Services

Visit our new Researcher Education Portal  that offers articles and webinars covering all aspects of your research to publication journey! And sign up for our newsletter on the Portal to stay updated on all essential researcher knowledge and information!

Register now:  Researcher Education Portal

Maximise your publication success with Charlesworth Author Services .

Share with your colleagues

Related articles.

Optimising your career and personal development during the PhD

Charlesworth Author Services 18/03/2021 00:00:00

Gain key transferable skills and enhance your employability inside and outside of academia

Charlesworth Author Services 11/11/2019 00:00:00

Career planning and job Hunting for academics

Charlesworth Author Services 15/03/2021 00:00:00

Related webinars

Bitesize Webinar: Planning and managing the research process-Module1:Effective collaboration to maximise the potential of research project

Charlesworth Author Services 10/03/2021 00:00:00

Bitesize Webinar: Planning and managing the research process- Module 2: Developing networking skills that work

Bitesize Webinar: Planning and managing the research process-Module 3: Managing research groups and teams of colleagues

Bitesize Webinar: Planning and managing the research process- Module 4: Presenting research effectively to maximise impact

Phd writing.

How can I reach the level of academic writing needed for a PhD?

Charlesworth Author Services 22/04/2021 00:00:00

How to start writing from Day One of your PhD

Charlesworth Author Services 15/01/2020 00:00:00

A simple guide to begin Publishing during Your PhD

Charlesworth Author Services 03/01/2020 00:00:00

• Transferable PhD Skills You Can Use in Any Career
• After a PhD
• Having a PhD demonstrates that you have a host of skills desirable for employers, allowing you to pursue a non academic career path.
• Transferable skills from a PhD include interpersonal skills, work ethic, problem-solving, time management, independence & responsibility, adaptability and report writing.
• It is important to sell yourself to potential employers by identifying and relating these transferable skills to the job you are applying for.

This page will explain how your PhD has prepared you for a career outside of academia, and how to make the most of your transferable skills when looking for a job.

Can PhD Doctorates Work in Any Role?

A common misconception we hear is that individuals with PhDs must pursue a career in academia. This is usually due to a lack of industrial work experience PhD students have upon obtaining their doctorate. However, this is not the case as one of the key benefits of a PhD is the transferable skills it brings.

Transferable Skills from A PhD

By completing a PhD you will have demonstrated several skills which make you desirable for employers. It is essential that you recognise these skills and can use them to sell yourself in your CV .

Transferable skills from a PhD include:

Communication

Throughout your PhD, you will have been required to work with others, be it supervisors or examiners. You will also have been required to communicate your ideas (often complex and detailed theories) succinctly and to those with less background knowledge than you. Communication skills are essential in the workplace, regardless of the job, as it shows the ability to work in a team effectively .

Completing a PhD is no easy task. In doing so, you have shown a drive to ‘ get the job done ’.

Problem Solving

Throughout your PhD, you will have encountered several problems you overcame. Use these as examples to show your ability to use creative thinking  to devise  solutions  to these problems.

Data Analysation

Most PhD research projects will involve some degree of data analysation. The ability to interpret complex information and identify relevant data is a valuable skill in numerical fields such as science and engineering. You are also likely to have developed your research skills which shows you can identify types of bias, anomalies and trends which is useful in statistical roles such as accounting.

Time Management

An important skill in the workplace is the ability to  prioritise and organise   tasks . With your PhD degree, you should be able to convince potential employers that you can establish realistic timelines and remain to deadlines. You are also able to engage in both short and long term planning . Time management skills are particularly useful for those pursuing project management or leadership roles.

Independence & Responsibility

Perhaps one of the most important things you have shown throughout your research project is your ability to take responsibility  for your  development . A potential employer should see you as someone who does not need constant instructions, but someone who can take ownership of problems and resolve them using their own  independent judgement .

Adaptability

It is unlikely that you will have stuck to your original plan. Things happen and you will have been required to adapt on the fly during your PhD. This is common transferable skill employers are looking for if they operate in volatile markets.

Report Writing

You have been able to summarise approximately three years or more worth of work in a single thesis. This shows your ability to filter through massive amounts of information, identify the key points , and get these points across to the reader. The ability to ‘cut out the waffle’ or ‘get to the point’ is a huge asset in the professional industry.

Useful Phrases To Demonstrate Your Skills

From the above list, it’s clear that a PhD provides you with a host of transferable skills employers look for in candidates. The key is to relate these skills to the job you are applying for.

To help you with this, we’ve put together a few common examples of phrases we hear from doctorates that can be refined for job-seeking purposes. It’s imperative not to stretch the truth or to mislead them but focus on convincing your potential employers how your PhD has prepared you for the role you are applying for.

Other Specialist Skills

Aside from these PhD transferable skills, you may have also developed expertise in more specialised areas of knowledge . For example, as part of your PhD were you required to use Computer Programming? Were you required to use Medical Equipment? Did you organise events? Not only are these skills in themselves, but they have inherent  soft skills  too.

Make sure you get these skills across to your potential employer as they will help demonstrate how valuable you are.

Browse PhDs Now

Join thousands of students.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

What transferable skills does a research degree give you?

Transferable skills help you secure roles in a variety of industries. Alan Dolhasz , Research Fellow, explains how a research degree will provide you with a broad range of attributes.

Research degrees – not just for academia

There is an assumption that studying a PhD means you will only be able to progress into an academic position, whether that be a lecturer or a researcher.

While this can be true, you will also come out with a range of transferable skills , from problem solving to idea generation. These are often highly sought after in any skilled profession .

In my opinion, you should consider your research direction with respect to the job market. If you want to work in your area of study, you should understand the current demand for specialists in your field.

Some PhD topics will end up being relevant only in academia and therefore the number of career opportunities may be considerably lower.

Ultimately, if you aren’t sure whether you want to stay in academia or move to industry, consider a PhD in areas where such transferable skills are gained.

Currently, STEM-based subjects offer a wide array of  transferable skills , such as software development, data analysis or applied artificial intelligence .  

Examples of transferable skills you can learn

When you embark upon a research degree , there isn’t anyone or anything forcing you to do work. Yes, that means you have a lot of freedom, but you may start procrastinating.

Staying physically and mentally disciplined is definitely a key lesson learned throughout the process of a PhD.

Analytic and critical thinking

This is developed largely by making mistakes, such as not analysing something deeply enough in the first place, omitting some detail or not considering problems down the line.

The same applies to published research. When you start reading research papers they all sound perfect, but, when you try to replicate their results, you realise how many unanswered questions and issues there are, compared to your initial impression.

Communication and efficiency skills

At the start of my research degree , I would flood my supervisor with unnecessary information – I soon learned that people don’t really care how you are going to solve a problem, as long as you can show that you understand and have a general strategy in mind to tackle it.

Problem solving

Learning about many fundamental tools of science makes you realise that, for example, detection of a specific illness from an MRI scan of a patient can be seen as a binary classification problem on image data, while predicting next week’s price of Tesla stocks may just be a multivariate time-series prediction problem.

A PhD enables you to take on complex problems faced in the real world and reduce them to smaller, easier-to-solve elements, which you can then tackle one at a time.

Ready for career opportunities

I am pleasantly surprised at how many  transferable skills I have learned during my PhD. One thing I would say, though, is that you get out what you put in.

Studying my PhD part-time , for example, enabled me to nudge my research into the directions I saw the related industries moving towards.

For example, while I was doing my PhD, the area which I was researching suddenly underwent a revolution through the development of novel machine learning techniques ( the deep learning revolution of the 2010s ).

In order to keep my research relevant and to keep my job prospects broad, I had to learn a completely new area of research and adapt my own research to be more in line with that.

While it was a lot of work at the time, it has since provided me with great benefits, such as well-payed work, and lots of examples of transferable skills .  

Seek out new opportunities

I would also advise new PhD students not to restrict themselves.

I am still unsure where my career will take me, so I’ve been cultivating a range of skills which are useful for both my research, but also in the technology markets.

I have taught myself multiple programming languages, even though my PhD work only required one.

I have kept up to date with related industries and learned to use relevant software tools, even if they weren’t directly relevant to my PhD. I have engaged in side-projects which gave me an opportunity to learn new and interesting things.

You will pick up  transferable skills naturally throughout the PhD process, but taking time to seek them out will only widen your career opportunities further.

Thinking about a PhD?

Take a look at our PhD courses and become an expert in your field.

View courses

Life after a PhD

Why a part-time PhD could be right for you

The PhD student podcasts you need to listen to

Making the leap from full-time work to full-time PhD study

PhD student and prize-winning poet discusses new poetry collection

Recent searches

We won't record your recent searches as you have opted out of functional cookies. You can change this on our Manage Privacy page should you wish to.

Popular searches

• Scholarships
• Postgraduate Guide
• Student Finance
• Student Support

Suggested searches

• Life in Birmingham
• Look at Me Now
• Graduate Scholarship

Our websites may use cookies to personalize and enhance your experience. By continuing without changing your cookie settings, you agree to this collection. For more information, please see our University Websites Privacy Notice .

Office of Undergraduate Research

Transferable skills: explaining what you’ve learned through research.

As a second semester senior, my time as an undergraduate researcher is reaching an end and I have given my future beyond UConn serious consideration. When reflecting back on my experience while completing medical school applications, I realized that the skills research provides are much richer than the ability to check off a box on any application.

We have all heard of transferable skills, but how do you explain the skills you’ve developed through research and apply them to other settings? While writing about projects, publications, and conference presentations in my primary application, I needed to decide which transferable skills, or core competencies as described by the Association of American Medical Colleges, to highlight and how these experiences will benefit me in my clinical education. Of course, scientific inquiry is applicable here, but I wanted to go beyond this competency and evaluate where else research is intertwined. Based on my independent research experiences working with the Institutional Review Board and leading projects, I chose to highlight “ethical responsibility to self and others” and “resilience and adaptability,” respectively, since as a researcher and a future physician I have an ethical duty to my participants and patients.

During an interview with a medical school, we discussed how my research experiences connect with the school’s mission as well as how I will take what I’ve learned from these experiences and apply them to my clinical work. In this response, I decided to approach the core competency “resilience and adaptability.” Instead of focusing on how I adapted my timelines and procedures according to the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasized how the resilience that I built while conducting participant-based research during the pandemic has brought a greater awareness of the various life factors that contribute to participation in research. This experience adapting to participants’ schedules and discussing limiting factors in participant interviews will benefit me in building relationships with patients and in understanding how they prioritize health.

It’s not uncommon for undergraduate researchers to pursue medical school, but if you devote time to thinking critically about the skills you’ve gained through research it will allow research to apply to any graduate school or job application. For example, I am also applying to become an Educational Leadership Consultant for the sorority I am a member of, Alpha Omicron Pi, as an alternate plan for the 2022-2023 academic year. This position involves traveling to universities and aiding chapters in strengthening their leadership, recruitment, and function overall- completely unrelated to research. However, while completing the application, I illustrated how my research experience has strengthened my oral and written communication, collaboration, and social skills which are all essential for this position. Fortunately I received an interview invitation, and I hope to expand on how not only my sorority leadership but research leadership experiences will benefit me as an Educational Leadership Consultant.

As you prepare to or are applying to continue your education or join the workforce, take the time to consider where your research experience fits into the picture then paint it so that program or employer understands how valuable your research experience is and how well you’ll fit into your next endeavor.

Lauren is a senior majoring in Exercise Science and minoring in Biological Sciences. Click here to learn more about Lauren.

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

An evidence-based evaluation of transferrable skills and job satisfaction for science PhDs

Contributed equally to this work with: Melanie Sinche, Rebekah L. Layton

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Office of Graduate Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Visualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

¶ ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations Office of Graduate Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America, Department Biochemistry & Biophysics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Affiliations Office of Graduate Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America, Department of Cell Biology & Physiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

• Melanie Sinche, 
• Rebekah L. Layton, 
• Patrick D. Brandt, 
• Anna B. O’Connell, 
• Joshua D. Hall, 
• Ashalla M. Freeman, 
• Jessica R. Harrell, 
• Jeanette Gowen Cook, 
• Patrick J. Brennwald

• Published: September 20, 2017
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023
• Reader Comments

PhD recipients acquire discipline-specific knowledge and a range of relevant skills during their training in the life sciences, physical sciences, computational sciences, social sciences, and engineering. Empirically testing the applicability of these skills to various careers held by graduates will help assess the value of current training models. This report details results of an Internet survey of science PhDs ( n = 8099) who provided ratings for fifteen transferrable skills. Indeed, analyses indicated that doctoral training develops these transferrable skills, crucial to success in a wide range of careers including research-intensive (RI) and non-research-intensive (NRI) careers. Notably, the vast majority of skills were transferrable across both RI and NRI careers, with the exception of three skills that favored RI careers (creativity/innovative thinking, career planning and awareness skills, and ability to work with people outside the organization) and three skills that favored NRI careers (time management, ability to learn quickly, ability to manage a project). High overall rankings suggested that graduate training imparted transferrable skills broadly. Nonetheless, we identified gaps between career skills needed and skills developed in PhD training that suggest potential areas for improvement in graduate training. Therefore, we suggest that a two-pronged approach is crucial to maximizing existing career opportunities for PhDs and developing a career-conscious training model: 1) encouraging trainees to recognize their existing individual skill sets, and 2) increasing resources and programmatic interventions at the institutional level to address skill gaps. Lastly, comparison of job satisfaction ratings between PhD-trained employees in both career categories indicated that those in NRI career paths were just as satisfied in their work as their RI counterparts. We conclude that PhD training prepares graduates for a broad range of satisfying careers, potentially more than trainees and program leaders currently appreciate.

Citation: Sinche M, Layton RL, Brandt PD, O’Connell AB, Hall JD, Freeman AM, et al. (2017) An evidence-based evaluation of transferrable skills and job satisfaction for science PhDs. PLoS ONE 12(9): e0185023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023

Editor: Frank J. van Rijnsoever, Utrecht University, NETHERLANDS

Received: January 27, 2017; Accepted: September 5, 2017; Published: September 20, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Sinche et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All data presented in this manuscript are also provided as S3 Data File as part of the Supporting Information files, with the exception of identifying information which has been removed. As noted in the 'Response to Reviewers' the specified software needed to open S3 file is now noted in the manuscript as well.

Funding: National Institutes of Health (NIH) award number DP7OD020317 ( https://commonfund.nih.gov/workforce/fundedresearch ) supported work on this manuscript in the form of salary support for R.L.L. and P.D.B. while writing this manuscript. Co-Pricipal investigators on the grant included P.D.B., J.G.C., and P.J.B. The content contained herein does not reflect the views of the NIH and the authors are solely responsible for its content. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The original academic training model was designed as an apprentice model for a single career pathway. In that model, the faculty advisor served as a mentor, guiding each trainee towards a future position as a tenure track faculty member. Old assumptions regarding the natural progression of PhD scientists into faculty careers are rapidly changing to reflect a job market where only a small percentage of PhDs will follow in their academic advisors’ footsteps (e.g., [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]). Over time, the number of PhDs conferred in scientific disciplines in the U.S. [ 3 ] has risen substantially, increasing the pool of applicants for tenure-track faculty positions [ 5 ]. Hence, career progression for today’s PhD graduates is quite different. Instead of resembling a continuous pipeline, training outcomes have been compared to a branching career pipeline [ 1 , 6 ].

Because of the traditional structure of the academy, an outdated perception still persists that the best academic trainees in the sciences pursue faculty careers [ 7 ], and that the traditional tenure-track career path represents the true path to job satisfaction. Furthermore, a perception persists that doctoral trainees in the sciences and related fields develop discipline-specific skills that are relevant only to field-specific research, limiting options for other career choices. This study aimed to test these assumptions. We have chosen to focus broadly on disciplines which place an emphasis on employing the scientific method to engage in research, including life sciences, physical sciences, computational sciences, social sciences, and engineering disciplines. Social sciences are included because of their common reliance on the scientific method for research and training. Sometimes these disciplines are collectively referred to as “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics); while there is merit to considering some of these academic areas separately [ 8 , 9 ], this broad focus is consistent with Science and Engineering Indicators published by the National Science Foundation which includes all of the disciplines outlined herein [ 10 ]. For the purposes of this study, we will refer to this group collectively as “science PhDs.” First, we identify skills developed by these PhD-level trainees. Next, we highlight similarities and/or differences in the development of transferrable skills for those who pursue research-intensive (RI) versus non-research-intensive (NRI) careers. Finally, we explore potential job satisfaction differences between the two broad career groups.

Many graduate institutions struggle to adjust to new job market realities, continuing to provide training primarily for tenure-track faculty positions. However, there are an increasing number and range of opportunities for PhD-trained scientists that lead to distinguished careers in both RI and NRI career pathways (i.e., [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]). This evolution of the career landscape challenges the apprentice model for doctoral training wherein PhDs are prepared primarily for faculty research positions instead of the wide variety of jobs available to them.

Despite recent reports of doctoral program alumni entering NRI careers [ 2 , 14 , 15 ], empirical data related to transferrable skill development and associated career outcomes are lacking. Trainees have limited familiarity with rapidly evolving hiring trends and the wide range of job opportunities available; this could be remedied by greater visibility of PhD career outcomes data [ 16 ]. Previous research has focused on faculty positions (e.g., comparing the number of faculty positions available to graduate school enrollment numbers), or is limited to specific disciplines rather than cross-disciplinary samples (e.g., biomedical fields) [ 15 , 17 ]. We have therefore engaged in an extensive study of skills developed during PhD training across scientific disciplines, and of the contribution of these skills to career outcomes and job satisfaction for PhDs employed in a variety of careers. The results of this analysis can inform efforts to improve professional development in doctoral training programs. The current analysis begins to address this knowledge gap by: examining skill development during training relative to skill importance in actual positions obtained, and examining job satisfaction for PhDs in their post-training employment role.

The purpose of this study is to identify skills important to the success of both major career trajectories (RI and NRI) and to determine whether transferrable skills for both were developed during PhD training. We define RI careers as those careers where the scientist is conducting research as a primary function of the job. NRI careers include research-related careers, which require scientific knowledge but are not directly related to conducting research (see Materials and methods for listed example careers in each category). Our sample includes respondents who indicated they were in the following disciplines: life sciences, physical sciences, computational sciences, social sciences, and engineering, allowing us to identify a core set of skills developed in scientifically-based doctoral training. The analysis draws on recently-collected survey data to determine skill attainment for those entering both RI and NRI careers and also examines job satisfaction for each career group.

We hypothesized that many skills acquired during doctoral training correspond with the needs of employers in both RI and NRI careers, yet we anticipated that development of certain skills may be preferentially beneficial to certain career fields. We further hypothesized that some skills important for career success are inadequately developed through doctoral training, and we term these “skill gaps.” To identify these classes of competencies, we examined the development of transferrable skills during doctoral training and compared ratings of self-assessed skill development with ratings of the importance of those same skills for job performance in subsequent employment. In this manner, we measured and tested how effectively graduate training prepares PhDs for a wide range of careers. Furthermore, we evaluated whether there were any differences between RI and NRI careers in job satisfaction. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for graduate training in the sciences and provide specific recommendations that address development of skills that are especially important in all careers available to PhDs.

Materials and methods

Ethics statement..

In compliance with ethical standards of research, all research was conducted under the auspices of the Harvard University Committee on the Use of Human Subjects, IRB#15–063. All participants were provided with an opportunity to review and agree to an informed consent as part of the online survey. All data is reported in aggregate or with identifiable information removed [ 7 ].

Data collection.

The sample includes graduates who earned a PhD in life, physical, computational, and social sciences or engineering, at any institution between 2004–2014, and who had worked, trained, or studied in the U.S.

The sample was developed using qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. An online survey was constructed first as a pilot, with embedded cognitive questions. The survey was then pilot tested with a small sample of respondents, revised, and a large-scale survey was launched. This large-scale data collection effort took place in the spring of 2015.

Outreach to build the sample was conducted electronically via social media channels and direct emailing to potential respondents. The total number of complete responses to the final online survey was 8,099. The current analyses include a subset of relevant questions and responses. For more detailed information on sampling techniques and survey construction, see [ 7 ].

Participants

Demographics..

Eighty-three percent of respondents were US Citizens or permanent residents; seventeen percent were not, and less than one percent indicated that they preferred not to respond. Seventy-seven percent identified as Caucasian, followed by thirteen percent Asian American. Underrepresented minority respondents included four percent Hispanic/Latino, two percent Black/African American, two percent other, and less than one percent Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native (the remaining three percent preferred not to respond). Females made up fifty-seven percent of the sample; males forty-three percent; transgender, other, or those indicating a preference not to respond comprised less than one-percent.

The final survey instrument took approximately 15 minutes to complete and included questions about career interests, activities, current employment, and motivations for career choices, and job satisfaction ratings (for additional information see [ 7 ]). The instrument consisted of four major sections: Education, Postdoctoral Training, Employment, and Demographics. The current research included a subset of these data as detailed in the measures section (see S1 File ).

Education, training, & employment.

In the Education section, participants were asked to identify the field/discipline/academic program of their PhD by selecting from a list of academic program options (including “other” write in; see S2 File ). The list of doctoral programs was generated (requested by MS) using the publicly available database of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a division of the National Center for Education Statistics, and includes disciplines in the life sciences, physical sciences, computational sciences, social sciences, and engineering. Participants indicated whether they had completed or were currently in a postdoctoral position. Those who had postdoctoral training experience were asked to indicate the total number of years of postdoctoral training across all locations and research institutes, from 0–29 years (intervals of 1, up to 29; or 30 and above; for the purpose of analyses, this variable approximated an interval variable and was treated as such). Respondents were asked to select their current job title from a multiple-choice list (including “other” and “I don’t know”; see S3 File for full list of options), and to identify their current employer using an open-response text box. For all list options (e.g., doctoral discipline, job title) an open-response “other” text box option was provided for any answers not included on the list.

Academic programs represented.

Respondents represented over 500 doctoral academic programs in scientifically-based fields. Selections were made from an extensive drop down list of 485 academic program options, and an additional 56 “other” options were identified in the open response section (see S2 File for full list). Respondents were grouped into five categories to examine the representativeness of the sample. All five of these programmatic areas were represented (see Table 1 ). A representative sample drawn from the 2015 iteration of the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates suggests that the numbers of life, physical, and computational scientists in this sample are representative of the national breakdown, although the numbers of social scientists and engineers in this sample is quite low [ 18 ]. Nonetheless, a sizeable number from each group are represented.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.t001

Job categories represented.

Respondents selected the job title category most applicable to them from multiple-choice selections provided. Each multiple choice job title was later categorized as either RI or NRI, and further subdivided into one of thirteen general job categories (recoded using syntax in the IBM SPSS statistics/data management program). The four RI categories included tenure track, non-tenure track academic, government, or industry research. The eight research-related NRI categories included: administrative, business development, consulting, intellectual property, regulatory affairs, science writing and communication, teaching intensive, or science policy. Respondents who indicated that their primary job duty focused on teaching (education at a liberal arts college, community college, or K-12 institution) were included in an NRI “teaching-intensive” category, rather than in the RI category, although they may also conduct research in some cases. The remaining category consisted of “other” entries, which were binned manually into the pre-selected multiple-choice categories where applicable (of the 635 free-response text answers, 481 were sorted into existing categories, leaving 154 “other” job titles remaining). A bivariate proxy variable was created for RI versus NRI (including the research-related careers plus other responses) for use as the dependent variable for the binary logistic regression. The distribution of respondents in each of the thirteen career categories is included in Table 2 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.t002

Transferrable skills.

Skill-based questions consisted of fifteen specific transferrable skills, developed from previous work by the National Postdoctoral Association and the Career Success Program at Michigan State [ 7 ]. Each of the fifteen transferrable skill items developed during doctoral training were rated by asking respondents to indicate their level of agreement with the following statement: “I developed/continue to develop this skill during my doctoral program.” Respondents rated each skill on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = lowest, 5 = highest) from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” A comparable rating scale was used to evaluate each skill’s importance for success in each respondent’s current position, using the following statement: “Which skills are important for success in your current position?” Respondents rated each skill on a 5-point, Likert-type scale (1 = lowest, 5 = highest) from “not at all important” to “extremely important.” Examples of transferrable skills included items like communication skills, time management, teamwork, decision-making, creativity/innovation, etc.

Job satisfaction.

One item assessed this construct, namely “How satisfied are you in your current position?” Respondents indicated their job satisfaction on a 5-point scale (1 = lowest, 5 = highest) from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied.”

Transferrable skills: Development & importance

To evaluate skill acquisition during graduate school, we first asked respondents to rate their own development of the fifteen transferrable skills during doctoral training on a five-point scale (a value of five corresponded with “strongly agree”). All means were above neutral (e.g., greater than 3.0), indicating that for nearly all of the transferrable skills, trainees generally agreed that they had developed the skill during doctoral training ( Table 3 ). Notably, the means for the majority of skills developed during doctoral training were higher than neutral (e.g., closer to or above 4.0, indicating agreement), suggesting that PhDs across scientific disciplines do indeed build essential skills beyond discipline-specific knowledge.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.t003

We then asked respondents to rate the importance of each skill for their current job (rated on a five-point scale; a value of five corresponded with “extremely important”). A skill gap was identified as the average difference between how well a given skill was acquired during doctoral training and the corresponding rating of the importance of that skill during employment (see Table 3 ). No skill gaps were greater than or equal to one point, suggesting that skill acquisition during doctoral training was generally commensurate with job requirements post-PhD training. If the importance of a skill for a particular job was rated higher than the development of that skill during doctoral training, this is indicated by a negative number. Consequently, if a particular skill was developed to a greater extent during graduate training than its perceived importance to a particular job, this is indicated by a positive number. Hence, a positive value indicates that the skill was highly developed during training and/or may not have been as necessary during employment. A negative value of larger magnitude (e.g., gaps of magnitude greater than or equal to -0.5 which would round to a deficit of -1) we identified as indicating potential areas for improvement in graduate training programs.

In addition to trends noted in the means displayed in Table 3 , additional analyses produced the same trends when examining the skill gaps within subjects. Trainees were well prepared during doctoral training for the top three skills (mean differences ranged from 0.13 to 0.58; Table 3 ), whereas they were not as well prepared for the remainder of the skills (mean differences ranged from -0.12 to -0.89). Paired-sample t-tests for all skills were statistically significant at p < 0.05, df = 3718 to 3800, t s = 30.16 to -41.20. Yet based on our minimum criteria of difference (a skill gap of greater than or equal to one point), we identified five skills as those showing a substantial differences of interest. Concurring with our descriptive data, the five skills that showed both significant and substantial differences were the same five skills identified with the lowest developmental ratings, replicating the pattern visible in Table 3 .

Transferrable skills between career groups: RI and NRI skill importance & development

To further examine the differences between doctoral skill training and employment skill importance relative to career groups, both RI and NRI employment skills were compared with doctoral skill training ( Fig 1 ). Fig 1 illustrates that generally the skill importance ratings were consistent between career categories. As in Table 3 , which indicated only small skill gaps for the majority of skills, Fig 1 illustrates that skill development and importance means were quite similar. We continued our investigation by examining the data using further analyses to determine whether specific skills were particularly well developed for these two groups (RI and NRI; Table 4 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.t004

Fig 1 Skills ordered from left (highest) to right (lowest) using transferrable skill ratings acquired during doctoral training as the reference category.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.g001

Logistic regression model.

We used a logistic regression model to determine whether particular transferrable skills were associated preferentially with one of the two major career categories (e.g., RI or NRI). Logistic regression is a statistical procedure that allows for comparison of the odds of two events, in which 1.0 means that the odds of either event are equally likely, using a model of parameters entered (e.g., factors researchers believe impact the outcomes; [ 19 ]). While a few skills associated specifically with one career category versus the other (three each for RI and NRI), the majority of the skills were not associated more with either RI or NRI careers, indicating their wide applicability. To control for possible effects of postdoctoral training on skill development, we included years of postdoctoral experience as a control variable. (There was a significant positive association with length of postdoctoral experience and RI careers).

The level of association between skill acquired during training and subsequent career choice is presented in rank order from most likely to be in RI positions, to most likely to be in NRI positions ( Table 4 ). Skills related to an RI career choice are indicated by significant odds ratios greater than one, whereas skills related to an NRI career are indicated by significant odds ratios less than one. Non-significant odds ratios (the majority of odds ratios are in the middle, close to 1.0) indicate approximately equivalent relevance for either career category. Further, the logistic regression model provided a good fit for the data, χ 2 (16, N = 3579) = 268.48, p < .001, Cox & Snell r 2 = .07, Naglekerke r 2 = .10.

Nine of the fifteen skills developed in training showed no differential association with career category, suggesting the value of most skills irrespective of career category. However, three skills were specifically associated with one or the other career category (RI vs. NRI). Creativity/innovation, career planning/awareness, and ability to work with others outside the organization were positively associated with RI careers. In other words, respondents who rated themselves as proficient in these skills were more likely to be employed in research intensive careers. On the other hand, respondents who had high ratings for project management, learning quickly, and time management skills were more likely to be employed in NRI careers.

In addition to career differences in transferrable skills developed during doctoral training, we wanted to examine the importance of transferrable skills during employment. To examine transferrable skill distinctions at the more granular level of career tracks, we created a dot-plot (see Fig 2 ) of the importance of employment skills for four key RI careers, and eight common NRI research-related careers contained in the sample. Mean employment skill ratings of these twelve sub-categories were plotted as colored dots, on grey bars representing mean acquired doctoral skills. Two conclusions emerge: First, the importance of discipline-specific knowledge and ability to manage others varied the most widely across the careers. Second, while the majority of careers suggested the need for a broad skill set (e.g., tenure track, administrative, consulting), the data suggested that some careers may call for specialization in more narrow essential skill sets (e.g., science writing), although this should be interpreted with caution. It is also possible that the skills selected do not represent the totality of important skills pertinent to each career in question, with some key constructs left unassessed. Despite the small differences at this very granular level, the data points of most employment needs per skill set clustered fairly closely together reinforcing the conclusion that transferrable skills gained during PhD training prepare scientists broadly for many careers.

Currently employed PhDs rated the importance of each skill for their current role (“Other” responses not included on the plot above). The overall mean importance rating for each transferrable skill during employment is represented by a corresponding grey bar, ordered from left (highest) to right (lowest). Each career track mean is represented by a color-coded dot overlaid on the grey bar corresponding to each transferrable skill.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.g002

Career choice and job satisfaction

Between the two major career categories for PhDs (RI and NRI), job satisfaction was relatively high, meaning that most respondents were satisfied or very satisfied in their current position (RI: 4.04 M, .99 SD; NRI: 4.08 M, 1.00 SD). We used an independent means t -test to examine whether there was a significant difference in job satisfaction between the two career groups. We found no significant difference in satisfaction between the two, t (3728) = 1.19, p >.234 (CI 95%: -0.03–0.10). This result suggests that scientists in NRI positions ( n = 1741) were equally satisfied with their career compared with scientists in RI positions ( n = 1989).

There are three overarching conclusions of this work. First, these results broadly suggest that doctoral programs provided trainees with a wide variety of transferrable skills. Second, the majority of those skills were transferrable across RI and NRI careers, with a few exceptions. Third, PhD-trained employees reported a high degree of job satisfaction, regardless of career choice. These findings are encouraging and lend support to ongoing efforts to broaden scientific training and career exploration opportunities during graduate education.

Development of transferrable skills during doctoral training

Areas of strength..

Our findings indicate that doctoral training programs in the sciences are providing trainees with transferrable skills that are valuable for a multitude of career paths. These skills include: discipline-specific knowledge, ability to gather and interpret information, ability to analyze data, oral communication skills, ability to make decisions and solve problems, written communication skills, ability to learn quickly, ability to manage a project, and creativity/innovative thinking.

Areas for improvement.

There were, however, areas for which trainees ranked skill acquisition barely above neutral during their graduate training, indicating that there could be room to improve training in these areas during graduate school. The following skills were identified as less well-developed: the ability to set a vision and goals, time management, ability to work on a team, ability to collaborate outside the organization, ability to manage others, and career planning and awareness skills. Particularly of note, career planning and awareness ranked the lowest of all skills, suggesting an area for targeted growth in graduate education. Importantly, improvements in these skills are likely to be highly beneficial across a broad spectrum of both RI and NRI careers.

Transferrable skills and career choices

The majority of skills we analyzed were not associated preferentially with either career category, suggesting that there is substantial overlap in the relevant skills needed for trainees who chose either RI or NRI careers.

Transferability of skills (RI and NRI).

Our study demonstrates that many transferrable skills are being developed in PhD training that are equally relevant across career paths. This finding suggests that doctoral programs in science fields are in many ways meeting the increasing demand to prepare graduates for a wide variety of careers. The majority of transferrable skills (66%) were similarly associated with both RI and NRI career choices. However, three skills were associated more with RI careers (career planning and awareness, creativity/innovation, and the ability to collaborate outside the organization) and three skills were associated more with NRI careers (project management, quick learning, and time management). Aside from these few exceptions, trainees who choose RI and NRI careers seem to share many of the same transferrable skills.

Research-intensive skills.

Three skills were favorably associated with RI careers: creativity/innovation; career planning and awareness; and the ability to work with others outside the organization. The finding that creativity/innovation was positively associated with RI careers was not surprising. Both of these skills are crucial when developing new projects or using novel approaches, which are important aspects of a research intensive career.

Career planning and awareness shared a positive association with RI careers as well. One explanation for this association is that doctoral candidates interested in pursuing RI careers may be more likely to receive career guidance because their chosen career closely aligns with the training of their mentors, colleagues, and coworkers within the graduate training environment. Additional investigation could better examine the relationship between career planning with RI careers to determine what factors contribute to this association.

Ability to work with others outside the organization was also more highly associated with RI careers. Given the increased necessity for cross-disciplinary (and cross-institutional) scientific collaborations in academia and industry, this skill has become increasingly important and could explain the association with RI careers. It is worth noting that in addition to this skill being associated with an RI career, it also rises to the top of the skill gap list. Stated in different terms, finding ways to incorporate cross-sector collaborations into graduate training is likely to have significant positive outcomes for trainees on an RI career path.

As expected, postdoctoral experience was a significant predictor that associated positively with RI careers. This is likely because most RI careers expect independent research, demonstrated ability to attain grant funding, and a sustainable research program, which are central elements for a successful postdoctoral experience.

Non-research-intensive skills.

Strengths in three skill categories were positively associated with NRI careers: project management; the ability to learn quickly; and time management. It is likely that individuals with research intensive graduate experiences who are transitioning to NRI careers need to adapt quickly to new settings, situations, and roles. This aspect of career transition could explain the positive association with the ability to learn quickly.

Likewise, the data suggest project management is a skill that is particularly well-developed by those who enter NRI careers. This skill is valued across a wide range of occupations because much work in the knowledge economy is project-based.

Another area for which higher skill ratings were associated with NRI careers was time management, which may be a part of the expectation for employees to complete work on time and by deadline in structured work environments. Time management is also fundamental to project-based work, signifying the importance of both of these skills to NRI careers.

Comparing skill acquisition during training and skill importance for employment.

Skill importance during employment was compared with skill acquisition during doctoral training (e.g. Fig 1 ). Skill development during the PhD illustrated a similar pattern to the skill importance for employment when separated by broad career categories (RI and NRI): ratings of transferrable skills developed during graduate training were generally commensurate with the corresponding ratings of skill importance for employment. Further, skill importance ratings for most career types clustered near the means (e.g., Fig 2 ). These findings support the hypothesis that doctoral training programs in the sciences are generally preparing trainees well for the workforce across career pathways.

Job satisfaction

PhDs who are employed in RI and NRI employment categories reported comparable levels of job satisfaction, challenging the prevailing notion that RI careers provide maximal career fulfillment for PhDs. Our data suggest that, for the most part, graduate training is preparing PhDs for both RI and NRI career fields, enabling them to be successful and satisfied in a wide variety of careers. This level of satisfaction is consistent with other recent national data sets (e.g., the 2013 Survey of Doctorate Recipients) which shows that scientists across the country and across occupations are largely satisfied with their work [ 9 ].

Limitations

It is possible that some of the areas for potential improvement of graduate training identified in this study could simply represent skills where trainees lack confidence or awareness of their skill levels rather than an actual deficiency in skill-building opportunities during graduate school. Scientists who are accustomed to focusing on discipline-specific and technical expertise may be unaware that they have also acquired transferrable skills not directly related to their research pursuits. One potential solution to this lack of awareness would be to increase access to career counselors/coaches or other mentors who can help trainees identify the transferrable skills they already possess but may not recognize. For example, most scientists have collaborated with a range of colleagues including senior scientists (sometimes across departments or even institutions) and junior trainees (mentoring undergraduate research assistants, training new graduate students, etc.). These types of activities build communication, leadership, and teamwork skills. Many trainees may not recognize the degree of teamwork ability they have developed as part of a successful collaboration and fail to identify it as a personal strength until it is identified by another person. Similar reasoning may also apply to other acquired skills.

Furthermore, trainees may underestimate some skills they have acquired simply because additional improvements to the skill are desired. For example, no matter how proficient one becomes at time management, there is always room for improvement. This desire could result in a trainee’s perception of a time management deficiency that appeared as a skill gap in our analysis, when in fact, the trainee had indeed gained time management skills during their graduate training period. Nonetheless, it is still possible that more formal training in goal-setting and prioritization would improve time management skills for those engaged in graduate training in the sciences, as well as improving self-efficacy regarding time management.

Another limitation of our data is that we do not know the direction of causality between skill acquisition and career choice. We acknowledge that career choice represents an interplay between personal interests and skills, along with availability of jobs. Skills and techniques learned in a particular discipline may influence the feasibility of pursuing certain careers. Hence, it is possible that skills attained may encourage one to pursue a field where a particular skill is highly valued, or conversely that one’s career options may be limited if a highly valued skill is not a personal strength. In some cases, however, availability of jobs may strongly influence career choice. More research is needed to better understand the complex interaction of how skills, interests, and job availability interact to affect job choice.

Another methodological limitation of the sampling methods used is sample selection bias, since these methods largely assume online activity through the professional networking site LinkedIn, scientific societies, and other online networks. Furthermore, this sampling method may miss PhDs who are unemployed or not seeking employment and thereby less active on electronic or social media channels linked to this survey. Nonetheless, we believe these data are widely representative, inclusive of a large sample of PhDs from a variety of academic disciplines, and who hold a multitude of job types.

An additional concern, given the potential sampling bias, is that self-ratings of skill importance during employment may not match the actual skills employers are looking for. However, our employment skill rankings are quite similar to those collected from employer sources. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Job Outlook 2014 survey reported similar means rated by employers for comparable transferrable skills [ 20 ]. This similarity suggests that the self-reported employee skill importance in our sample is representative of skills employers seek. While not all of the transferrable skills rated in the current sample overlapped with those in the 2014 NACE survey, those skills included in both samples showed similar patterns. This concurrence suggests that the skill gaps evident in our data set likely represent actual skill deficits in employees.

A related critique is that skills at higher levels on any organization chart may converge on managerial and leadership-relevant skills. However, our survey sample includes only those earning their PhDs within the ten-years prior to responding to the survey, thereby limiting the amount of career progression in the respondents. While this concern is a limitation (e.g., the current data are unable to address progression along a career path), the sample parameters nonetheless reduce the potential concern that career distinctions among fields could converge because senior PhDs may attain high-level leadership positions. In fact, this critique supports our conclusion that many skills are important to both RI and NRI career paths in that over time, those differences might diminish even further, again emphasizing the importance of most skills across career paths generally.

Recommendations for graduate training programs

For those skills identified as possible areas for improvement in graduate training, our recommendation includes both expanding opportunities for trainees to gain awareness of skills developed as well as a greater programmatic focus on transferrable skill building. Therefore, we make two recommendations for graduate training programs: offer opportunities to a) improve trainee skill awareness, and b) enhance trainee skill acquisition.

First, improved skill awareness could be facilitated by an experienced career coach, counselor, or mentor who can help trainees to identify transferrable skills acquired during doctoral and postdoctoral training. Additionally, each trainee could learn to use terminology specific to the field to which they plan to apply. As a result, trainees will appropriately highlight the skills developed during their own training that are required for their chosen career. This process could also help graduates identify best fit careers which may lead to higher success in acquiring desired positions. Furthermore, recognizing their own abilities may improve trainees’ confidence in skills they have already developed (e.g., ability to learn quickly, ability to solve problems).

Second, increased resources for directed career training through an office responsible for graduate career and professional development is crucial for providing skill acquisition opportunities. An intentional focus on identifying and developing transferrable skills could be: 1) embedded into existing research experiences and program coursework, 2) developed by adding supplemental opportunities to existing training as a la carte programs, or 3) provided through one-on-one career counseling/coaching sessions with a professional. It is important to note that each institution may find specific combinations of these solutions most relevant and practical to implement. A recent initiative by the National Institutes of Health known as Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) has a website [ 21 ] with resources and best practices that have emerged from 17 different institutions that have received BEST grants to develop new professional development programming.

In addition to improvements in these targeted skill growth areas for all trainees, institutions and programs may also consider providing specialized training experiences for those focused on RI careers (e.g., encouraging creativity/innovation) and for those targeting NRI careers (e.g., project management). We recognize that principal investigators are sometimes reluctant to support their trainees’ attendance at professional and career development events. However, the skills developed during training can benefit the trainee and their research projects immediately (e.g., communications, teamwork, problem-solving). Hence, administrators, faculty, and staff of doctoral training programs and related offices can be confident that building career and professional development training into the doctoral training period is a worthwhile investment and compatible with the overall doctoral training mission.

The outdated assumption that successful training for should exclusively prepare early career scientists for academic faculty positions has been challenged [ 17 ]. This expectation is a holdover from a time when a large proportion of junior scientists were expected to enter academic research positions, and when becoming a principal investigator was seen as the sole pinnacle of a science career. Successful transferrable skill development in conjunction with skill importance ratings by employees suggest that trainees are very competitive for and are highly successful in a multitude of careers. Given the intense competition for funding opportunities and limited positions available in the academic workforce compared to the number of trained scientists matriculating into the workforce, the apprentice-only model is particularly important to reexamine.

Our data on the connection between skill development and skill importance on the job, combined with the knowledge of comparable job satisfaction across careers, suggest that PhD programs should create, expand, or maintain professional development opportunities for trainees. Continued offerings that enhance career exploration and training for a broad range of RI and NRI careers should be considered as well. Trainees should be encouraged to pursue careers that align with their interests and skills, since we now know that rigorous training in scientific inquiry is vital for a range of occupations. Institutions and the scientific community should embrace this broader training model as central to their mission.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that science PhDs enter the workforce equally well-prepared for both RI and NRI careers and remain equally happy in their chosen fields. Comparison of mean skill preparation with mean employee skill ratings suggests that doctoral training provides experiences that correspond to skill competency, as measured across all fifteen transferrable skills. Future directions of research could investigate discipline-specific differences in skill development—and the corresponding likelihood of entering RI vs. NRI careers—compared across academic fields of specialization. The conversation around broadening scientific career awareness, as well as increasing self-awareness among PhD graduates of their inherent skills, persists nationally and we hope for its continued evolution.

Supporting information

S1 file. supporting data file (ibm spss file format)..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.s001

S2 File. List of academic program survey options.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.s002

S3 File. Job title survey options.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185023.s003

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the staff and faculty of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, The Jackson Laboratory, and the University of North Carolina’s Office of Graduate Education for their ongoing support of this research. In addition, we thank Chelsea G. Nehler for her valuable comments on earlier versions of this draft. Finally, we are appreciative of the Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for consultations on our statistical analyses.

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 2. National Institutes of Health. Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group Report. 2012 [cited 2016 Nov 9]. NIH Documents and Reports [Internet]. http://acd.od.nih.gov/biomedical_research_wgreport.pdf .
• 3. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities. 2015 [cited 2016 Nov 9]. National Science Foundation [Internet]. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16300/digest/nsf16300.pdf .
• 5. Keenan E. Ph.D.s Do Have Transferrable Skills, Part I. Vitae. 2015 [cited 2016 Apr 2]. Chronicle Vitae [Internet]. https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1068-ph-d-s-do-have-transferrable-skills-part-1
• 7. Sinche M. Next Gen PhD: A Guide to Career Paths in Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 2016.
• 8. American Institutes for Research, Broadening Participation in STEM Graduate Education, 2014 [cited 2017 Jun 20]. Issue Brief: The Nonacademic Careers of STEM PhD Holders [Internet]. https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/downloads/report/STEM%20nonacademic%20careers%20April14.pdf .
• 9. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Survey of Doctorate Recipients, 2013 [cited 2017 Jun 16] SESTAT Metadata Explorer [Internet]. https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/metadataexplorer/metadataexplorer.html .
• 10. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2015 [Internet]. Table 12: Doctorate recipients, by major field of study: Selected years, 1985–2015 [cited 2016 Nov 9]. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/data.cfm .
• 11. Nature Editorial. There is life after academia. Nature [Internet]. 2014 [cited 2016 Aug 10]. http://www.nature.com/news/there-is-life-after-academia-1.15808
• 12. PhD Career Guide [Internet]. 2016 [cited 2016 Nov 9]. http://www.phdcareerguide.com .
• 13. Janssen K, Sever R, editors. Career Options for Biomedical Scientists. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2014.
• 16. Singh, S. Training Career Outcomes. NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog: A catalyst for interaction with the scientific community. 2015 [cited 2017 Jun 19]. https://loop.nigms.nih.gov/2015/08/training-career-outcomes .
• 18. National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators, 2014 [Internet]. Explorer [cited 2017 Jun 16]. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/index.cfm/overview .
• 19. Tabachnick B, Fidell L. Logistic Regression. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson; 2007.
• 20. NACE. The job outlook for the class of 2014 [Internet]. National Association of Colleges and Employers. 2013 [cited 2016 Sep 14]. http://www.unco.edu/careers/assets/documents/NACEStudentJobOutlook2014.pdf .
• 21. NIH Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training [Internet]. 2014 [cited 2017 Jun 19]. http://www.nihbest.org .

• Student Life
• Campus Jobs

PhD transferable skills

Sometimes it's difficult for PhD students to identify what skills they have since the academic experience is not necessarily focused on articulating skill sets. We also often find that PhD students struggle, understandably, to present the transferability of their academic experiences to non-academic contexts. Here are examples of PhD skill sets and ways to describe them.

• Define a problem and identify possible causes
• Comprehend large amounts of information
• Form and defend independent conclusions
• Design an experiment, plan, or model that defines a problem, tests potential resolutions and implements a solution
• Facilitate group discussions or conduct meetings
• Motivate others to complete projects (group or individual)
• Respond appropriately to positive or negative feedback
• Effectively mentor subordinates and/or peers
• Collaborate on projects
• Teach skills or concepts to others
• Navigate complex bureaucratic environments
• Manage a project or projects from beginning to end
• Identify goals and/or tasks to be accomplished and a realistic timeline for completion
• Prioritize tasks while anticipating potential problems
• Maintain flexibility in the face of changing circumstances
• Identify sources of information applicable to a given problem
• Understand and synthesize large quantities of data
• Design and analyze surveys
• Develop organizing principles to effectively sort and evaluate data 
• Work effectively under pressure and to meet deadlines
• Comprehend new material and subject matter quickly
• Work effectively with limited supervision
• Prepare concise and logically-written materials
• Organize and communicate ideas effectively in oral presentations to small and large groups
• Write at all levels — brief abstract to book-length manuscript
• Debate issues in a collegial manner and participate in group discussions
• Use logical argument to persuade others
• Explain complex or difficult concepts in basic terms and language
• Write effective grant proposals

• Show search form Hide search form
• Quick links
• Staff search
• Search Search --> Websites Staff search Start search

Transferable Skills

In addition to subject knowledge, early career researchers are expected to develop other skills, such as the ability to present their findings to different audiences and to publish them in an appropriate form. They need to plan projects, understand the scientific landscape and be able to navigate it successfully.

The University of Vienna offers doctoral candidates a comprehensive training programme for their personal and professional development.

• To the workhop program

• Service to the State

College of Education - UT Austin

• Academics Overview
• Bachelor’s Programs
• Master’s Programs
• Doctoral Programs
• Post-baccalaureate
• Educator Preparation Programs
• Student Life Overview

Career Engagement

• For Families
• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Tuition, Financial Aid and Scholarships
• Commencement
• Office of Student Affairs
• Departments Overview
• Curriculum and Instruction
• Educational Leadership and Policy
• Kinesiology and Health Education
• Our Programs
• Educational Psychology
• Special Education
• Centers and Institutes
• Find Faculty
• Office of Educational Research
• Alumni and Friends Overview
• Advisory Council
• Meet Our Alumni
• Update Your Information
• About Overview
• College Leadership
• Facts and Rankings
• Reimagine Education
• Visit the college
• Building Renovations
• How to Apply
• How To Apply
• Newly Admitted Students
• Academic Advising
• Student Services
• Office of Educational Research Support
• Communications, Marketing and Media
• Visit the College
• Transferable Skills

Through the course of your education, internships, extracurricular activities, and work, you have developed skills in many areas. Work skills — also called job skills — are the competencies you need to perform tasks the job requires.

If you’ve researched, written, edited, and presented papers for a class, you’ve used skills that are not limited to that class but are transferable to many situations or occupations. A prospective employer expects you to apply the skills you have learned to the work environment.

But sometimes, it’s hard to identify your OWN skills and know-how to transfer them into different fields.

By identifying your skills and knowing the “language” to describe and discuss skills, you can better communicate your value to potential employers.

You will use the “language of skills” throughout your professional life when you:

• Write a resume
• Read about a job opening
• Go for a job interview
• Talk with your supervisor
• Ask for a raise
• Seek a promotion
• Change your career

Career Competencies

Career competencies are transferable skills you can take from one situation to another. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has identified eight competencies associated with career readiness. The following NACE Career Competencies are sought after by nearly all employers, including those who hire UT Austin College of Education students.

Critical Thinking/Problem Solving

Exercise sound reasoning to analyze issues, make decisions, and overcome problems. The individual is able to obtain, interpret, and use knowledge, facts, and data in this process, and may demonstrate originality and inventiveness.

Oral/Written Communications

Articulate thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively in written and oral forms to people inside and outside of the organization. The individual has public speaking skills; is able to express ideas to others; and can write/edit memos, letters, and complex technical reports clearly and effectively.

Teamwork/Collaboration

Build collaborative relationships with colleagues and customers representing diverse cultures, races, ages, genders, religions, lifestyles, and viewpoints. The individual is able to work within a team structure, and can negotiate and manage conflict.

Digital Technology

Leverage existing digital technologies ethically and efficiently to solve problems, complete tasks, and accomplish goals. The individual demonstrates effective adaptability to new and emerging technologies.

Leverage the strengths of others to achieve common goals, and use interpersonal skills to coach and develop others. The individual is able to assess and manage his/her emotions and those of others; use empathetic skills to guide and motivate; and organize, prioritize, and delegate work.

Professionalism/Work Ethic

Demonstrate personal accountability and effective work habits, e.g., punctuality, working productively with others, and time workload management, and understand the impact of non-verbal communication on professional work image. The individual demonstrates integrity and ethical behavior, acts responsibly with the interests of the larger community in mind, and is able to learn from his/her mistakes.

Career Management

Identify and articulate one’s skills, strengths, knowledge, and experiences relevant to the position desired and career goals, and identify areas necessary for professional growth. The individual is able to navigate and explore job options, understands and can take the steps necessary to pursue opportunities, and understands how to self-advocate for opportunities in the workplace.

Global/Intercultural Fluency

Value, respect, and learn from diverse cultures, races, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and religions. The individual demonstrates openness, inclusiveness, sensitivity, and the ability to interact respectfully with all people and understand individuals’ differences.

Transferable Skills for Teachers

Sometimes you train to be a teacher, but can’t find a teaching position or you finish the program and realize that you do not want to teach.

How do you translate your teaching education and experiences into terms a private-sector employer will understand and value? What transferable skills do you have?

Consider the following examples as you identify transferable skills that you gained through teaching and the Professional Development Sequence.

Teachers are Passionate and Committed

Teachers tend to be passionate about helping people. In spite of many obstacles, you persevere in order to get the job done. You perform above and beyond normal standards because you want your students to succeed.

Employers want people who can power through the rough patches and get the job done.

Teachers are Creative and Innovative

In an era of low budgets and student iPhones, classroom teachers have to think outside the box in order to provide engaging and meaningful learning experiences.

Companies need employees who can innovate in order to bring success to a client, program, or system.

Teachers are Effective Communicators

Teachers are adept at communicating verbally and in writing to different audiences – students, administration, and parents, etc.  Each of these interactions requires a different communication style tailored to the audience’s level.

The private sector requires effective communicators. It comes down to knowing one’s audience and assessing its needs, a skill that teachers are constantly perfecting.

Teachers are Multi-taskers

“ Transferable Skills: What Do You Do Well? ” will help you identify your skills and give you the language to communicate them. Also, it will help you find areas that you need to develop. Finally, you should be able to provide a brief example of how you have used each skill.

• Kinesiology and Health Education Career Paths
• Teacher Career Paths
• Youth and Community Studies Career Paths
• Career Fair Preparation
• Job Search Strategies
• Interviewing
• Dress for Success
• Tips for Online Applications
• Internships
• Four-Year Career Checklist
• Social Media for Professional Networking
• Information for Recruiters
• Alumni Resources
• Guides for Faculty and Staff

Contact Career Engagement

Sánchez Building Monday – Friday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

(512) 471-3223

• Mainnavigation

Introduction Links

Locationfinder, navigationarea university of basel.

Mobile-Search

Mainnavigation-area, free content, transferable skills.

The course program is specifically addressed to all doctoral candidates and postdocs of the University of Basel. It supports researchers during their dissertation period as well as during their postdoc phase and prepares them for a professional career inside or outside of academia. The courses are free of charge for doctoral candidates and postdocs of the University of Basel and promote creative and interdisciplinary exchange.

Spring 2024

Online registration for the spring semester 2024 will open on Wednesday January 17, 2024, at 9 am. The program can be found here: Program Spring Semester 24 .

Course Times

Please note that some courses take place on the same days. Please check the course dates and times and only register for courses that do not overlap.

Course Format

A part of the courses in the spring semester 2024 will take place on-site, a part will be held online. More detailed information can be found in the respective course descriptions.

Conditions of Participation

By registering, you agree to our conditions of participation . Please take a moment to read the individual paragraphs.

We also explain the individual steps involved in obtaining ECTS credits.

Courses Department of Educational Development

The courses Teaching My First Course and Meine erste Lehrveranstaltung , each with a scope of 1 ECTS credit, can be credited as transferable skills. These courses for doctoral candidates and postdocs are offered by the Department of Educational Development and are free of charge. You can register for these two courses at fortbildung.unibas.ch.

Scientific Tools

Python Crash Course (for Beginners)

Course Description & Registration

Maxim Samarin

4 March 2024 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

5 March 2024 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

11 March 2024 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

12 March 2024 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

All Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

Coaching Skills for Supervising Bachelor and Master Students

Dr. Oliver Schürmann

5 March 2024

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

6 March 2024

Informationsdesign – Gestaltung von Präsentationsfolien, Postern, Berichten und Handouts

Martina Schradi

13 March 2024

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

20 March 2024

10 April 2024

2h in small groups

Career Funding for PhDs - Overview and Services

Team Career Advancement

14 March 2024 12:15 PM - 2:00 PM

All Doctoral Candidates

Good Scientific Practice and Its Pitfalls in Every-Day Research

Helga Nolte

(Member of the Team Good Scientific Practice )

18 March 2024

9:00 AM - 2:30 PM

28 March 2024

30 April 2024

1 ECTS credit automatically transferred towards the end of the semester

Career Funding for Postdocs - Overview and Services

Team Grants Office

21 March 2024

12:15 PM - 2:00 PM

Fortgeschrittene Doktorierende & Postdocs

Ethics of Science

Dr. Isabelle Wienand

5 April 2024

10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

19 April 2024

09:00 AM - 1:00 PM

17 May 2024

9:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Dealing with Research Data Management

Members of the Research Data Management Network

22 April 2024

9:15 AM - 16:30 PM

23 April 2024

9:15 AM - 12:30 PM

Opening Higher Education - How to Strengthen University Teaching with Open Educational Resources

Dr. Jean Terrier

25 April 2024

1:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Education for Sustainable Development

Prof. Dr. Marco Rieckmann

26 April 2024

Advanced Python and Machine Learning

29 April 2024

LaTeX Crash Course

Dr. Anthea J. Alberto

14 May 2024

21 May 2024

Critical Reasoning and Logic

Dr. Malte Engel

( Institute of Competence in Argumentation )

27 May 2024

9:00 AM - 3:00 PM

28 May 2024

Using Digital Media for Learning

Helen Beetham

3 June 2024

9:30 AM - 11:00 AM

10 June 2024

24 June 2024

9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Future Workshop: A Method for Vision-Oriented Teaching

7 June 2024

Principles of Causal Inference

Prof. Dr. Giusi Moffa

11 June 2024

18 June 2024

Ihr Werkzeugkoffer für die digitale Lehre an der Universität Basel

Dr. Anna-Barbara Utelli

Sabrina Brandt

13 June 2024

9:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Ideation Training

Prof. Dr. Elke Cabooter

Dr. Elio Keko

( MTI² )

14 June 2024 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

21 June 2024 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Writing & Publishing

Writing to Be Published

Dr. Paul Skandera

( SKANDERA english language services )

26 February 2024

8:00 AM - 1:30 PM

4 March 2024

11 March 2024

Writing Productivity - Tools and Techniques

Dr. Philipp Mayer

( Science-Textflow )

Boost Your Career: Fit for Own Third-Party Funding

Susanne Matuschek

( Matuschek Consulting )

10:00 AM - 4:30 PM

11 April 2024

Advanced Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

Effizient wissenschaftlich schreiben - Der Weg zum Text

Gabriela H. Venetz

Communication

Video Abstracts

Dr. Thomas Lehmann

Sebastian Schell

Stephan Meyer

Prof. Dr. Mirko Winkler

27 February 2024

Out of the Box! Visualize Your Science

Evelyn Huber-Trutmann

( Evelyn Trutmann Illustration , behance )

Public Speaking and Impactful Communication (Not Only) in the Sciences

Michael Berndonner

25 March 2024

Out with It! - Training for Voice, Speech, Body Language

Katharina Padleschat

( Raus mit der Sprache )

19 March 2024

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

9:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Increase Your Wordpower

8 April 2024

8:30 AM - 4:00 PM

Wissenschaftskommunikation für Forschende

Sabine Gysi

20 June 2024

9:30 AM - 5:30 PM

Professional Self-Competence

Negotiation Skills for Scientists

Rob Thompson

Imposter Syndrome? Overcome Self-Doubt and Boost Your Career Growth

Maria Douneva, PhD

28 February 2024

Finde deinen «PhD-Flow» – Fokussiert arbeiten, motiviert promovieren

Dr. Daniel Kunzelmann

29 February 2024

14 March 2024

9:00 AM - 2:00 PM

04 April 2024

Project Management for Researchers

Dr. Dimitrije Krstic

Self-Branding and Self-Promotion

Dr. Petra Wüst

( Wüst Consulting )

7 March 2024

8 March 2023

Thesis Defense Training

12 March 2024

Advanced Doctoral Candidates

Difficult Conversations, Conflict Management and Better Communication

Carl Emerson

( InsideOutSolutions )

26 March 2024

27 March 2024

Project Management – A Toolbox for Scientists

Sina Saladin

( Manage Science )

12 April 2024

Improved Reading - Speed Reading Science

Friedrich Hasse

15 April 2024

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

15 May 2024

Self-Management and Career Success

Christina Kuenzle

( executive and business coaching )

16 April 2024

17 April 2024

Time Management - How to Get Things Done by Managing Yourself and Your Time

Dr. Thomas Teichler

( Lead to Trust )

Ziele. Motive. Motivation: Das Geheimnis der Selbstmotivation

Martin Feigenwinter

Ready for Take-off – For Early PhDs

Dr. Ariane Schnepf

Katrin Küchler

5 June 2024

Early Doctoral Candidates (1 st Year)

Wen-Do: Selbstbehauptung und Empowerment

Dr. Livia Boscardin

16 May 2024

9:45 AM - 1:45 PM

23 May 2024

Intuitive Decision Making

Dr. Mirja Michalscheck

( Lemon Tree Coaching )

22 May 2024

Resilience and Well-Being in Academia

Desiree Dickerson, PhD

( www.dickersonetal.com )

Personal Finance

Dr. Jacqueline Henn

8:15 AM - 12:15 PM

6 June 2024

Fit for Leadership?!

Monika Maria Thiel

Intercultural Communication

( Competence in a Multi-Cultural World )

25 June 2024

26 June 2024

Career & Innovation

Writing Attractive CVs and Cover Letters

Dr. Riana Paola

( Language Center , University of Basel)

1 March 2024

Finding a Post-Academic Career

Dr. Djahane Banoo

Dr. Martin Gutmann

22 March 2024

How to Find Your Job after Your Postdoc

Dr. Matthias Schwarzkopf

9:30 AM - 1:30 PM

All Postdocs

Job Interviews

Dr. Janina Bühler

24 May 2024

8:30 AM - 3:30 PM

Successful Applications for Your Career in Industry

Matthias Augustin

Advanced Doctoral Candidates & All Postdocs

Courses for Doctoral Candidates of the Faculty of Science

Storytelling, Message Distilling and Presentation Design for Natural and Life Scientists

Dr. Daniel Angerhausen

Amran Salleh

( Explainables Science Communication )

Project Management for Researchers in the Natural and Life Sciences

Presentation Training for Natural and Life Scientists

Gaby Rockmann

9 April 2024

Engage, Inform, Inspire - Bring Your Natural and Life Science Talk to the Next Level

9:00 AM - 5:30 PM

24 April 2024

Writing Process in Natural Sciences: From Research to Publication

Dr. Martina Michalikova

13 May 2024

2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Writing Workflow: Forming Your Next Article in the Natural and Life Sciences

29 May 2024

12 June 2024

Courses for Doctoral Candidates of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Theology

Project PhD: The Path to a Successful Doctorate

Dr. Daniel Friedrich

Writing for Publication in the Social Sciences and Humanities

15 March 2024

Überzeugende Drittmittel-Anträge in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften

( MATUSCHEK CONSULTING )

Wie weiter nach dem Doktorat in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften?

Dr. Matthias Zach

The program is subject to change. Please check the website for changes and read the course descriptions as well as the conditions carefully.

Questions? Please contact us!

Organisation.

Description

Related content, further information.

• Doctoral Candidates and Postdocs
• Supervisors and Mentors
• Quality in Doctoral Education
• Advisory Services
• antelope Career Program
• ZOOM@Novartis
• Team Graduate Center / Transferable Skills
• Higher Education Didactics for Doctoral Candidates and Postdocs

Uni Info / 27 May 2024 Occupation of university premises on Petersgraben terminated

Awards & Honors / 27 May 2024 Dirk Bumann elected as member of Leopoldina

Sharebar-Area

Socialmedia sharing.

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

• Student information
• Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

RAISE Doctoral Fellows with Vice Provost Stacey Bent (bottom row, center-left), RAISE Director Joanne Tien (bottom row, center), and VPGE staff. (Image credit: Alex Gillaspy)

Across the Stanford community and around the globe, Stanford’s Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement Doctoral program (RAISE) has broadened connections among researchers and the communities whose lives they aim to improve with their work. The program has also helped doctoral students – in collaboration with their faculty advisors and community partners – to develop new skills. And it has pushed research in new and deeper directions.

“You could have a whole career designing new technologies and never really think about who is going to use your technologies,” said William Tarpeh, assistant professor of chemical engineering. “RAISE helps make sure that the community is involved and considered from the start, not just as an afterthought.”

The RAISE program, which was announced in 2021, is a university-wide fellowship that supports doctoral students across disciplines who want to pursue community-engaged work, either as part of their research or as a separate project. The three-year fellowship provides tuition and stipend, as well as money to be spent on the fellow’s project, which is most often completed in partnership with a community-based organization, or as public scholarship.

“We’ve always known that students who pursue doctoral research are motivated by contributing new knowledge and seeing that the output of their research and scholarship have impact within their scholarly communities,” said Stacey F. Bent, vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs. “But increasing numbers of students also want their research and scholarship to have practical benefits to their communities, whether that be local, national or global.”

Part of the strength of the program is its interdisciplinary nature.

“One of the main takeaways from this fellowship is that if you want to do community-oriented work, the solutions have to be co-created,” said Samantha P. Bunke, a RAISE fellow and a PhD candidate in chemical engineering. “You can come in with ideas, but you are not there to force your solutions onto a community.”

“You could have a whole career designing new technologies and never really think about who is going to use your technologies. RAISE helps make sure that the community is involved and considered from the start, not just as an afterthought.” —William Tarpeh Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

Creating community connections

The partnerships with community organizations help doctoral students build relationships with and better understand communities – expanding their horizons and supporting them in doing more rigorous research.

Safari Fang, a RAISE fellow and a PhD candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), discovered this when she began working with Songlin Wang of the Qingdao Marine Conservation Society on research into Chinese fishing communities.

“It takes years to build the kind of relationship where people tell you what they really think and what’s really happening,” said Fang. “Because I work with Songlin, I instantly gained a lot of trust from the communities.”

The program helps students gain insights closer to home, as well. Shalmali Bane, a RAISE fellow and a PhD candidate in epidemiology, initially wanted to study abortion access in a deep red state but ended up working with two nonprofits in central California.

“I was genuinely reluctant to believe that it was a challenging experience to get an abortion in California since it is a sanctuary state,” said Bane. “But people have an incredibly hard time,” Bane comments, where even in a sanctuary state, abortion access can vary in large parts of the state.

A supportive interdisciplinary cohort of researchers

The RAISE program brings together graduate students from across departments who might not otherwise have met each other. Engaging with others in the cohort helps with the challenges of community-focused research, Wallace said.

However, there can be tradeoffs between more traditional academic research and community-engaged research. Luqueño, for example, has heard questions about whether getting close to the families she is studying will bias her research – though it could also make families more likely to give her honest answers.

“We’re having these very honest conversations with people that understand the very hard tension between the academy and community engagement,”  Luqueño said.

The fact that RAISE fellows share their research with students from other disciplines also strengthens their work.

“It forces us to be accessible in the way we present our research,” Wallace said. “We can’t hide behind the jargon that we’re used to using within our own academic circles.”

New skills, deeper research

RAISE fellowships also give participants the time and money to work on projects that have more impact than traditional research.

“Community-engaged research takes so much time, so much labor, so many resources – that’s a barrier to entry for a lot of students,” Park said. “This fellowship supports students to do that labor-intensive work.”

And some RAISE fellows use the fellowship to pursue projects that aren’t directly connected to their dissertation topics. Bane, for example, decided to keep her dissertation separate since she had already started it when she received the fellowship and did not want to slow her progress toward graduation.

“There’s so much value in the RAISE model for learning these community-based principles,” Tarpeh said. “You learn them in the context of your own work, but you learn it better when you see it in 20 examples.”

“We’re having these very honest conversations with people that understand the very hard tension between the academy and community engagement.” —Leslie Luqueño RAISE Fellow and PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Education

Pushing participants in new directions

From new grant applications to expanded career paths, the RAISE fellowship has opened up new possibilities for the fellows, the faculty members they work with, and the communities where they engage.

“Some of the strongest supporters of the program are our own RAISE fellows and faculty advisors. They have experienced firsthand the benefit of the support, training, and resources they receive through the fellowship that allows RAISE fellows to pursue their projects and be effective and thoughtful community partners,” Bent said. “We are already seeing a domino effect, within Stanford as well as in the communities where our students are having an impact.”

One example: Bunke is currently working with professors in Kenya on additional grant applications, including one that would create a brand-new research center in the country.

“The RAISE fellowship basically opens the door for you to start engaging closely with different community groups – you have the title behind you, and you have the funds,” Bunke said. “It opens up partnerships that can then ripple out to a bunch of other things.”

And as RAISE fellows finish the program and move on to do research elsewhere, the program’s impact will continue to grow.

“I think I’m still underestimating the future impact,” Tarpeh said. “Soon we will have more senior RAISE scholars, and later we will have RAISE alumni. That seems to be a really beautiful, positive, self-perpetuating cycle.”