Applying for post-PhD jobs: 5 Unoriginal tips

Just over 4 months ago, 6 months prior to submitting my thesis, I started job hunting. It was a stressful experience to say the least. Eventually, I’m pleased to say, I secured a job writing for a medical communications agency. If you haven’t read my previous blog then you won’t know that I had planned to stay in academia via either a post doc position or, if I was very lucky, a fellowship. After some flip-flopping, and a few rejections I decided academia wasn’t for me and started considering other jobs. Trying to balance lab work, writing my thesis and job hunting was one of the most stressful periods of my life.
I have tried to turn this period of stress into a learning experience. Below are some suggestions to help you during your job search, some of these I used myself, others I wish I had done. As the title suggests not all of these tips are going to be original but you might find something that helps you when it’s your turn to start looking for post-PhD jobs.
Disclaimer: The following are based on my personal experience applying for jobs, these are things that I did and worked for me, or looking back wished I’d done. If you want professional job advice then look elsewhere.

Know what you want
Before you even begin looking for a job you need to know what you want, and I don’t just mean the job you want. Finding a job you want to keep long-term might take years. Rather than aiming for the perfect job right away, think about what you want your work day to look like. Do you want to be in a lab all day? Ok, what kind of lab – do you prefer cell culture to organic chemistry? Or maybe you’d prefer to be in an office? Ok, what do you want to be doing; crunching numbers on a spread sheet or creating presentations? Once you know how you want spend your time you can start to find jobs that suit that goal.
If you can’t tell - I enjoy writing. So when I started job hunting this was my top criteria. On any job advert I’d give it a quick read and if it didn’t mention writing then I skipped straight past it. Again let me add this for emphasis – you don’t have to find a perfect job, mainly because I doubt there is such a thing. But you can find a job that meets your needs. Before you figure out what that job is you need to sit down and ask yourself what you want to get out of the job. Don’t be afraid to do some self-reflection, 10 minutes of thinking could save you hours applying for jobs you don’t actually want.

Make technology work for you
Job hunting is hard - that’s just a fact. Between CV writing, assessments and waiting to hear back, it’s an incredibly stressful experience. The best piece of advice I have to minimise this stress – make technology work for you. Firstly, keep an eye on your emails and WhatApp chats, it cliché but as the saying goes “it’s not what you, know but who you know.” I heard about my new job because an internal email got sent around asking if anyone was interested in medical writing. Keep an eye on your work emails to see if anyone is looking to fill roles, likewise if you’re job hunting tell your friends. You never know, a friend of a friend may know about a job opening. The beauty of instant messaging and email is that you can reach out to different groups of people instantly – make that work to your advantage. 
Secondly, if you want to job hunt and be lazy (something I’m guilty of) the best advice I can give is to sign up to email alerts from job sites. Sites like Indeed allow you to set up email notifications. You enter a few key words and a location then anytime a job advert pops up meeting those criteria you get an email. This lets you stay up to date on the latest job adverts without having to search every day; instead you get a list of jobs that you know are relevant and get to scroll through them at your own leisure. Even if you don’t apply for any of the jobs it’s a great way to stay up to date on the job market and potentially come across jobs you didn’t know existed. 

Tailor your CV for each job
As the title of this post implies, these tips aren’t original – if that’s what you want, I can only apologise. Instead, I’m going to give you clichés, like – make sure you edit your CV to suit the job you’re applying for. You don’t have to rewrite your CV for every job application, just make sure you have a few different types of CV, one for the different types of jobs you think you’re going to apply to. Then when a job comes up all you have to do is tweak a few sentences to suit the specific job application. When I was applying for post-PhD jobs I had two CVs, one was for academia and focused on my research and publications, while the other was for more creative jobs, and focused on my writing experience outside of academia. I’m sure you’ve heard this suggestion before, and it sounds like a lot of effort, but this can be the difference between your CV being noticed or going in the bin.

Interview prep – be specific
You’ve written an amazing CV, and got an interview – now what? Time to start googling. For every job interview I’ve looked at lists of the most common interview questions (what are your strengths/weaknesses, what skills will you bring to the role?). Then I’ll write down answers to these questions, that way I won’t be surprised if those questions, or something similar, is asked. Then my advice would be to study the job description/advert and see what skills they say they want. Look at your CV and think back to examples that you can use; you want to match what they are looking for in a candidate with your own experience. Remember to “show, don’t tell.” Rather than saying “I am good at X” give specific examples when you did X. If you say you’ve got leadership skills, then tell them about the time you led a team of explorers across the artic. You claim to be good at communication, then talk about when you performed stand-up comedy in front of a bar full of people. Be specific, and give examples.
Also, a side note: If the interview is remote (more likely now thanks to COVID) – stick post-it notes around your computer screen with answers or important bits of information that you want to remember. That way, you won’t get flustered during the interview, instead just glance up or to the side, and the answer is there. 

Interview prep - Do your research
Alongside coming up with good answers to interview questions you’ll want to show that you know the company. Most companies have a website, that’s always a good place to start; it should give you a broad idea of who they are. You can also use this as an opportunity to find out if you would actually enjoy working there. A great place to look is GlassDoor, a site where employees can post reviews about their company. This will give you an idea what it’s actually like to work there.
Again, take notes on anything you think is important – especially if there is anything you want to know more about. The last question in any interview is always “do you have any questions for us?” If you’ve done your research you should have a list of questions ready.

Applying for jobs is stressful, exhausting and often feels harder than it should be. All you can do is accept what you can control, focus on being prepared, and don’t beat yourself up - it’s something we all go through, you’re not alone. If you can think of any more tips that I’ve missed be sure to let me know in the comments below or on twitter.