Job Skills Any success when leaving PhD off resume?

[twofish-quant]

Indeed one of the other guys I missed seeing was doing 5-10 for manslaughter.

Just to be clear, when I mentioned that you should avoid a gap in your resume so that HR doesn't think that you've been in prison for X years, I meant that literally. Since you are introducing yourself to someone that knows nothing about you, they don't know that you *haven't* been in prison. Because of their job, HR is naturally suspicious, they'll assume the worst about people, because sometimes the worst happens to be true.

One other note. Don't include references or "references on request". For most industry jobs, people don't trust references at all, and if they need them (which almost never happens), they'll ask.

Some other random notes about interviews

1) Tell me about your last employer? This isn't a question about your last employer. The interviewer knows that you are leaving your job because you are dissatisfied. This really is a question about emotional self-control and the ability to master corporate-speak.

2) Why do you want this job? For finance jobs, the true answer is "because you are going to pay me lots of money." In finance, this is not a question about motivation, but rather on self-presentation skills.

Also, the question of "why don't you work in a university?" isn't a question about job opportunities. Even if the employer knows that there are no jobs, he may rather hire someone that would be happier spending eight hours a day doing something totally mindless and menial than someone that is dreaming about having a job as a professor even though those jobs don't exist.

The reason that is a tough question, is that most people are not convincing when they say something they don't really believe, and if you try to convince the interviewer that you are really passionate about moving boxes and sloshing code, it's not going to work, if you don't believe it and if it happens not to be true. If you really *are* so desperate for work that you are willing to force yourself to do something that you otherwise wouldn't want to do, then that's also a problem, because if you look too desperate, that gives a bad impression.

It's incredibly Kafkasque.

What you have to do is to figure out some answer that is "true for you."

In my situation, I can honestly say that I like new experiences and as long as I'm learning something new and different, I'll be happy, even if it something that other people think is crap work. That's something I can say convincingly because it's true, and feel free to copy that answer if it's true for you, but it may not be.

One good news is that there are jobs in which the interviewer doesn't care if you are "passionate." There is a lot of contract work for big companies in which people don't care that you love your job. On the other hand, small companies tend to be "cults" that demand some degree of emotional commitment, and anything that is customer facing or service oriented involves the ability to either like your environment or to fake it convincingly so you don't scare off customers.

One final thing is that it's useful experience to be in both sides of the interview table. It's often the case, that I'm not the best candidate, and part of being on the other side of the table is that when someone tells me that I'm "vastly overqualified" or the "there is a bad fit between me and the job", I'm inclined to agree with them.

If it's a job in which I have to punch a time clock and do something totally mindless day after day for a decade and take orders without thinking or asking questions, then you'll almost certainly find someone better than me, and it would be unfair to them if I got the job.

 

[twofish-quant]

film star - what's the role?

One weird thing is that I've found my share of HR and headhunters with "outside dreams" and I usually get along well with them. Some of the most talented HH's I know are actually just doing the job to pay the bills until their film or music career takes off, and so they understand and sympathize with someone that is doing finance work to pay the bills until they can do astrophysics. It's amazing how similar the "physics industry" is to the film and fashion industries.

One other reason I ended up in NYC is that people in New York City have big dreams. In most cities if you respond to "what are your career goals?" with "I want to be CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation and transform the global economic system, and this job is just to get me there." That's a bad thing. In NYC, "I want to be king of the world" is true of most people so someone with crazy outlandish ambition fits in, including people with seemingly menial jobs.

If you talk to the janitors and taxi drivers there, you'll find a good number of them went through hell to get to NYC, and are making what would be considered a king's ransom where they came from, and for many of them sweeping the floors is part of their plan to rule the world.

 

[Locrian]

You are more likely to convince them that you've fallen in love with whatever you are interviewing for. i.e. "While working on my phd, I found I was enjoying developing and debugging code more than the science I was involved in... "

This is the correct answer!

Nickyrtr, I realize that getting to the interview can be tough, but here are some important rules once you're there:

1) Don’t leave it off your resume – it’ll find a way to come back to haunt you later, probably in the interview. Downplay it if you have to.

2) Do not say anything negative about your past education, jobs etc. Nothing. You loved your work and think highly of your education and educators. Appearing even slightly jaded in an interview is a near guarantee fail. I know when we hire we look for it carefully.

3) You’re excited about the new opportunities. Since you’ve researched what they do (you did, right?) you can explain why you think it’s interesting and hopefully convince them. Sure, it’s different, but flexibility is one of your positive traits. You’re excited about whatever new challenges they’re sending your way.

And here’s the kicker: it might turn out to be true. The cubicle job I have now is more rewarding on both a personal and financial level than anything I did in science ever was. Your mileage will vary, but the mere possibility may make you sound more genuine in the interview.

Best of luck.

 

[nickyrtr]

Locrian, thanks for the advice, that's pretty much how I already behave in interviews, and it requires no dishonesty. I really did enjoy my years cranking out code in a cubicle, and would love to do it again ... a little science twist would make it even more interesting, but is not mandatory for me to enjoy the job.

The problem is that I just don't get interviews, period, after sending out hundreds of resumes. This never happened before I had a PhD, though of course I am also a few years older, a few years out of the job market and in a vastly worse economy.

 

[ParticleGrl]

The problem is that I just don't get interviews, period, after sending out hundreds of resumes. This never happened before I had a PhD, though of course I am also a few years older, a few years out of the job market and in a vastly worse economy.

Yes, I had this exact same experience. If your current resume isn't doing anything, try mixing it up. I left my phd off the resume (but left my work experience as "researcher") and had marginally better results.

I eventually had five different versions of my resume, and I tracked the response to each from various types of work as I narrowed down my programming resume, my bioinformatics resume, etc. If nothing else, treating things like a problem to be solved kept me sane in one of the more dark periods of my life.

Also, if you MUST stay in your area and things start getting desperate, look for jobs at good/higher end restaurants waiting tables or tending bar. The pay after-tips is more then you think(especially after grad school), and there is no such thing as overqualified- they expect staff to turn over all the time.

 

[nickyrtr]

..
I eventually had five different versions of my resume, and I tracked the response to each from various types of work as I narrowed down my programming resume, my bioinformatics resume, etc. If nothing else, treating things like a problem to be solved kept me sane in one of the more dark periods of my life..

Interesting, which of these resumes finally got you an interview and a job, or did that happen through some other avenue?

Waiting tables or bartending has crossed my mind. I make enough to get by adjunct teaching at community colleges, and have a gainfully employed spouse, but I really hate being an unequal contributor to the household.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Interesting, which of these resumes finally got you an interview and a job, or did that happen through some other avenue?

I've had interviews in probably a dozen different fields. Programming, finance and insurance interviews went best, engineering went worst, in general. In the end though, I got a job because I was bartending at a tourist resort, and on a slow day was chatting with a customer who turned out to be in charge of a small modeling group at a health insurance company. He gave me his card, I called the next day, and had a job offer by the end of that week.

Waiting tables or bartending has crossed my mind. I make enough to get by adjunct teaching at community colleges, and have a gainfully employed spouse, but I really hate being an unequal contributor to the household.

When I was adjuncting, it was about 2-3k per 4 credit class. If you can find a high-end restaurant with good volume, you can make 50k+ a year waiting tables. Its not a long term solution, but as a stop-gap measure its not bad.

 

[twofish-quant]

2) Do not say anything negative about your past education, jobs etc. Nothing. You loved your work and think highly of your education and educators. Appearing even slightly jaded in an interview is a near guarantee fail. I know when we hire we look for it carefully.

There are also some "code words" to use in interviews for "I hate my former boss." One useful expression, is "It was a truly educational experience which I value." and "I prefer to talk about the future rather than the past." What ever you say, say it with a smile, and figuring out how to say something positive with a smile is part of the interview process.

One way of thinking about this is that "corporate-speak" is just a different language, and there is a *reason* for this language. The reason for this is that if you go negative, it's easy to get everyone depressed so that nothing gets done, so part of the art of mastering "corporate-speak" is to say something negative without sounding negative. Also the work-place is a place with lots of intense emotions, and sometimes you have two people that smile at each other and essentially say to each other "I hate your guts", and it's important to be able to do this without getting into a fist fight.

There are code words for "he is a great guy" and "he is a jerk." If you say "what do you think about person A" and someone replies by not talking about A, that tells you something. If you are close to someone, they will drop the corporate-language, but you aren't close to the person on the other side of the table.

There's also plausible deniability. If you are trying to hint that you hate A, and it later turns out that you will get into trouble for hating A, then you can say that it was all a miscommunication, and you never said that you hated A. Then again, maybe you *don't* really hate A, and it really was a miscommunication. This can be important when A is the CEO of your company.

If I senior manager asks you want you really think about a situation. Maybe they are sincere that really want to know that they are being an idiot. Maybe they don't. How to deal with that situation can be really challenging, so you can start "hinting", and then based on the response figure out what to say next.

If this looks obscure and baroque, it is, and part of the purpose of corporate-speak is to have sensitive conversations without outsiders having a clue what people are talking about.

Sort of like academic papers.

And here’s the kicker: it might turn out to be true.

And "I'm excited about new opportunities" is sometimes a way of saying "I hate my old job, and I'm desperate to look for anything different."

Part of the reason I like my job is that I'm fascinated by human communications and I like figuring things out. The same bit of my brain that gets excited when you give me an set of greek letters and symbols and is trying to figure out what that means, is also the same bit of my brain that gets used when you get a memo from the head office, and you are trying to figure out what they are *really* telling you.

I also like puzzles. Trying to figure how to say what I want to say with a smile is sometimes quite challenging. Trying to figure how to say something without going insane is also quite challenging.

 

[twofish-quant]

The problem is that I just don't get interviews, period, after sending out hundreds of resumes.

Where are you sending resumes to?

I've found that sending resumes to HR is a waste of time. It goes into a big black hole that no one every sees. The places that I've found to be useful is sending resumes to HH's. You can get a list of recruiting companies with www.dice.com and www.efinancialcareers.com, www.phds.org focusing on jobs in "Ph.D-friendly" cities (NYC, Silicon Valley, Austin). Talk to Dominic Connor on www.wilmott.com

Find alumni. One common misconception is that having a friend in a company will help you to pull strings. That's not true, but having a friend in a company will let you know the secret e-mail address that resumes need to go to to get read. You can also politely ask people that are posting on chat groups what those e-mail addresses are.

One other thing that kills Ph.D. resumes is work status information. If you are a US citizen or permanent residency, that information absolutely must be on the resume or else it is dead.

This never happened before I had a PhD, though of course I am also a few years older, a few years out of the job market and in a vastly worse economy.

1) You are not older, you are more experienced
2) You weren't outside of the job market, you were gainfully employed as a research assistant.

 

[nickyrtr]

Where are you sending resumes to?

I send my resume along with online job applications, and a cover letter when possible, in response to advertisements found via job search sites like dice, indeed, craig's list or usajobs.gov, or by looking up specific employers and going to their jobs page.

One other thing that kills Ph.D. resumes is work status information. If you are a US citizen or permanent residency, that information absolutely must be on the resume or else it is dead.

Good idea, I'll make sure that's in order.

 

[twofish-quant]

I send my resume along with online job applications, and a cover letter when possible, in response to advertisements found via job search sites like dice, indeed, craig's list or usajobs.gov, or by looking up specific employers and going to their jobs page.

One dirty secret is that the resumes that get submitted through a jobs page for most companies get sent into a black hole. The trouble is that the company gets spammed, and no one has any incentive to go through the resumes. The other thing is that companies web pages lie. Even when a company is firing everyone, they won't update the careers web page (since they likely just fired the people in charge of keeping the web pages updated).

Online job applications also go nowhere. If you go through a web frontend, that means that someone is trying to automate the process, which means that the people that would read your resume have either been fired or are worried enough about their jobs so they don't care about you.

The ways of getting a resume into the system

* networking through friends and alumni or anyone else you might randomly meet
* campus recruiting
* head hunters

The problem with HR, is that they don't care about you or your resume. If you submit a resume and nothing happens, no one is going to get into any trouble, so no one cares. Head hunters get a commission based on hires, so they care.

 

[SophusLies]

This thread just seems so strange to me. How on Earth can someone possibly justify having a 5-6 or even 7 year gap with no job or no school? That's an extremely large gap. I can see a year maybe 2 but that long has to throw up a red flag to someone.

 

[ParticleGrl]

This thread just seems so strange to me. How on Earth can someone possibly justify having a 5-6 or even 7 year gap with no job or no school? That's an extremely large gap. I can see a year maybe 2 but that long has to throw up a red flag to someone.

You leave your employment as "researcher for University X", with descriptions of relevant work you did. You leave OFF the phd in your education section (or just push the education section to a later page where its less likely to be noticed). No gap in employment, and no phd on the resume.

 

[SophusLies]

You leave your employment as "researcher for University X", with descriptions of relevant work you did. You leave OFF the phd in your education section. No gap in employment, and no phd on the resume.

Ahh, I see. Slick trick.

 

[nickyrtr]

One dirty secret is that the resumes that get submitted through a jobs page for most companies get sent into a black hole.

You could be right; that is certainly how it seems lately. It wasn't always that way ... my two last jobs before grad school were both obtained via online applications, and I got a third job offer the same way. This was during the period from 2001-2005 or so.

As you said, the web-based job application process is probably broken now because of resume spam, which must have significantly increased since that time.

The ways of getting a resume into the system

* networking through friends and alumni or anyone else you might randomly meet
* campus recruiting
* head hunters

Good suggestion, I'll take a second look for head hunters. I never heard of any PhD students at my grad school getting assistance from campus recruiting, but that's worth a bit of investigation too. As for friends and other random contacts, I guess that's up to fate

 

[twofish-quant]

I never heard of any PhD students at my grad school getting assistance from campus recruiting, but that's worth a bit of investigation too.

At UT Austin, the McCombs school has some excellent career services that are totally off limits for natural science students. The excuse was that MBA students had to pay an extra fee, but when asked for a quote for how much I'd have to pay in order to get access, I got blank looks.

From a policy stand point, fixing campus recruiting systems is one big thing that schools could do.

As for friends and other random contacts, I guess that's up to fate

Yes and no. There is a statistical issue in that the odds of getting a lead in a particular situation is random and quite low, but if you contact a ton of people, then the chance of getting any hit goes up and the process becomes a lot less stochastic.

One thing I did to keep myself busy was to try to mathematically model the job market, and there is all sorts of interesting effects. Your probability of getting a job is P(job|contact)*N(contacts), and since P is low, one tries to crank up the number of N.

The other thing is why you want a contact. Most people have the mistaken notion that contacts are useful because they pull strings or try to sell you in the company. This isn't why they are useful. Contacts are useful because they get your resume into the system by telling you who to send your resume to, and getting feedback as to whether that resume is being processed, so you don't need close contacts. Some random person that you've met at a conference with a business card is good enough. Also it's important to get people at the right level. If I have the business card of a CEO of a major Fortune 500 corporation, that is totally useless to me, because he won't be able to help me get a job.

Getting people to *talk* to you is an incredibly difficult challenge, so if you know someone well enough so that they'll at least reply to your e-mail, you are already doing great.

 

[nickyrtr]

One thing I did to keep myself busy was to try to mathematically model the job market, and there is all sorts of interesting effects. Your probability of getting a job is P(job|contact)*N(contacts), and since P is low, one tries to crank up the number of N.

P(job|contact) is also very nonuniform, though. You don't just want lots of contacts, you want the right ones, and ironically contacts that you make for the explicit purpose of getting a job may not have the best probability.

In my opinion, part of the problem is that the job market isn't much of a market, in the modern sense; it is woefully lacking in transparency and efficiency. Compare the process of selling a house to selling your work (i.e., applying for jobs). Before listing the house, I can check the quantity and prices of comparable properties in the area, and if it doesn't sell I can drop the price to attract more buyers.

In contrast, I can't view a list of the people competing with me for jobs in my area and the salaries they demand. Dropping my price isn't really an option either. Offering to work for less would make employers think something is wrong with you. Also, a large volume of jobs are traded "off the books" through informal networks of personal contacts.

 

[twofish-quant]

You don't just want lots of contacts, you want the right ones, and ironically contacts that you make for the explicit purpose of getting a job may not have the best probability.

I've found that you do want lots of contacts because 99% of contacts won't be useful to you and there is no way in advance to know what the 1% of useful contacts are. But that's no different from selling custom software. One thing that was useful in looking for work is to see how telemarketers work. When a telemarketer calls someone there is an extremely, extremely high probability that they won't make a sale, so they end up going through a ton of leads to make any sales.

In my opinion, part of the problem is that the job market isn't much of a market, in the modern sense; it is woefully lacking in transparency and efficiency.

I don't think that the job market is that much worse than most other markets.

Before listing the house, I can check the quantity and prices of comparable properties in the area, and if it doesn't sell I can drop the price to attract more buyers.

Real estate is a bad example. There are a lot of games involved in listing houses, and there are a huge number of inefficiencies in the system that aren't obvious. Also real estate markets are notorious for being non-clearing markets. Once a market has slowed it's hard to sell a house at any price.

One cute trick is to provide the "illusion" of transparency and efficiency. Real estate is notorious for this. So are cars.

In contrast, I can't view a list of the people competing with me for jobs in my area and the salaries they demand.

www.Glassdoor.com is useful for this. Also *you* can't see this information, but any halfway competent HR department or HH will have this information at their fingertips. They will not tell you because their job is to use any information asymmetry they have against you.

One job tip. Never quote a salary. Make the company quote a salary, and then say yes or no.

Dropping my price isn't really an option either. Offering to work for less would make employers think something is wrong with you.

One problem is that if your first reaction to not getting sales is to lower your price, this is going to be bad if you are selling the products of the employer.

Also, a large volume of jobs are traded "off the books" through informal networks of personal contacts.

There is no "on the book."

Practically all jobs that I know of in programming are traded through informal networks of personal contacts. Some of these personal contacts aren't necessarily "social" contacts, but companies tend to have close personal relationships with their recruiters, and the recruiters will have relationships with you. Also companies also have lots of social relationships with schools.

 

[nickyrtr]

One job tip. Never quote a salary. Make the company quote a salary, and then say yes or no.

Absolutely, but if you are at the point where you're being offered a salary, you already have the job.

One problem is that if your first reaction to not getting sales is to lower your price, this is going to be bad if you are selling the products of the employer.

Depends what the product is, but my first reaction is not to lower price but to improve the product. In the job market, that means acquiring education and experience that better fit employer demand. Experience is a bit of a catch-22, since you mostly get that from already having a job, though I suppose an unpaid internship is an option. As for education, I'm actually pondering a BS or MS in some sort of engineering; it's a bit weird to go back for that after already finishing a physics PhD, but who knows it might help.

A second option is to repackage the product, since a purchasing decision is often based more on the package than the substance of what's inside. That's the general thrust of de-emphasizing or even omitting the PhD from my resume. I admit that I am bad at these kinds of marketing games and find them distasteful, which is likely a big reason I don't have a job yet.

Practically all jobs that I know of in programming are traded through informal networks of personal contacts. Some of these personal contacts aren't necessarily "social" contacts, but companies tend to have close personal relationships with their recruiters, and the recruiters will have relationships with you. Also companies also have lots of social relationships with schools.

My experience was very different, though not recently. Over the years I was hired for many good programming jobs by going in through the "front door" so to speak, i.e. responding to a help wanted advertisement. Perhaps times have changed.

 

[twofish-quant]

Depends what the product is, but my first reaction is not to lower price but to improve the product.

One other gotcha is that while there are programming jobs in which the employer cares about price, those get shipped off to India. An entry level programmer in Mumbai will cost the company one fifth what a programmer in the US will cost, and jobs which are price sensitive are just not going to be done in the United States.

In the job market, that means acquiring education and experience that better fit employer demand.

That's also tricky, because you can hit the "overqualified" landmine. Also sometimes
the employer really doesn't want someone that is "too smart." I've been in situations where
I figured out that in order to survive I had to "act stupid" which I was able to do for a few months while I was looking for another job. I've also had some "Anakin Skywalker" moments in which it was clear that the person I was talking with was trying to turn me into Darth Vader.

Something to remember is that there is some inherent tension in the employer/employee relationship. What the employer wants (someone that works for free and makes the company a ton of money which the employer keeps) is fundamentally at odds with what the employee wants.

There are also tensions between the interviewer and the company. One reason supervisors hate to lower salaries is that if the people you supervise get their paychecks cut, guess what's going to happen to your paycheck.

Experience is a bit of a catch-22, since you mostly get that from already having a job, though I suppose an unpaid internship is an option.

It's a bad option. If they don't have enough money now to give you even a nominal salary, then the odds are that you aren't going to be getting any money in the future, and if they can get people to do work for free, that's going to turn into something more permanent.

A second option is to repackage the product, since a purchasing decision is often based more on the package than the substance of what's inside.

In business, the packaging is part of the substance. There are some very interesting information, sociology, psychology, and neuroscience issues here. A lot of the issue with marketing is how you can very quickly and efficiently provide relevant information to the buyer in order to provoke an emotional response.

For example, I can *say* that I know radiation hydrodynamics, but how do I *prove* that. If I just write "I know radiation hydrodynamics" then anyone can do that. You can do challenge-response, but that's hard to set up. So what do I say on a resume that proves that I can do radiation hydrodynamics?

That's the general thrust of de-emphasizing or even omitting the PhD from my resume. I admit that I am bad at these kinds of marketing games and find them distasteful, which is likely a big reason I don't have a job yet.

Like everything else it comes with practice and watching other people. One reason I've had a lot of appreciation about marketing comes from watching salesmen in action. The other thing that I've found is that marketing is socially essential. Vacuum cleaners and software doesn't sell itself, and you have to someone involves in selling the product. In one of my old companies, I had a CEO that pushed the point "Everyone is in sales."

The other thing is that marketing is a two way conversation. One thing that I learned from watching salesmen in action is how *quiet* they were. When you had a situation in which you were with a client, they'd shut up and listen. If the customer doesn't like your product, then you just sit down, have them vent, and then figure out to do.

 

[nickyrtr]

[unpaid internship is] a bad option. If they don't have enough money now to give you even a nominal salary, then the odds are that you aren't going to be getting any money in the future, and if they can get people to do work for free, that's going to turn into something more permanent.

The idea is to intern at one place, then use that experience to apply for a paying job in the same field at another place. I don't know if it really works though.

 

[ThinkToday]

While searching for a job, a number of people have suggested that I leave the PhD off my resume when applying for positions that don't require it. I haven't tried that yet, but am considering it. The alleged benefit is that fewer employers will be scared off by the "overqualified" PhD label. The down side is, it's hard to explain what I did for a few years in graduate school without mentioning the PhD, and of course the emotional downer of hiding an achievement I'm proud of.

Has anyone tried leaving the PhD off their resume and had successful results? I'm wondering if the benefits are real, or just an urban legend.

Failure to be completely truthful and accurate on your resume is a termination offense at EVERY place I've ever worked. Rather than hide or deminish the PhD, pump up the things you'd like to do with a company. If not directly related to the work at hand, perhaps, push the budget, teamwork, supervisory, time management, etc. aspects (value) of the PhD experience. IMO, all those things would be important for jobs that carry responsibility.

 

[Choppy]

Failure to be completely truthful and accurate on your resume is a termination offense at EVERY place I've ever worked.

To be fair, the thread is talking about omission of potentially irrelevant information and not direct misrepresentation.

I've obtained the rank of shodan (black belt) in Kodokan Judo. This is an accomplishment that took many years of training and dedication. I don't generally include this on my CV because it's not relevant to my profession, it's not something that employers generally look for in my field, and it would take up extra space that I use to convey far more relevant information.

My employer would not have grounds to terminate me for this.

On the other hand, misrepresentation (such as clamining that I have a certification when I do not) or omission of relevant information (such as deliberatly hiding a criminal history) is grounds for termination.

 

[feathermoon]

Geography is a pain, but it turned out that what worked for me was to work in NYC Monday to Friday and then fly to Texas on the weekends. The scary thing was that lots of people were doing that.

Seriously?

 

[twofish-quant]

Failure to be completely truthful and accurate on your resume is a termination offense at EVERY place I've ever worked.

We are being completely truthful and accurate. However, you have one minute to make an impression on a resume, and you have to decide what you can say in that one minute that gives the listener the most relevant information.

Rather than hide or deminish the PhD, pump up the things you'd like to do with a company.

1) If the company thinks that the Ph.D. is either useless or negative, they by mentionng it you are taking valuable addition from some other aspect of your application that they would consider positive.

2) It's a Catch-22, but companies often will not tell you want the job is about. It's a Catch-22, because if they tell you that they are looking for skill X, they will get flooded with 10000 resumes claiming to have skill X. If they don't mention skill X and they hit on a resume that mentions skill X, then that person just won the lottery by picking the right numbers.

If not directly related to the work at hand, perhaps, push the budget, teamwork, supervisory, time management, etc. aspects (value) of the PhD experience.

You have one minute to make your case. You don't have time to do this. If the employer doesn't already know that Ph.D.'s do a lot of management work then it's going to hard to convince them. If you know that administrative skills are important, then calling yourself a research administrator might do this is two words, but it's still a long shot.

There is something called pre-sales, which means molding the perceptions of the buyer before you try to make the sale. Now the applicant doesn't have the ability to do pre-sales, but schools and professional societies should do a better job, since they may not be limited to one minute.

IMO, all those things would be important for jobs that carry responsibility.

On the other hand, you may get hit with the overqualified label. If the job is for entry level, then putting in management experience will knock it out of the bin.

 

[twofish-quant]

I've obtained the rank of shodan (black belt) in Kodokan Judo. This is an accomplishment that took many years of training and dedication. I don't generally include this on my CV because it's not relevant to my profession, it's not something that employers generally look for in my field, and it would take up extra space that I use to convey far more relevant information.

On the other hand, I know that some companies look specifically for this sort of thing. There are companies that I work for that will be impressed by some outside interest that requires a large amount of personal training and whose results are quantifiable. For example, I know people that have gotten an interview because they put on their resume the fact that they finished a marathon, can play chess at the national master level, or have won money in poker or bridge tornauments.

Again, one has to think about this when marketing. Mentioning that you jog as a hobby won't get you anywhere, but mentioning that you've finished a marathon will help. Also, be prepared to defend this in an interview. If mention that you are a champion bridge player, then you will be interviewed by someone that knows something about bridge.

The philosophy is that if you've put a lot of energy into playing poker and you've gotten really good at it, then you have the personality to put that energy into whatever the company is doing. Not coincidentally, companies with this sort of thinking also are impressed by physics Ph.D.'s.

 

[Diracula]

Other than a Ph.D., is there something one can do (short of prison time) for 5-6 years that will actually harm their career prospects so much that it is actually better to leave it off a resume?

 

[twofish-quant]

Other than a Ph.D., is there something one can do (short of prison time) for 5-6 years that will actually harm their career prospects so much that it is actually better to leave it off a resume?

It's a matter of relevancy.

For example, if I spent five years as both a pastry chef and a computer programmer, and I'm applying for a position as a pastry chef, I'd leave off my programming experience, and vice-versa.

Remember that people's attention spans are extremely limited, so that mentioning that you did something means not mentioning that you did something else, and vice-versa.

The other thing is it's not so much harming your career prospects as "putting together a bad movie trailer." If you do have an employer that is extremely opposed to your having a Ph.D. no matter what, then you *should* put it on your resume so that they don't waste your time with an interview for a job that you aren't going to get. But I can't imagine a situation in which an employer is ready to hire someone and then changed their mind once they find out that he has a Ph.D.

The situation with being "overqualified" is quite common, and not limited to Ph.D.'s.

 

[nickyrtr]

The other thing is it's not so much harming your career prospects as "putting together a bad movie trailer."

Disgruntled PhD graduate sets up hideout in volcano, builds death ray and robot army ... "they laughed at my resume, now I'll show them all, mwahahaha!" Someone call the SyFy channel, this is way better than most of their plots :P

 

[Diracula]

It's a matter of relevancy.

For example, if I spent five years as both a pastry chef and a computer programmer, and I'm applying for a position as a pastry chef, I'd leave off my programming experience, and vice-versa.

But you're leaving a resume gap when you do that.

But I can't imagine a situation in which an employer is ready to hire someone and then changed their mind once they find out that he has a Ph.D.

Really? I hear all the time how Ph.D. holders are disqualified from technical jobs for being overqualified. We have evidence on here of people getting better results when applying for jobs and leaving the Ph.D. off. It seems pretty typical for people to disqualify candidates who may be awesome fits simply because they spent 5 years getting a Ph.D. in a tough technical field like physics. Maybe even commonplace.

The situation with being "overqualified" is quite common, and not limited to Ph.D.'s.

Someone with 5 years industry experience in a technical field may be overqualified for entry level jobs. But they will be sought after for jobs requiring 5'ish years experience.

Someone who spent those same 5 years getting a Ph.D. in physics is overqualified for entry level jobs, and they don't have the skills and experience required for the jobs requiring 5'ish years industry experience.

There's a massive difference between these two situations even though both can apply for jobs they are "overqualified" for.

I don't think being a pastry chef for 5 years would leave one overqualified for getting an entry level computer programmer position, but a Ph.D. in physics certainly could based on what I've seen.