Prepare Applications

1. Application: CV, cover letter, letters of recommendation, likely a Research Statement (often reviewing both what you have accomplished in your Ph.D. and what you plan to research in your new position)

   • Postdoc roles and applications can vary widely by institution, location, theory vs experiment, subfield, and type of postdoc (institution, national fellowship, grant-based, etc)

   • Follow application deadlines very closely! Many high-profile fellowships (e.g., Harvard Junior Fellowship, Berkeley Miller Fellowship) have deadlines much earlier than typical postdoctoral applications

   • If submitting online, make sure your application is built to get through the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) filters (see below for details). (Note: like LinkedIn, AcademicJobsOnline is an ATS!)

2. Phone or Video Interview

3. Site Visit for Interview and Talk

   • See the Talk about Yourself page for interview guidance.

4. Job Offer (hopefully!)

Note: this general outline might apply more to bigger or mid-sized companies than to startups.

1. Application: resume and (sometimes) cover letter

   • Note: 80% of jobs aren't posted online: they'll be pipelined internally. This is why it's so important to network and talk to people currently working at the places you want to get hired!

   • If you have somebody willing to vouch for you, ask for them to recommend you by helping get your application directly into the hands of HR. (This isn't like a litter of recommendation in academia, but it's different from a simple referral, which often consists of a code that you put in an online submission that gives you a little bump in the online filtering system.)

   • If you're submitting your application online:

     1. Make sure it's built to get through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) (see below for details)

     2. Submit it Sunday evening or early Monday morning (before 10 AM). Applicants who do this get hired 46% more frequently, and it's because hiring managers check their job postings at the start of the week and figure out at the start of the week who they're going to call that week. If your submission comes on Friday they might not even see it!

2. Initial Phone Screen

   • A bit of history: even as recently as a few years ago, positions had a ton of applicants, and getting past the initial screening meant you were in the top 5-10% of applicants. Now ATS systems and hiring managers see fewer applicants, and are letting more through, so getting through only puts you in the top 20-25% of applicants.

3. Interviews

   • Companies make up for the additional applicants getting through initial screens by doing more interviews; the average number of interviews in some areas like tech is ~5 interviews!

   • During this time, there will likely be several people looking at your resume that you never talked to, and if you find yourself not getting later-stage interviews, it could be your resume that is at issue.

   • See the Talk about Yourself page for interview guidance.

4. Job Offer (hopefully!)

General Considerations

When a job requires a resume, they're trying to tell you something about what they want from you: they want a short (1-2 page) persuasive document focused on your skills and your results. This is pretty different from our usual mindset in academia, where we're focused on highlighting all of the things we got published. Specifically, if a job requires a resume, then:

• Its audience is probably ATS software and hiring managers who don't have their PhDs.

  • This means you want a language change: even though you aren't the expert in your field relative to your advisor or other PIs, you're the expert as far as the hiring manager is concerned, and you need to talk about yourself appropriately.

  • Your resume should be formatted according to how ATSs work and what humans do when reading resumes (see below).

• It should be tailored to the job description.

  • Don't just go through and find the words you think are important—we all have our own biases and see what we want to see.

  • Copy and paste the job posting into a word cloud software and see what's most used. Then go back to the job description and look for the phrases around those most-used words, the "key phrases." Use that language in your resume!

  • Don't include every single award, publication, and so on; only include information relevant to the role.

• It should highlight your transferable skills as well as your relevant technical ones.

• It should focus on impact, not on volume.

What People (and Software) Do When Looking at Resumes

• Companies get hundreds of resumes per job posting, so they've evolved ways to get through them quickly.

• ATS software: a first-level smart-but-dumb filter that throws away applications whose keywords don't match what it's looking for.

  • They often look for the word "summary" at the top. The top third of the first page of the resume gets on average 80% of the keyword strength!

  • ATSs usually look for "experience" next; algorithmically they'll find the "experience" heading, look at the first line under it, and then look for lines with similar formatting in that section (bolded job titles, for example). Those lines get another 15% of the keyword strength.

  • Since they're looking for keywords, everywhere they look they should see keywords that are on the job posting! This includes the headings in your "experience" section—see the functional resume format below.

  • There should be no artwork or significant design on resumes, as these can mess up ATSs. A well-designed black-and-white resume is best.

• Hiring managers and recruiters spend just 5-7 seconds on your resume, and their eyes follow specific patterns. It's actually very similar to how ATSs skim resumes, because ATSs were built to mimic humans!

  • Our eyes go to the top center, and then do an F-shape on the rest of the document, going to the bottom to make us feel like we looked at the whole thing.

  • Since they're going to be skimming, make use of bolding and headings.

  • More negative space can help the eyes relax and make them stay on the resume a little longer.

  • As an evaluation of your resume, try giving it to someone for 7 seconds, and then asking them what they remember. This can be eye-opening after spending a while crafting your resume.

Resume Structure and Formatting

• Often if we're applying for a job that requires a resume, it's in industry or some place where we as academics don't have direct experience in that field. So we need to highlight what skills we've developed in the PhD that are transferable to the job. For this reason a functional resume format may be the best approach for recently graduated PhDs.

• As a general rule, resumes should have: heading including email and LinkedIn URL, professional summary, work experience, education, technical skills, and an honors/hobbies/interests, in pretty much this order. Do not put an objective section, and do not include references or even "references available upon request." Most of these sections should contain bullet points! The work experience section differs heavily between a standard format (which lists job positions in reverse chronological order) and a functional format (which lists skills and results from using those skills).

Notes on Skills

• It is common for us to think about only our technical skills (that software or this control theory), but outside academia they'll be looking for a number of other types of skills. We can break these into roughly three categories, e.g. below. Usually PhDs have a lot of these, but we don't think about them or, just as importantly, don't use the industry terms for them!

  • People-oriented skills: strategic vision, performance management, change management, personnel development, cross-functional collaboration, competitive drive, task delegation, chain of communication, leadership

  • Systems-oriented skills: innovation, risk management, systemization, production, return on investments, financial acumen, regulatory acumen

  • Self-oriented skills: work ethic, initiative, decisiveness, completeness, confidence, stress management, technical literacy

• The skills you should be putting on your resume are the ones for the job you're trying to get! Analyze the job posting (see General Considerations above)!

• Some external resources about skills you develop in the PhD:

  • VersatilePhD has a huge library of past webinars about how to use your skills in various industries such as consulting and writing (UMD is no longer a subscriber, but these recordings can be accessed for free)

  • Cheeky Scientist's free eBook library for PhDs trying to get into specific careers and career industries

  • Since we're all nerds, some literature on transferable skills for physics and science PhDs from the American Institute of Physics and from PLoS ONE

Resources for Resumes

• Broad overview video from the UMD Grad School

• Article, article, article, and eBook from Cheeky Scientist (note: Cheeky Scientist is pretty sales pitch-y, but its advice looks very sound as they've gotten thousands of PhDs into industry positions)

• Guide and videos from APS

• Resume example and guide from Science Latte blog

A statement of my opinion: there are about 74 kajillion metric tons of articles, videos, books, templates, and courses about effective resumes and cover letters. Some of them will differ in their advice from what's written here. For us, what's important is our specific situation: we've been in academia for a decade or more (including undergrad) and most non-academics don't know all the transferable skills we gain in a PhD. But these non-academics are industry hiring managers who do know if you don't have direct experience in the field you're applying to. So the resume needs to be tailored to our specific situation, and the advice here corresponds to what PhDs say gets them hired out of grad school into industry.

CVs are more comprehensive lists of your achievements during your PhD, and are typically desired for academic job applications such as postdoc positions.

Formatting Considerations

• There is no specific length limit, but 2-5 pages is common for a PhD student

• Since this is a longer document, put your name in a footer or header for every page of the CV

• Make sure there's adequate white space in your CV to help readers; use bold and/or italics where useful

Structure and Content

• There's no single "best" or even "common" ordering of sections, but there are a few general rules.

• Sections you likely want to have: contact information, education, research experience, grant funding, teaching experience, mentoring experience, publications, presentations (talks and posters), honors and awards, leadership, service, professional memberships, certifications.

• If you have a particular strength, place it higher on the CV, e.g. grants if you have a history of this, or publications if you have a number of high-impact publications. The key is to emphasize those accomplishments that make you stand out.

• Within sections, items should be listed in reverse chronological order, with less important details (locations, dates, etc) on the right margin.

Resources for CVs

• Example CVs from Harvard's Office of Career Services

• A few before-and-after CV examples from the Chronicle of Higher Education (UMD has access, so check out on campus or using the Reload @ UMCP button to see these articles)

Around half of industry jobs and most postdoc positions will want a cover letter. Across sectors the basic principles of a cover letter are the same. Below when we say "institution" we mean whatever you're applying to, whether it be national lab, private company, postdoc with a particular lab, or anything else.

Foundations

• Length: no more than one page for industry, no more than two pages for postdoc positions

• The cover letter should be in standard business format.

• Write a different cover letter for each position you apply to! Tailor the content to the specific position.

• The cover letter should not be your resume or CV in letter format. It's an opportunity to coney your enthusiasm for the institution and market yourself specifically.

  • Thoroughly research the institution and their mission, values, and/or research goals. Think about ways your research or objectives align with theirs.

  • Write the letter as an independent researcher and job applicant. Even for postdoc applications, this isn't the time to be modest with things like "we": market your specific strengths, and instead of saying "we did this", talk about what you did within that group to achieve the outcomes.

• Address the cover letter to a person, not To Whom It May Concern. If the job posting doesn't list this information, call and ask!

• Keep the tone conversational but professional.

Structure and Content

• There will generally be one page with three major paragraphs.

• Salutation: should be to a specific person, not To Whom It May Concern!

• First paragraph: introduction

  • State your name. For postdoc applications, state your academic status, institution, PhD advisor.

  • Name the position you're applying for and express interest.

  • Briefly state a few accomplishments or whatever makes you an ideal candidate for the job. For industry, use their language if possible, and do this with an eye for making a case that you can bring value to the company. For postdocs, mention grants, high-impact publications, field knowledge, or other top things you want the PI to know about you.

  • If you have a connection to the institution (e.g. collaboration or referral) state it here.

• Second paragraph: why you're cool, and why your coolness fits their needs

  • For postdocs: this means discussing your thesis research at an academic level, with an eye toward conveying your expertise and specific contributions, showing off your technical or critical thinking abilities, and demonstrating your writing skills.

  • For industry: this means discussing your skills, contributions, and results. You should use the language of the job posting. Leave off information that isn't directly relevant. Some letters use bolded bullet points for this part when it's an industry job.

  • These are paragraphs, so tell stories! Include stories covering soft skills (mentorship, leadership, collaboration).

• Third paragraph: what you can bring

  • Talk about how your skills/expertise fit with the needs of the institution.

  • For postdocs: does the lab use techniques you know, or will the techniques you know advance the lab? Are you fundable in a way that will help the lab? In what ways can you advance the lab through leadership and mentoring? Show that you understand the lab's research goals and you can bring specific value to move those goals forward.

  • For industry: show that you've researched the company's mission, values, and organization and that your skills can contribute to those things through this position.

• Summarize: restate the strengths you can bring to the institution, describe what else is in your application package, state your intended follow-up method, and thank the person for their consideration of your application. Sign the letter as is standard business format.

Resources for Cover Letters

• Examples and tips from the University of Illinois Grad School

• Example cover letters for industry sectors from ImaginePhD and more examples from Harvard's Office of Career Services (note: I'm not a big fan of the resume examples on either of these sites and I don't believe they have the best chance of getting you hired, but their cover letters are good)

• Example cover letters for postdocs from Harvard's Office of Career Services (scroll past the example CVs)