A few months ago I received an e-mail message from Bruce, a recent Ph.D. in classics. First he told me about the good job he got upon completion of his degree -- program officer for a think tank specializing in education policy and practice. Then he told me what was wrong with the job:
"The executive director is extremely difficult to work with, and people have been jumping ship for the last few months. Originally, I intended to stick it out for a year or so and then use my experience to get something better. Things have deteriorated since I began, however -- people are very unhappy, and about three more people will likely leave in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the number of projects we have to complete hasn't changed, yet the leadership refuses to hire more people. I hate to jump ship, but things are growing increasingly intolerable. ..."
In conversations and articles about career options for Ph.D.'s, we are used to pointing to the "good job" as the solution to the problem of unemployment. But good jobs can go bad, or they can turn out not to be what we thought they would be.
Bruce was happy to get his job. It dealt with issues he cared about, and he spent most of his time doing research and writing major reports. He interviewed for the position on two different occasions with a number of people in the organization including the executive director. Before he accepted the offer, he called several people and asked what they knew about the organization. All of the answers were positive -- it seemed like a good place, he was getting to do work he valued, and he was being paid well.
Two and a half months into the job, he realized that the organization had high turnover and low morale -- everyone complained behind closed doors about how poorly the organization was managed. The executive director kept everyone on a short leash, wanted exactly what she wanted whether it was good research or not, gave contradictory orders, and changed her interests from one week to the next.
Could Bruce have foreseen this? I don't see how. He did what you are supposed to do -- visited on site, met a number of people more than once, called outside people to check.
The question is, What should he do now -- leave as quickly as possible or stay and try to make the best of his situation with an impossible boss? Certainly it seemed tempting to jump ship. But Bruce realized that every day he was gaining valuable experience -- interviewing people, conceiving and organizing projects, writing proposals and reports, and learning about the other organizations out there that do similar work. Temporarily he has made peace with balancing the good experience with the bad circumstances of the job. But if he becomes embarrassed by the low quality of the reports (reconfigured to please the executive director) or if he is asked to write up results that the research doesn't support, then the price of staying will be too high, and he will leave.
Ellen, a Ph.D. in the sciences from Harvard University, landed a coveted position in equity research for a financial-services company. In taking it, she incurred the wrath of her adviser, who invoked the supremacy of science research to tell her how far she had fallen. A manager in her company who believed in the special skills of Ph.D.'s for conducting research and writing reports hired four of them to form the core of the equity-research group. Before Ellen even started the job, a new manager replaced the one who had hired her and the other Ph.D.'s. This new manager made a point of telling her early on that he didn't value her degree. "No one cares about it," he said. The Ph.D.'s were paraded in front of clients to show that the firm had experts who knew science, but they were not given credit for authorship, and they were pigeonholed. They were given a very specific task and expected to do it; they were not given access to information that would allow them to see the big picture; there was none of the much-advertised teamwork; and they did not feel well-utilized.
The other three Ph.D.'s have left the company. As the sole survivor, Ellen feels the relief of someone who still has a job in a very tough market. But she doesn't want to stay. She is hoping to "hang on" until she finds another job. The biggest problem, she says, turns out not to be bad management but an ethical issue -- the feeling that she is a "sellout" and has no principles. Ellen said she had not anticipated the conflicts between research results and business relationships. She admits to feeling like a used-car saleswoman, with a job that requires overlooking certain things in order to make the sale. Ellen is actively sending out her résumé to "buy side" financial firms (such as investment funds) where more scrutiny and skepticism are tolerated, and she is also exploring public-policy positions related to biotechnology.
Sometimes it's not up to you whether you stay or go. In these times, many people are finding their jobs pulled out from under them as employers engage in waves of layoffs in response to a bad economy. Susan Basalla wrote on this site a few months ago about her own experience losing her job as a content producer with an Internet company. I know others in the same predicament.
A Yale University Ph.D. in biological sciences last year talked happily to me about his job in equity research with a major global investment bank, but six months later, he found himself without a job. One of the last hired, Eric was among the first fired. Within four months, however, he had another job, better than the first one. He works for a small money-management fund, now as a generalist instead of a specialist in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.
To become a generalist had been his long-term goal in the first job. Eric feels that the second job search was harder than his first. He had more experience, knowledge, and confidence but all of that was more than offset by the changes in the economy. He noted that friends and connections are all so worried about getting laid off themselves that they are reluctant to pass your résumé along -- which they did freely a year ago.
Still, his experience made headhunters interested in him, and his knowledge of the industry allowed him to be clear about what he wanted. What headhunters liked about his résumé was seeing evidence that he could learn something new and come up to speed quickly. He found the headhunters by talking to friends, and he got the job because one headhunter acted as his advocate and gave him critical advice about what the employer really was looking for. Did anyone ask why he was laid off? Yes, but he said he had lined up people he worked with both inside and outside his firm who would recommend him. He summed up his experience with the old saw, "don't put all your eggs in one basket," and called the job search a numbers game. "Call people you have any interaction with. For every 10 résumés you send out, maybe one person looks at it; for every 30 résumés, maybe one person looks at you," said Eric.
Another Ph.D. who lost a job but is still looking acknowledges both the horrible feeling of her life "out of control" and how much she is learning through her job search. When Carol got her degree from Duke University in computer science, she already had her job lined up, at a company where she previously had interned. She felt relieved that she got a job so quickly and easily. Now she says, "The longer you look the better. When you look you learn more about the different kinds of companies and opportunities out there and about yourself too -- what you really want." She has been getting plenty of interviews and just learned about a new company that she is very excited about.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
-
It's easy for a job to go wrong or be taken away.
-
It's almost never your fault.
-
Falling into a job instead of exploring options and conducting a real search may not be as great as you think.
-
Give thought to the ethical aspects of the job you are considering.
-
Lay the groundwork for your next job search right after you land the first job -- maintain your network of contacts, make sure plenty of people know about the good work you are doing, and be sure you are doing work that gives you useful experience.
