Anyone reading the Chronicle of Higher Education can't help but notice a trend in their career advice columns: an increasing recognition that many graduate students will not be working in traditional academic careers. A recent article in the Chronicle reports on a group that will examine ways to help graduate students move into careers. An article by Professor Lennard Davis at The University of Illinois at Chicago provides helpful advice to graduate students. The Chronicle also recently published an article on what faculty can do to help and even an article about changing the way we socialize doctoral students. And it's not just an American problem, a recent article deals with preparing Canadian graduate students for nonacademic careers. Clearly, there is a growing recognition that graduate students need better assistance in seeking training-related non-academic careers. This is the first of 6 posts covering key aspects of the graduate student job search. Links to the other posts are at the end.
I wrote a blog post over a year on the vanishing academic career and the career challenges facing Ph.D.'s and other graduate students. Unfortunately the situation hasn't improved since that time. Articles continue to describe a less-than-robust job market, particularly for humanities majors.
As a result of the economy and changes in higher education hiring, more and more graduate students are looking outside academia for training-related career opportunities. And for the first time many graduate programs are even supporting this notion. This is a radical shift for graduate programs where reputations are based on the number and percentage of graduates who obtain college or university tenure-track teaching positions. But in this economy it is increasingly necessary, prudent, and perhaps ultimately beneficial for both the students and the department. But even with departmental support it's not an easy decision to leave the ivory tower.
A majority of doctoral students (particularly in the humanities and liberal arts) enter their doctoral programs with one clearly defined career goal–college professor. The career track for these students is as linear as the one for their colleagues in law, accounting, or engineering. After 4 years of college, they enter a doctoral program (sometimes with an intermediary step of a master's degree) and their next 5-7 years are a combination of courses, writing, research, publications, conference presentations, grant applications, and teaching. They are squarely on a track for continuing these activities throughout their careers as professors. You can think of the metaphor of a "career ladder" as they move from assistant professor to associate to full professor. It's a pattern that has served students and institutions of higher education for decades.
Until it doesn't.
And suddenly the ladder is missing that next rung. Or it's against the wrong wall. Suddenly the job search isn't linear after all.
Welcome to the 21st century job search. It's a search that is more improvisation than script. And it is complex, aligning better with chaos theory than any linear/ladder approach.
Chaos theory originated with a desire to improve our ability to predict the weather. But what ultimately was discovered was that predicting the weather isn't so easy or simple-- and neither is predicting your future career. Some of the key elements of chaos theory which can also apply to careers include:
- Complexity: Careers are part of a complex system with many variables influencing the outcome, making it challenging to predict where you'll be in the future.
- Emergence: New information appears constantly. Chance meetings; unexpected opportunities can show up any time.
- Nonlinearity: The ladder is gone: your career is now a matter of what you create from your knowledge, experience, and skills. Think latticework instead of ladder (see explanation below).
- Unpredictability: You can throw away any fortune-telling devices. Accept that you will control what you can about your job search but that there will always be aspects of your career you cannot control (such as the current economy).
- Phase Shifts: This is a fancy way of saying, "I've changed my mind." You will go through several phase shifts as you find your career–some changes coming from within, but not always.
- Attractors: Attractors serve as focus points. For many grad students, a tenture-track teaching position has been the primary attractor. Many will have to find a new attractor.
So how do you take advantage of chaos theory as a metaphor for career development?
1. Recognize that what looks chaotic up close often makes sense and shows an understandable pattern from a distance. So focus on the present: what are you doing now-today, this week, this month-to further your career prospects? Don't try to predict 5 years down the road.
2. Determine what you can control in the process and control it– knowing that there will always be elements out of your control and often unexpected. That is now the "new normal"– it is no longer the exception to the rule. Take action to create favorable circumstances. Recognize opportunities when they show up and jump on them.
3. Define and designate new positive attractors. You can't define a job search by what it isn't, so avoid focusing on the "non-academic" job search. Instead, determine what you are seeking and use that as your focus, as in "federal government job search" or higher education administrative job search."
4. As you look at new career fields or jobs, always keep Daniel Pink's questions in mind:
- Can a computer do it faster?
- Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?
- Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
Thinking about the answers to these questions will help you find a stronger position within whatever field you consider.
5. Switch from a ladder metaphor to a lattice metaphor. The concept of a latticework metaphor comes from a book by Robert Hagstrom, Investing: The Last Liberal Art. The latticework metaphor was used by Charles Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway to describe an interlocking structure of ideas.
In a latticework, all the key elements of a system are labeled and inserted into the spaces between the lattice, allowing for a broad spectrum of information to be laid out laterally and combined in a variety of ways. Hagstrom proposes that investing be approached like a latticework: pulling information and ideas from a variety of resources and looking for the connections and intersections. He writes, "When you allow yourself to look beyond the immediate fences, you are able to observe similarities in other fields and recognize patterns of ideas. The key is finding the linkages that connect one idea to another. Each discipline entwines with, and in the process strengthens, every other discipline."
This latticework metaphor applies equally well to careers. By looking at all the different skills, experiences, knowledge, and education you have acquired and placing all of that information onto a lattice framework you are able to make new connections and see ways to use your talents in new settings. How can you combine your education, experiences, and skills in a creative way to develop your new career paths?
Want to learn more? Here are the links to my series of posts related to helping graduate students find jobs outside academia:
