Hello and welcome to another edition of Ask Cheeky. I'm Isaiah Hankel with Cheeky Scientist and today we have a great question from Partiv Keevy:

"Hi, I wanted to have some real insights into transitioning into industry. I'm a recent PhD holder in Material Science from the UK. I'm very interested in transferring my academic research experience to an Application Scientist role, but the people I follow on LinkedIn, in similar areas as me, seem to have two to three years of postdoctoral experience. My question is, if anyone could guide me whether I should do a postdoc first or transition directly into industry? After going through job specifications for these roles, I found that most companies prefer postdoctoral research."

This is a great question and we get it a lot. The underlying question is, "Should I do a postdoc or transition directly into industry? Is there value to doing a postdoc anymore?" If your goal is to transition into industry, we've been very clear on this in the past, there's no reason for you to do a postdoc. There really isn't. If there's a company out there with a specific position for you and they tell you, "Look, you need a postdoc before you even go into this position", only then should you do a postdoc. In most cases, you can get into these positions without a postdoc and a lot of companies hire people with Bachelors or even Masters degrees and then they train them on the job up into these roles. The same roles that you're going to get with your PhD and with your postdoc.

We have a lot of postdocs on our team, whether they are consultants or associates, and they all tell us the same thing. They do not need to do their postdoc in industry and that being said, if you've already done a postdoc, certainly you can leverage this to your advantage in the right way. You can communicate how it has helped you effectively and maybe put yourself over other job candidates, but the reason that it's not crucial, if you want to transition to industry, because in industry, on-the-job training is much more important, right?

Every company has their own way of doing things, whether it's through standard operating procedures or it's a certain technical skill that they want to train you for, they want to do it their way. This is why you go on interviews in the first place because they want to make sure you have the right transferable skills. The right interpersonal skills. Technical skills, they know if you have a PhD, they can train you in any technical skill, right?

This is why it's really important to understand that on-the-job training is valuable and it's a crucial part of being able to transition directly into industry once you have your Ph.D. without needing a postdoc.

Also, I mentioned before, you'll have people, and we hear this, again, from our consultants and associates, they'll be very surprised when they transition into these entry level positions in terms of working at the bench as a research scientist and they're working side-by-side with somebody with a Master's degree or with a Bachelor's degree. They're wondering how this happened, it's because in industry you are rewarded for your performance. It's not based on seniority. Not based on degrees. Again, the sooner you can get into industry and start performing, the faster you can get promoted to higher positions. Positions that you can get faster than spending a couple more years in a postdoc in academia.

Make sure you keep these things in mind when you're making the decision on whether or not you want to transition into a postdoc role first, but if your goal is to get into industry, your best bet is to transition directly into industry and not waste more time with a postdoc.

Until next time, remember your value as a PhD and start thinking and acting like a successful industry professional.

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