In the few years since I joined industry, I have been asked to give several seminars on how to make the transition to industry to groups of postdocs and graduate students. Usually, I give my background to everyone: the Ph.D. in Immunology doing HIV vaccine development, the transition to transplantation Immunology as a postdoc on the switch to Oncology clinical development in industry. I always explain how in industry we look for people who have solid training, good problem solving skills and who can think on their feet. 

 

Yet, time after time, I get the same questions with a slightly different twist: “I work on organism Obscuro obscurosis, how do I get a job in industry?” “I study signaling thru gene Obscuro, OBS, and nobody else does, how I am going to get a job?” “I only do experiments with technique obscuritiscope and I don’t know how to do anything else, what can I do?” What amazes me is this concept that these incredibly smart people who have gone through many years of graduate school and postdoc cannot see all the basic skills they have acquired during their training.

 

So let’s use a hypothetical example, and I’ll elaborate. This is how we translate in industry what you have done so far into valuable skills. Jane Doe approaches me at the end of the talk. She has worked on what seems to her a great basic science project that, in her mind, would have no application in industry. Then she tells me about her experience:

 

“I started in the lab doing experiment XYZ at the suggestion of my PI, but it wasn’t working so, on my own, I went back to the literature and found couple of other ways to address the question. -problem solving, independent thinking. In order to try one of those approaches, I started collaborating with this other lab - initiative

In the meantime, this other guy in the lab was having issues with his project, so I offered him a hand because I had some experience with that work and we got a Nature paper out of it - team player

 

My PI had to write some grants and his English wasn’t so good, so I ended up writing his grants. After that, I became the writing reviewer for all my labmates - writing skills. Finally, after much trying, I got the third approach to work with technique X, so I got the clone, did some in vitro studies, and finally tested the system in the ^obs+/obs+ mouse and the ^lgt-/lgt- mouse models. Things worked out well and I ended up developing two mouse models to evaluate this particularly rare disease.” - mouse models, multiple techniques.

 

 With this in mind, what is it that we are supposed to learn in graduate school?  The newest techniques?  The coolest animal models?  The greatest genes?  That may be true to some degree, but it is not the whole story. In reality, we have gone to graduate school to learn how to think, how to answer questions in a methodical fashion (thus, the emphasis on the Scientific Method, remember?  Observation, hypothesis, experiment, analysis), how to collaborate with other scientists to advance science one step at a time. 

 

Next time you are wondering what you could do in industry, try not to think in terms of knowledge content (techniques, genes, diseases) but more in terms of skills. Get a job description that seems interesting and read the skills requirements section. Now, look back and think of the different activities in which you have been involved, the different aspects of your project and how you may have practiced those skills. If you identify some gaps, how can you get that experience?  

 

For example, as a graduate student, I was involved with recruitment, taking candidates out on the town. In addition to granting me some free meals in nice restaurants that I could not afford on my student budget (who says you can’t get a free lunch?), I learned to get comfortable with lots of different people. Not only that, but I had to quickly assess these candidates’ interests and somehow try to sell the program and the city to them based on those interests - RECRUITING SKILLS.

 

I also was able to work as a Teaching Assistant, which was not even a requirement in our program, but helped me build great skills in public speaking, learning to adjust the content to my audience and to better communicate with small (office hours) and large (lecture hall) groups of people - COMMUNICATION SKILLS.  

 

Finally, as a postdoc, I co-chaired the Postdoctoral Council and accomplished a few things - Leadership skills. 

 

Having said that, looking thru the “retrospectoscope”, I realize the opportunities I missed, the classes I could have taken and the lessons I could have learned. Now I am in industry and continue to hone in on the skills I have acquired and learn new ones. Writing this column is all about WRITING SKILLS and I just signed up for a Project Management class and hope to take some business classes in the near future. The learning never ends, but isn’t it why we went into Science in the first place?