First Person

The Search Is Over

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By John S. Brady

I've done it. I've successfully completed the transition from academic to nonacademic work. I've left the adjunct salt mine for a job in politics in Los Angeles. My new work offers more financial, professional, and personal satisfaction than toiling away as a temporary instructor of political science ever did.

And as an added bonus, I have the chance to finish the story I started in The Chronicle more than two years ago.

I have fantasized about writing this final column many times. Each time I was on my way to a job interview or even just waiting for a callback, my train of thought would skip the rails and head off in the direction of the happy land of hope. "Of course, I'll get the job," I would think. "Who wouldn't give me a shot with a résumé like mine?" And then I'd drift further afield and think of the money, the brighter future, and oftentimes about the final column I'd write. I'd lean back and tell everyone how it was done, reveling in my triumph along the way.

Yeah right. With each passing month, the chance of realizing that fantasy seemed more remote. Résumés dutifully sent out met with resounding silence. Calls went unreturned. The few interviews I had led to nothing.

Speaking of fantasies and unacknowledged applications, when I was on the academic job market and suffering its many indignities, I would dream of a better nonacademic world. In that land, phone calls would be returned promptly. Interviewers would be interested and informed. They would not harbor secret agendas or use me as a pawn in their power struggles. Rejection letters would transcend unfeeling boilerplate and tactfully, even gently, explain why my copious, multifaceted, and obviously transferable skills were not needed at this time.

I repeat: Yeah, right. Members of academic hiring committees can rest assured that they are not alone in their tardiness, indifference, and general lack of understanding regarding the plight of job applicants.

But unfulfilled fantasies were actually a minor irritation in my nonacademic search. There were much worse things, as I soon discovered.

To recap a bit: In 2003, my then girlfriend, now wife, and I moved to Southern California for jobs. Sarah, a physician (read: the right kind of doctor) had a great position in public health. I had a one-year adjunct position at the University of California at San Diego, but I was on the fence about my academic future and had already begun to take small steps in a nonacademic direction. By the fall of 2004, I cut bait, as the saying goes, and committed myself fully to a nonacademic search.

It is one thing to sit on the fence, looking longingly at the nonacademic world while, in reality, remaining anchored to the academic one. As much as I complained about the low pay and sometimes demeaning working conditions, being an adjunct instructor did give me an identity. I had a sense of purpose and a bit of status.

In deciding to leave, I thought I had made all the necessary mental adjustments. I had reviewed my experiences. I knew what I liked about academe, and I had weighed that against what I disliked. I knew the university and its rules, and I knew what it could and could not offer. I knew what my strengths were and where they would take me, and I also knew what my weaknesses were and how they would impede my progress. I had looked at all of that and decided to leave.

But what I had not considered, and probably could not have considered until I actually got off the fence, was what it actually means to start over. Quite suddenly, the ground shifted below my feet (and not just because I live in Los Angeles). I lost my status. I lost my professional framework. I faced the task of redefining my goals and standards of success. And, hardest of all, I had to face the fact that I most likely would be starting at the bottom of the totem pole in any future job.

One of the most difficult aspects of starting over was readjusting my attitude toward my skills. One of the first lessons taught to academics seeking nonacademic work is that if you are going to have any success outside the ivory tower, you have to realize that you have not specialized yourself out of gainful, nonacademic employment. In fact, you have a well-honed set of skills that is not only applicable, but highly desired in nonacademic settings. Without that confidence-boosting lesson, the search can never get off the ground.

It's a tough lesson to learn, though. You have to resist succumbing to the social prejudices about academics as nerdy freaks who don't do real work.

I soon encountered an even tougher lesson. As I started applying for jobs that matched my skills -- jobs with nonprofit groups, consulting jobs, political and government work: the usual suspects -- I realized how ridiculously overskilled I was. The jobs to which I was applying didn't need the level of research, writing, public speaking, and project-management skills that I had acquired in academe.

Sadly, that didn't mean I was a shoo-in for those jobs. While I had a bounty of transferable skills, what I lacked was concrete job experiences that nonacademic employers would recognize as proof of my skills. It was a tremendously frustrating and depressing Catch-22. The only way to get such experience was to get a job. But I couldn't get a job because I didn't have any experience.

Caught in that trap, a nagging, demoralizing question occupied more and more of my time: Why had I even bothered to get the Ph.D. in the first place? Believe me, a bag full of resentment, regret, and frustration is not what you want to be carrying around when you're trying to convince employers to hire you.

I escaped that trap by following much of the usual advice offered to Ph.D.'s seeking nonacademic work. There's almost too much such advice out there, and I don't want to pile on, so I will just highlight two things that turned out to be most useful to me in my search. They are networking and volunteering.

Networking

I distinctly remember the section on networking in the employability seminar I attended at the very beginning of my job search. The instructor gave us a sheet of paper and asked us to list family members, friends, and acquaintances, and the connections they had to potential employers. I scoffed. I don't come from a well-connected family; there aren't any captains of industry, high-powered politicians, or even many mid-level movers and shakers to be found in our family Rolodex. We don't even have a family Rolodex. The whole exercise seemed pointless.

But necessity is the mother of networking. Months later, I dug up that list and gave it a second look. I discovered that I did have a network out there, but finding it meant going beyond the first couple of degrees of separation.

For example, a colleague of my father's regularly played poker with the retired district director of my hometown's Congressional office. Not exactly a tight connection, but I was interested in exploring political staffing, and so I asked my father to give his friend a call to see if anything could be done. My father's friend called his poker buddy, who in turn called his replacement in the district office, who in turn placed a call to the Washington office, which in turn led to an informational interview with a chief of staff about political work.

In networking, no connection is too ephemeral.

Volunteering

After my first few months of fruitless searching, I realized that I actually faced two tasks. To be successful, I would have to not only engage in the usual job-search activities but also reposition myself. I had to diversify my résumé and amass experience that employers understand.

The standard piece of advice on how to do that is to volunteer. One of the best pieces of advice I received about volunteering came from another Ph.D. who had made the transition to nonacademic work. He suggested that instead of just volunteering, I should try and set up a somewhat more structured relationship and exchange my pro-bono time for a title with the organization. That would not only elevate the work in my own mind but also allow me to feature it more prominently in my résumé.

Volunteering is also a great way to get a sense of what it means to start over. Will you mind doing menial tasks like stuffing envelopes and answering phones? Do you have the social savvy to establish yourself in an organization, prove your worth, and push for more responsibility? Those are the sorts of important questions you can start to answer through volunteering.

During the final round of interviews for my current job -- working for an elected official in Los Angeles -- a member of the hiring committee asked, "John, if we hire you, you will be one of the few people on staff with such an advanced degree. Are you going to be able to go from the world of the university to fielding complaints about potholes and burned-out street lights?"

I had a convincing answer because, over the past two years, I had worked hard to gain campaign and political experience. I had volunteered on campaigns, doing everything from walking precincts and stuffing envelopes to recruiting volunteers and writing issue reports.

I could highlight that experience as an indication of my willingness to perform all sorts of tasks. And perhaps more importantly, I was able to point out that I had learned that the retail politics of the sort my interviewer was asking about weren't just a bothersome afterthought attended to before the real political work got started. Instead, they were the very stuff of politics.

It was a good answer, and I got the job.

But it took months and months of informational interviews, networking, and volunteering to get to that answer.

In the end, I don't feel like some sage scout leader. I feel like a proud survivor of a particularly grueling marathon. I'm happy it's over. And even though I know now that I could do it again, I certainly don't want to run such a race anytime soon.