10 Transferable PhD Skills You Can Use in Most Jobs

“No one wants to hire PhDs because they are overqualified and too independent!”

This is one thing PhDs are tired of hearing. How can your PhD be a liability to your career? Rather,
recruiters prefer PhD candidates over others not just for their qualification but for their transferable
PhD skills.

What are Transferable Skills?

Transferable skills are exactly what the name suggests! These are skills other than technical skills that
you develop in your academic program. Furthermore, these skills are so versatile that they can be
used everywhere, irrespective of the designation or field. Transferable skills are desirable because if
you already have them, your employer will not have to train you on them. Consequently, you can
make positive contributions in any career with these skills.

Which are the Transferable PhD Skills that You Must Develop?

Considering that a doctorate degree is the highest degree in most fields, the skills that are required
to excel in the same are impeccable. Undoubtedly, researchers pursuing their Ph.Ds. or postdocs
develop technical skills related to their research. However, what they also need to develop is a host
of transferable skills they can use as they progress in their careers.

Which are 10 Transferable Skills You Can Use in Most Jobs?

With the surge of jobs for PhD in STEM, recruiters struggle to fill those positions with talented
candidates. They are always in need of trained professionals who know how to create information
from scratch, and not just recreate it in a tinkering manner.

While your work experience and education during PhD is an asset, you’d be surprised to find out that
employers in most sectors pay close attention to your skill set. According to a recently published
survey report by LinkedIn, 57% of respondents identified soft transferable skills as more important
than hard skills (technical knowledge).

Here, we list 10 significant transferable skills PhD students can use in most jobs.

1. Project Management

The most apparent thought that comes to anyone’s mind while thinking about PhD is “project
management” skills. A successful research experience goes hand-in-hand with a well-planned
project. As simple as it may sound, the management skills of a PhD graduate are not confined to
his/her project. It starts right from ideation of the research project to final submission, which results
in an ultimate success of the project. Different stages of a PhD’s journey demands customized
planning and organizing to ensure that deadlines are met and projects are completed efficiently and
effectively. Furthermore, a PhD makes sure that all plans are duly incorporated. Employers seek
candidates with this transferable skill as they want someone who can not only see a task through,
but can visualize what needs to happen on a project from start to finish.

2. Accelerated Learning

As a doctor of philosophy, the ability to ascertain knowledge runs thick in the veins of a PhD
researcher. An inquisitive mind and quick comprehension of technical things is interlinked to your
accelerated learning ability. Moreover, being a PhD, you attend conferences and read papers to stay
on top of the latest trends in your field. Consequently, this transferable skill ensures employers of
your ability to understand technical procedures, protocols, and methodologies.

3. Time Management

Time waits for none! The key to a tension-free and smooth workflow is effective time management.
While planning is important, defining your deadlines, setting realistic and achievable goals, and
adhering to them takes you a long way! At a job, every moment spent on an unfocused or frivolous
task, is a waste of money. Contradictorily, time management may not be viewed similarly in
academia. However, as a PhD your motive has been to complete your program in time. This acts as a
serious motivation to develop excellent time management skills.

4. Attention to Detail

One of the essential core skills of a PhD is paying attention to the details. To the best of your
experience as a researcher, you are aware that mistakes can be missed in the bat of an eye.
Therefore, it is a known fact that PhDs are one of the finest people to make sure that each project
runs through a fine-tooth comb. As a result, employers can count on you for detail-oriented
assignments that require critical assessment and corrections.

5. Ability to Collaborate

As stated earlier, PhDs are not new to working in groups to achieve common goals. Your significant
contribution in research groups, as a researcher and author during your PhD program demonstrates
your ability to collaborate. Employers seek candidates who are team players making positive
contributions to the success of a group.

6. Writing Proficiency

Given the nature of modern technology, writing may not be a primary task of most job profiles.
However, it sure is an essential element for academic and allied knowledge dissemination careers. In
due course of pursuing a PhD, you come across countless reading material from authors all around
the world. This subsequently stocks up your bank of vocabulary and enhances your writing skills for
an unambiguous conveyance of messages and information.

7. Leadership Skills

Leadership skills aren’t only your ability to supervise and manage a team, but to take the lead on a
project and get a team to follow through and achieve goals. As a PhD you’re the “lead” for your
project. While it doesn’t necessarily involve leading other people, it still means being responsible for
major decisions to accomplish targets. Additionally, it is common for PhD students to work in
research groups and collaborate on shared projects. Nonetheless, they also demonstrate leadership
while organizing conferences and seminars for their department or university. PhDs are also seen
showing leadership skills while advising students and mentoring peers.

8. Critical Thinking and Analysis

As a PhD, it’s a given that you are able to analyze data and provide logical reasoning to it. Throughout
your program, you collect data, analyze it, and draw conclusions. The ability of a PhD to critically
examine everything and deliver logical reasoning behind it is not new to anyone. A PhD is well versed
with 360-degree logical thinking without being biased. Employers seek this transferable skill of a PhD
to consider alternative solutions to a problem and suggest next steps for efficient functioning.

9. Communication Skills

This is the master of transferable PhD skills. Even if you decide to step into a career that is a 180-
degree sweep from your PhD, you’d still need to communicate! Your ability to communicate
efficiently is developed right from preparing for your PhD interview, presenting papers and posters at
academic conferences, defending your thesis, etc. As verbal communication affects your ability to
work with your peers, it is one of the most sought after transferable skills by employers.

10. Adaptability

A PhD isn’t only about specialization. Rather, it’s about the ability to specialize. During your PhD you
learn to tackle a new topic, solve it, and move on to the next problem. Almost all careers require
employees to focus on specific topics and projects in detail to achieve a specific goal. Your ability of
in-depth specialization in academic research project demonstrates adaptability and flexibility—quite
literally!

So the next time you are asked, “What skills do you bring to this position?”, you certainly know how
to answer that! Brush up your transferable PhD skills to help you make the right career switch.
Remember that your PhD isn’t a liability after all. In fact, it’s an asset! Let us know how you acquired
these valuable skills that are highly sought after by employers today. You can also visit our Q&A
forum for frequently asked questions related to different aspects of research writing and publishing
answered by our team that comprises subject-matter experts, eminent researchers, and publication
experts.
Time management

As a PhD candidate or postdoc, you tend to focus your time on one project very intensely. In
industry, you are often focusing on several subject matters and working on different projects, but not
as intensely as you would on your PhD project in academia. Many PhD programs have a time-limit for
completing the project, with smaller deadlines along the way, so time-management is an essential
skill that you develop throughout your PhD, to be able to drive your project by planning ahead and
setting goals.

Additionally, in academia your priority is your research, but you are still required to balance research
in the lab with seminars, reading and meetings. Similarly, in industry, you need to split your time
between meetings and projects. Deadlines in some parts of industry are stricter and you must be
able to manage your time to meet them. You will need to utilise the excellent time management
skills required in graduate school in order to meet multiple deadlines and prioritise your work.

Writing skills

The need to publish manuscripts and write grants is often not as important in industry as it is in
academia, but writing skills are still important. The amount and level of writing required will depend
on the company you join and the nature of your role; some roles may require you to write grants,
whereas in other roles the majority of your writing skills will be used for internal communications.
Both technical writing skills and non-scientific writing is important industry. You need to be able to
clearly communicate via email, reports and documents. The writing skills you acquired when writing
lab reports, meeting notes, presentations and your thesis will be extremely helpful in industry roles.

Communication and presentation skills

The communication skills you have honed during graduate school are essential. In industry, you will
need to able to convey your information to your direct team, your manger, the broader work
community, senior management and investors. Each of these interactions will require a different
type of communication skill.

You will need to be able to convey information without jargon and be able to distil complex ideas.
This is especially important when speaking to investors.

Although while in industry you might not go to conferences to present, you will be expected to
present your work and/or ideas during internal and external meetings. This will vary in occurrence,
from weekly, quarterly or bi-annually, to as and when required. Often you will be expected to
present using PowerPoint so you can rely on the yearly graduate school seminar skills. This might
seem like an elementary skill but is a very important one that you have sharpened, which will be
valued by employers.

Decision-making, problem-solving and trouble-shooting

Graduate school is plagued with trouble shooting experiments and figuring out answers to your
questions. You will need these skills in industry, but in a different sense. If a protocol is already
established, you might not need to troubleshoot as much. However, if you are developing a protocol,
you will be using these skills extensively at the beginning. In industry you will have a wide array of
resources available to you and you should let them be part of the process. In industry, as in grad
school, you will need to make decisions on the spot about the direction of a certain procedure.

In graduate school, your decisions are made based on the data and conversations with your PI.
Towards the end it is usually purely your decision. In industry, your decisions are again guided by the
data, but it is at a much faster pace. If a project does not go in the direction that was predicted, you
might need abandon it and move on to the next the thing. In industry, things move rapidly and
change at any moment, therefore one must be flexible and a quick-learner. Although typically during
graduate school you have focused on a few sets of skills, you still have learned how to absorb new
information quickly. Novel techniques are not as intimidating and you are able to pick up on things
faster, this is an important skill to emphasise when applying and interviewing for industry positions.

Project management and leadership skills

Your thesis is a series of projects that you have managed throughout your graduate career. Similarly,
in industry you may have several projects you may need oversee. You need to be able to plan out
your time, manage multiple projects, and sometimes also budgets, simultaneously. As in graduate
school, you will need to prioritise the various projects you are managing. If you are a group leader,
you will need to supervise trainees, which many graduate students do.

Data analysis

Where data is being generated, it needs to be analyzed. Indeed, there are many different programs
out there, but there are basics such as GraphPad, MATLAB, Excel, etc. If you are able to work with the
general framework, you can adapt to different programs.

I hope that I have convinced you that many of the skills that you have honed as a graduate student
are transferable to industry. The next step is being able to show others this too. Which means using
the correct language in your resume or CV. You have the skills, you just need to word it correctly. You
can find a list of action verbs for resumes here. This document lists a set of skills you may have
developed throughout your graduate career and examples of how you might have obtained this
experience.

I would like to thank Juliana Ansari, José Liquet y González, Shatanik Mukherjee, and Danielle Twum
for their input on this article.