Finding a Math Job: Preparing Before Graduation

[homeomorphic]

But intelligent people know when to keep their mouths shut and how to slowly bring others to their way of thinking.

Being a bit shy, I CAN be pretty good at keeping my mouth shut. As for slowly bringing people to my way of thinking, that's definitely something I'm not good at. I'm not good at influencing people at all.

It's a skill combined with the intelligence of how to work with people.

Yes, I'm not going to lie. I suck at working with people. There's only so much I can do about that. I'm easy to get along with, actually. My posts on here might not be very representative because I'm very disgruntled about the state of pedagogy in math, physics, and engineering, and on here, it's hard to control my fury because of that. Mal4mac seems to have gotten a taste of this on that other thread a while back and that's probably why he thinks I'm arrogant, more than this thread. He was talking to a guy who was a lot like me who wanted to understand things more deeply, and he was basically telling him that's the way it is, so I had to set the record straight. Looks like I'm being a know-it-all to him. But he doesn't understand how I've sat in classes, and how upsetting it is when you want to understand it more deeply and the textbook doesn't want to go there, or the prof doesn't want to go there, and they're pulling things out of hats, moving symbols around, and you just know that there's a deeper meaning to it, but they're robbing you of it. In my experience with countless subjects, I am proven right every time that the subject actually makes much more sense than they are letting on. So, I'm not being a know-it-all, trying to show off. I'm trying to address someone's suffering because I identify with it. That's what it's about, not showing off, or trying to win arguments.

Belligerence and spouting off may feel good but it's not the intelligent way to handle situations, it's not going to get you hired.

I don't think I'm really that belligerent. Believe it or not, I keep most of my non-conformist, iconoclastic thoughts to myself, more so in real life. Things are fairly anonymous here, so I'm more open. I give a lot of my opinions that I'd only give in real life if you asked. Who knows, maybe I alienate too many people. But on the other hand, a lot of people can really identify with my views and appreciate what I'm saying. They've told me so.

You need to have sophistication and savvy, as well as intelligence and social skills. From your posts, I find you lacking in all of these areas. You may have book smarts, I don't know, but I can tell you don't have the other crucial elements to succeed.

Yes, I'm pretty bad with people. I do have intelligence, though, I mean, come on. Don't be silly. I'm working on my people skills. But really, I'm so bad, I don't know if there's much hope there. I'm actually not worried about coming off as belligerent or arrogant. That's an artifact of these forums and my particular anger issues when it comes to excessively formal and unenlightening presentations of math and physics. What I really worry about is just utter lack of charm, charisma, conversational skills, that sort of thing.

I don't mean any of this as a put down, but as constructive criticism in hopes that you can change and maybe get a job.

Well, thanks for the honesty, but really, if compromising my principles beyond a certain point is going to be my downfall, I'm prepared to go down. Not that I can't be somewhat strategic about it, but past a certain point, well, as Kurt Cobain said, "It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you're not."

 

[homeomorphic]

By the way, any suggestion that I'm not getting jobs because I'm too belligerent is off base because, as I said, the problem is that I can barely even find a job where I think they'd consider hiring me, other than actuary, which, up until this point, I haven't bothered to apply for because I needed to get that exam under my belt. Maybe I should apply to jobs that I don't meet all the requirements for, but it feels stupid, and one of my job search books even says it's a waste of time and you'll get screened out. So, there's no judgement of me going on, except my resume, for the most part. Mostly, it's just me seeing the job descriptions and going, "nope, that's not me...nope, that's not me...nope, that's not me..." for a couple hours. That's my job search. Not them saying no to me. Actually, I'm spending most of my time on learning skills, rather than searching because of that.

In one case, maybe I was too negative in my cover-letter because I wanted them to know why a math PhD was leaving the math world. I tried not to rant excessively about it, but I put in a couple comments. But that was only one case, and furthermore, I think it's fair to say that that will be exactly what a lot of people are wondering about, even if I don't know how to address their concerns very skillfully.

Also, I'm shy and socially incompetent, so networking is a real challenge.

"Why are you changing careers?"

"Why aren't you teaching?"

"Why leave academia?"

"Wouldn't you rather be working in the field you studied?"

You need two to three sentence answers to these that are clean, positive, and move the discussion away from the topic. You might consider posting your planned responses here.

It's really hard to be positive about academia. It's become almost synonymous with "hell" in my mind. It's to the point where I could imagine myself slipping and calling it hell by accident. But I can try. It could be that the best I can do is minimize the negativity, rather than be positive. The truth is I'm leaving all those things because I found them very unpleasant. So, if I have to positive about it, maybe that's pretty close to saying I need to lie about it. But, yeah, moving the discussion away would probably be good.

So, anyway, I'll think about it.

 

[MarneMath]

I'm going to give you some general advice that may hopefully help and that you may hopefully take.

1)Do not volunteer people information that they do not ask for. This means, you do not need to explain why you chose to leave mathematics for a different field in a cover letter. It will come up in an interview. Feel free to half lie your answer when it does. Believe me, any guy in suit will appreciate, "I found out that academia wasn't for me, and that I would strongly prefer to work in xyz setting instead."

2)Get work experience doing anything. I understand you have your 'principles', but principles will be there after you have established your ability to function in the daily grind and be a productive member of a team at a company. Furthermore, if you cannot get a 'real job' then attach yourself to an open source project, solve problems posted by companies. Ask consulting firms to work for FREE for them, just so that when you apply to a 'real job' you can actually point to a real achievement besides a PhD, because let's face it, not many people really know how hard that accomplishment is and what it entails. They just know it's hard.

3)Your Resume and Cover letter probably are terribly written in a business sense. There's no reason why you haven't been able to get one interview at all besides your inability to process these things pass filters.

4)Get over the whole 'academic was hell so I'm bitter' it does you no good. I went to war and saw a lot of bad stuff. I still somehow manage to smile and remember the good times about it. If I can 'get over' that, then surely you can put aside this negativity and do something productive with it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Maybe math departments should require every graduate student to demonstrate mastery of at least one "marketable skill" (e.g. programming, numerical analysis, financial mathematics, statistics, etc...)

How does this work? The department refuses to give the PhD to someone who has demonstrated that she is a great topologist but a lousy computer programmer?

At some point you have to start treating people as adults and letting them make their own decisions. It's their choice whether to get a PhD, or not, in which field. It's their choice if they want to try and become a plumber or an engineer or a rocket scientist. It's their choice if they want to visit the career center often, or once, or never. People getting PhDs are maybe 27-28 years old. I don't think that's too soon to treat them as adults.

 

[eigenperson]

How does this work? The department refuses to give the PhD to someone who has demonstrated that she is a great topologist but a lousy computer programmer?

At some point you have to start treating people as adults and letting them make their own decisions. It's their choice whether to get a PhD, or not, in which field. It's their choice if they want to try and become a plumber or an engineer or a rocket scientist. It's their choice if they want to visit the career center often, or once, or never. People getting PhDs are maybe 27-28 years old. I don't think that's too soon to treat them as adults.

Well, most graduate programs have "breadth" requirements already, which at most places means you have to pass an exam on algebra, analysis, and topology. So if you are an expert algebraist, but are terrible at topology, you can't get your PhD.

And topology may be just as irrelevant as numerical analysis, programming, or whatever would be to the algebraist. Let's not even start about how this works if your specialty is set theory, or combinatorics, where you could easily go through your entire career without needing to know anything from those exams.

Would you therefore argue that the exam requirements should be removed because PhD students are adults? I certainly wouldn't. A PhD ought to mean something. You don't get to become a PhD in math without knowing some topology, whether you need to use it or not. And in my opinion, schools should start to say "Fine. Just like our PhD means that you know topology, whether you need it for your research or not, from now on, our PhD will also mean that you know some form of mathematics that is useful to the real world, whether you need it for your research or not."

 

[homeomorphic]

1)Do not volunteer people information that they do not ask for. This means, you do not need to explain why you chose to leave mathematics for a different field in a cover letter. It will come up in an interview. Feel free to half lie your answer when it does. Believe me, any guy in suit will appreciate, "I found out that academia wasn't for me, and that I would strongly prefer to work in xyz setting instead."

I tend to resent this whole thing of not being able to speak my mind. But yeah, I suppose I can try to avoid the subject, and then give short, milder explanations. Which is what I tend to do in practice. In my informational interviews that I have, it doesn't seem to have been a major problem. I just said I found out I didn't like research or teaching when I got there. Didn't seem to be that big of a deal. A lot of the actuaries were math majors and experienced something like that when they took real analysis or whatever, and I just met a couple last week who dropped out of grad school.

2)Get work experience doing anything. I understand you have your 'principles', but principles will be there after you have established your ability to function in the daily grind and be a productive member of a team at a company. Furthermore, if you cannot get a 'real job' then attach yourself to an open source project, solve problems posted by companies. Ask consulting firms to work for FREE for them, just so that when you apply to a 'real job' you can actually point to a real achievement besides a PhD, because let's face it, not many people really know how hard that accomplishment is and what it entails. They just know it's hard.

My principles aren't as inflexible as they might sound. What it boils down to is that I don't want to be something I'm not. I'm considering an unpaid thing, but right now, that seems a little drastic. Also, there was some article about how it didn't help people that much, statistically, although I'm not sure how much I believe that because everyone always wants work experience, and especially for me, that's one of the big things I lack.

3)Your Resume and Cover letter probably are terribly written in a business sense. There's no reason why you haven't been able to get one interview at all besides your inability to process these things pass filters.

I haven't written too many cover letters. Resume is one page, as I'm told it should be. I've had people look at it. They might not be resume experts, but I don't think it's terrible. I just haven't applied to many jobs because of the requirements.

4)Get over the whole 'academic was hell so I'm bitter' it does you no good. I went to war and saw a lot of bad stuff. I still somehow manage to smile and remember the good times about it. If I can 'get over' that, then surely you can put aside this negativity and do something productive with it.

This thread isn't how I'm going about my life, although it's been looming large the last couple of days in my mind. I put it out of my mind, most of the time. I passed that actuarial exam and probably studied for it twice as much as I needed to. I've gotten a lot of things done. But when the subject is brought up again, it's hard not to remember all the bad stuff.

 

[Choppy]

Well, most graduate programs have "breadth" requirements already, which at most places means you have to pass an exam on algebra, analysis, and topology. So if you are an expert algebraist, but are terrible at topology, you can't get your PhD.

And topology may be just as irrelevant as numerical analysis, programming, or whatever would be to the algebraist. Let's not even start about how this works if your specialty is set theory, or combinatorics, where you could easily go through your entire career without needing to know anything from those exams.

Would you therefore argue that the exam requirements should be removed because PhD students are adults? I certainly wouldn't. A PhD ought to mean something. You don't get to become a PhD in math without knowing some topology, whether you need to use it or not. And in my opinion, schools should start to say "Fine. Just like our PhD means that you know topology, whether you need it for your research or not, from now on, our PhD will also mean that you know some form of mathematics that is useful to the real world, whether you need it for your research or not."

Yes, but the difference is that a comprehensive skill set in mathematics is within the jurisdiction of a mathematics department to effectively determine. But as soon as they attempt to establish a "marketable skill level" they are stepping outside of their area of expertise.

It's not a bad idea for the record... just not as practical as one might think.

 

[Vanadium 50]

But as soon as they attempt to establish a "marketable skill level" they are stepping outside of their area of expertise.

Exactly. And once you start down that path, where do you stop? Why not plumbing or bricklaying? These are marketable skills too. And how much time should students be required to work on 'marketable skills'? 5%? 50%? 95%?

This moves a lot of the responsibility from the student to the Department. I'm not sure that will lead to better outcomes.

 

[jesse73]

Exactly. And once you start down that path, where do you stop? Why not plumbing or bricklaying? These are marketable skills too. And how much time should students be required to work on 'marketable skills'? 5%? 50%? 95%?

This moves a lot of the responsibility from the student to the Department. I'm not sure that will lead to better outcomes.

slippery slope?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Yes, it's a slippery slope. Once you decide that its not the 27-year old's responsibility but the Department's, where do you stop?

 

[gravenewworld]

But the mandate of a university is to provide the student with an education. If the student chooses a non-professional, academic field of study to pursue, is it really fair to turn around and blame the university for not focussing on the development of the student's career?

Have you seen how "universities" are run these days? What the university's true mission is might have flown in the 1960s or 70s, but what unis say they stand for rings nothing more than bells when you compare it to what they do. Unis these days are nothing more then giant for profit corporations with more admins striving to increase the bottom lines and endowments for a uni that laughably pay no taxes. I'm sorry, but if students are paying in excess of $50k to go to school per year, the least they should get in return are marketable skills for gainful employment so that they can pay off debt they incurred to go where they went to school. Maybe we should start gutting departments that don't offer anything for employment prospects if it will control tuition costs. I'm sorry, but learning Charlemagne never helped me land a job. I have absolutely no sympathy for unis or their so called mission, they brought this upon themselves when they decided to start charging ridiculous fees for tuitions for students, and all so students can be taught by TAs or crappy adjuncts with 0 office hours while professors are almost nonexistent and never answer emails because they're too busy trying to pull in grant money since they feel the pressure of unis trying to increase their US news rankings. A uni these days is almost anything but about education and more about increasing bottom lines and rankings.

 

[eigenperson]

gravenewworld, we are talking about PhD students here, and specifically in math. These people are receiving money from the school, as opposed to the other way around. And in my experience, the vast majority of professors really do care about educating and supporting the grad students, even if they don't have a realistic picture of the world those students will graduate into.

What you're saying might be an apt criticism of undergraduate education, but given that he's N years removed from it, I don't think undergraduate education has much to do with the reason homeomorphic doesn't have a job.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Truth to power!

Because universities are run by capitalist pig-dogs, we should turn them into trade schools. Stick it to the man! Power to the people!

 

[Locrian]

The problem is that math phds are still very rare- so a lot of companies are relying on biases that aren't based on first hand experience. For a consulting project, I recently had to work fairly closely with several HR members to find out what they look for in a candidate. Two of them told us explicitly they think too much education is bad (the examples used were hiring a programmer who lists "too many" programming languages on his resume, and someone with a stats phd in a specific analytics role). When I asked why they had these rules, neither could point to someone they hired that didn't work out- they just had platitudes "you hear stories."

The phd rule ended up not being meaningful anyway- searching through their data, they'd never even had any phd apply for any positions.

It's great to hear that you actually worked with HR over the issue and may have made progress on it. I think it's important that you posted your experience, since it's clearly different than mine.

I want to note though that math PhD resumes are far from rare in actuarial work (and Masters degrees seem almost common). Most actuarial departments circumvent HR and bigger companies have dedicated actuarial recruiting staff. My prior post should be read with that in mind.

 

[homeomorphic]

Yeah, I don't have any debts, except a tiny bit of roommate debt. Normally, someone in my position would have a good shot to get an academic job. I just don't want one of those, plus I had trouble with teaching, so I'm not sure if anyone would write me a teaching recommendation. I'm not the only one who has teaching difficulties, but this is something that hit me harder than most people in math.

If you look at the data, most math PhDs get academic jobs or postdocs. I'm not sure about what happens to the postdocs, if they become professors or what.

So, a lot of people do get jobs after finishing the PhD in my program, although there are some people who didn't and a lot of people who were in a lot of suspense and finally got something. I'm just a failure at teaching, so I got screwed over. Quite a few people don't finish the PhD, though. I'm not sure where all of them go. I knew a couple who teach, now, and a couple working in insurance. Even in my case, I've had to struggle a bit, but I will probably still end up with a good job. We don't know yet.

Here's that data from a couple years ago.

http://www.ams.org/profession/data/annual-survey/2012Survey-NewDoctorates-Supp-TableE1.pdf

Not that bad. What you see is about 1800 new PhDs. About 1/3 got non-academic jobs. About a hundred unemployed and 100 unaccounted for. Or something like that. Doesn't say which are tenure-track and which are the terrible adjunct positions. Also, it doesn't show how many people dropped out before finishing.

But keep in mind, this thread is an offshoot of a thread dealing with a BS in math. So, that's the context, which is why I've talking about how it's bad outside of academia. Well, maybe I have the over-qualification thing going on, but my point was, I've got the whole PhD, and it's not that easy. I don't think "applied" makes it that much better, unless it's the sort of applied that gives you marketable skills.

 

[Locrian]

I tend to resent this whole thing of not being able to speak my mind.

Nobody is telling you that you shouldn't speak your mind. Start a blog. Write an article for a magazine. Shout from your roof.

Speak your mind, but be capable of being appropriate to the time and place.

Answer those questions I listed and let's make sure you're prepared for them. They're the easy ones, but they trip lots of people up.

 

[homeomorphic]

Nobody is telling you that you shouldn't speak your mind. Start a blog. Write an article for a magazine. Shout from your roof.

Speak your mind, but be capable of being appropriate to the time and place.

Well, that's kind of what I was talking about, actually. I'm not saying I have to go around telling everyone everything that's wrong with academia all the time. I was just saying I need to shout from my roof, and maybe people aren't going to like what I say sometimes. But that doesn't have to be part of my job search. On this thread, some people have acted as if somehow this is what's preventing me from getting a job, but it's got nothing to do with it.

Answer those questions I listed and let's make sure you're prepared for them. They're the easy ones, but they trip lots of people up.

Okay, I'll think about it some more.

 

[homeomorphic]

"Why are you changing careers?"

I liked math as an undergraduate and to some extent in graduate school, too, but I found that I wasn't that interested in research-level math. I also realized that I wanted to do something more practical.

"Why aren't you teaching?"

I find teaching stressful, especially when it comes to lower-level math classes. It can be challenging to teach a subject to an audience that doesn't want to be there. Also, I find it draining to prepare for class several times a week with the whole class counting on you. It's also the kind of work that follows you home, and it never really feels like you are really done preparing for a class. You could always spend more time thinking about how to make things better. I'd rather have a job where I'm mostly free to do what I want when I get home.

"Why leave academia?"

I am more interested in putting things into practice in the real world than I am in academic research. I would like to accomplish something more concrete than publishing in math journals.

"Wouldn't you rather be working in the field you studied?"

Any interest I have in math and physics is best left as a hobby for me because I need to have complete freedom to pursue my curiosity wherever it leads, regardless of whether it yields any new ideas or publications. It's unlikely that I would have much to publish because I'm more interested in understanding things that we already know in a more intuitive way than I am in coming up with new results. It's very hard and not very fulfilling to do publishable research if you do not have a burning desire to answer the open questions in the field. Another issue is that to work in the field I studied, I would be required to also work in a different field which I have not studied, namely teaching.

 

[analogdesign]

I think your answers are pretty good except for your answer to "Why aren't you teaching?". I think you should think on that one if plan to apply to an engineering job. What you described as issues you have with teaching are essential aspects of the day-to-day life of a practicing engineer.

Often you have to work with people who are too busy to talk to you. These people could be other engineers, techs, or customers. Everyone is pulled in their own directions and you will have to learn to negotiate with them. How do you convince someone who you don't have any actual power over to do a task that you require in order for you to do your work? This is a hard and stressful problem. Also, you'll be preparing for meetings all the time and at a design review everyone will be counting on you.

And believe me, every engineer on this board will agree with me when I say that engineering is the type of job that follows you home. I have a project due in Sept. and it is already keeping me up some nights wondering how will I ever get it done in time. If you say: "I'd rather have a job where I'm mostly free to do what I want when I get home." most hiring managers will think you aren't engineering material. Every engineer ever feels they are never really done preparing a design or a change order or report whatever.

Some of the things that you don't like about teaching are just aspects of being a professional. That is one of the things that differentiates a professional career. You have to take ownership of your own projects and become self-directed. That means taking your work home with you and doing whatever it takes on occasion to complete your project.

 

[homeomorphic]

I think your answers are pretty good except for your answer to "Why aren't you teaching?". I think you should think on that one if plan to apply to an engineering job. What you described as issues you have with teaching are essential aspects of the day-to-day life of a practicing engineer.

Often you have to work with people who are too busy to talk to you. These people could be other engineers, techs, or customers. Everyone is pulled in their own directions and you will have to learn to negotiate with them. How do you convince someone who you don't have any actual power over to do a task that you require in order for you to do your work? This is a hard and stressful problem. Also, you'll be preparing for meetings all the time and at a design review everyone will be counting on you.

And believe me, every engineer on this board will agree with me when I say that engineering is the type of job that follows you home. I have a project due in Sept. and it is already keeping me up some nights wondering how will I ever get it done in time. If you say: "I'd rather have a job where I'm mostly free to do what I want when I get home." most hiring managers will think you aren't engineering material. Every engineer ever feels they are never really done preparing a design or a change order or report whatever.

Some of the things that you don't like about teaching are just aspects of being a professional. That is one of the things that differentiates a professional career. You have to take ownership of your own projects and become self-directed. That means taking your work home with you and doing whatever it takes on occasion to complete your project.

Hmm. Well, part of me is asking if I really want to be an engineer, then, part of me is thinking, maybe I can't get away from it, no matter what job I get, but part of me is thinking that there's something about teaching that is different in a crucial way. It's hard to pin it down. I think nothing puts you in the spotlight like like teaching. It's not so much fear of public speaking, which I got over. It just has this quality of feeling like there's a gun to my head, which nothing else I've ever done has. My thesis wasn't quite like it, even though the thesis followed me home. The best way to describe my thesis is that it was like having to carry a very heavy weight around wherever I went. But it wasn't the gun-to-my-head feeling that teaching gives me. I could have said that the students gave me poor evaluations and complained about me, but I thought it was better not to reveal that. I could add that the last time I taught, my evaluations were okay.

I think what it is is that with teaching, it's like constantly giving me an extremely unreasonable deadline for a project. Each class feels like a project that, in a reasonable world, I would have 3 weeks to do. I think that might capture what I don't like about it. You just can't expect quality if you make someone teach 3-5 times a week, at least not from me, and it just bothers me that I can't really think things through and do some research on how people respond to each topic, how do the best teachers do it, etc. With years of experience, in the current system, you can keep doing that sort of thing, getting notes from previous years and improving it each time, but it makes for a rough experience for beginners, I think. If it sounds like I'm being a perfectionist about it, it's because I'm terrified of the students judging me and complaining to the department because they really gave me hell, the first few times I taught, and I think I'm scarred for life, after that. There's nothing that scares me like teaching.

Plus, I don't really believe in lecturing predominantly, but I didn't have that much choice, as a grad student. I just thought I shouldn't get all experimental, as a beginning teacher. I experimented with some non-lecturing stuff, but I figured I shouldn't get too fancy with it, with a certain amount of material to cover and not knowing how the students would react, and so on. And I suppose, to be fair to today's lectures, I could say that the students are supposed to do most of the work outside the lecture, so in a way, our educational system isn't actually predominantly lecture-based, anyway (still, the fact is, most people don't have the kind of attention span to get much out of straight lecturing, least of all those college algebra kids).

I don't mind the job following me home to an extent, which is why I said, I'd like to MOSTLY be free to do what I want. I just want some flexibility, rather than something that's a constant nagging thing that's stressing me out for every waking moment. From what I've heard, I think I can get that as an actuary. My understanding is that I would have to work harder during busy seasons and that sort of thing. And then the exam studying, which is a big deal. But that's not a problem, I think. The reason why is that I can slack off on my studying Monday, but that's okay if I make up for it on Tuesday. As long as I'm ready for the exam when it comes. That's another key thing about teaching. You can't miss a beat. The next class is always there.

Whatever job I get, I'll step up to the plate, and do my best at it. If my work follows me home, it follows me home. Can't win 'em all.

It will be better than teaching, though--no doubt about that.

 

[MarneMath]

I'm going to give you what popped into my mind reading your answers as if you were applying to a statistics field.

I find teaching stressful, especially when it comes to lower-level math classes.

So you think working here won't be stressful? Why? Do you think you won't have to teach someone or a group of people something while employed here ever?

It can be challenging to teach a subject to an audience that doesn't want to be there

. Nearly all of my job is teaching a hostile group why I cannot sign off on their proposal because of bad methods. Do you think it's easy understanding the limits of their data and at the same time trying to find a method that will work or a way to collect more data?

Also, I find it draining to prepare for class several times a week with the whole class counting on you.

As a member of a team, I will count on you to prepare daily for meetings, and briefings that we have. As a junior member of team, you be assigned in ordering daily or week operational reports, and I will depend on you for this information? How will I know you won't burn yourself out?

It's also the kind of work that follows you home, and it never really feels like you are really done preparing for a class. You could always spend more time thinking about how to make things better. I'd rather have a job where I'm mostly free to do what I want when I get home.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I think this doesn't nothing to help you.

Overall, I think this answer alone, would make me shred your paperwork. My impression would be that you are a person is more or less a "professional" student, who does best learning, but not producing and doesn't know why hard work means in the industry. Regardless of the truth value, and as someone not inherently bias against a PhD in mathematics, I would much rather have someone with less credential but gives me more of the "team player" vibe.

Another issue I had was this"

It's very hard and not very fulfilling to do publishable research if you do not have a burning desire to answer the open questions in the field. Another issue is that to work in the field I studied, I would be required to also work in a different field which I have not studied, namely teaching.

How productive will you be as part of my team if you are not fulfilled by your job? This would lead me to ask you why you think field xyz would satisfy you enough for you to stay past 6 months or until you are 'drained' again? Also, as a side note, never say you don't want to learn in a different field as part of your job. As a statistician, I had to learn a lot of biology in order to do my job successfully. Even in the Army as an infantryman, I had to learn how to be a private confidant for sexual assault victims. Learning from a different field that your job interacts with is part of career development for most people.

 

[homeomorphic]

So you think working here won't be stressful? Why?

I'm sure most jobs will be a little stressful, but there's something particularly stressful about teaching. I think we'd all agree that lower stress is preferable to very high stress.

Do you think you won't have to teach someone or a group of people something while employed here ever?

Teaching is fine, provided I have sufficient time to prepare or only have to talk to one or a few people at a time.

. Nearly all of my job is teaching a hostile group why I cannot sign off on their proposal because of bad methods. Do you think it's easy understanding the limits of their data and at the same time trying to find a method that will work or a way to collect more data?

Point taken, but perhaps, it's not entirely a bad thing if I don't get hired because I don't fit the job. Kind of like dating. If I have to do some of that, fine, but if that's "most of the job", I have to agree, I shouldn't be doing the job. If there's nothing where I can avoid that, perhaps I just need to become a wiz at advertising for tutoring and make a living doing that. But I'm not convinced every job is like that. I am getting out of academia, partly because I don't like teaching. If all the other jobs are secretly teaching in disguise, then, yeah, fine, I'll just make a living doing the best kind of teaching (for me, anyway), i.e. tutoring. I can deal with not having a lot of money. Money is preferable, but not essential for me, beyond being able to eat and put a roof over my head, etc.

Also, I find it draining to prepare for class several times a week with the whole class counting on you.
As a member of a team, I will count on you to prepare daily for meetings, and briefings that we have. As a junior member of team, you be assigned in ordering daily or week operational reports, and I will depend on you for this information? How will I know you won't burn yourself out?

Hard to be able to compare. As I've said there's nothing that puts you in the spotlight like teaching. If I get to talk to people who are on my level, that's also a whole different ballgame.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I think this doesn't nothing to help you.

Overall, I think this answer alone, would make me shred your paperwork. My impression would be that you are a person is more or less a "professional" student, who does best learning, but not producing and doesn't know why hard work means in the industry. Regardless of the truth value, and as someone not inherently bias against a PhD in mathematics, I would much rather have someone with less credential but gives me more of the "team player" vibe.

Well, the reason I want it is because I've had the polar opposite of that for the last seven years. So, I do know the meaning of hard work. In fact, I know the meaning of being a workaholic, and I'd like to be able to stop being one.

How productive will you be as part of my team if you are not fulfilled by your job?

Okay, I disagree with the logic here. I was not fulfilled by a different job. If I say I am not fulfilled by X, that says nothing about Y. X could be being a barnyard masturbator (someone who masturbates animals to collect their sperm--apparently, this job exists). I've already explained that I'd be more fulfilled by something a bit more practical.

This would lead me to ask you why you think field xyz would satisfy you enough for you to stay past 6 months or until you are 'drained' again?

Well, it took me 9 years of studying math before I was drained, and it's understood that it's a pretty difficult path that only a few people would make it through.

Also, as a side note, never say you don't want to learn in a different field as part of your job. As a statistician, I had to learn a lot of biology in order to do my job successfully. Even in the Army as an infantryman, I had to learn how to be a private confidant for sexual assault victims. Learning from a different field that your job interacts with is part of career development for most people.

Actually, I love learning different fields, if I like the them. I have very wide interests. It's true that if I was a math professor, I'd get to use (more of) what I studied, but I was trying to point out that, as far as learning how to do other things that I didn't study, I wouldn't get away from that by being a math professor. So, in a way, you're kind of stating my point, which is that math doesn't free me from having to adjust to something that I'm not already prepared for.

 

[jasonRF]

Sorry to jump in the middle of this, but as an engineer who has been in industry for well over a decade the "nothing puts you in the spotlight like teaching" comment is interesting. When an engineer has to give an important presentation to a customer, doing a bad job can result in the customer backing out of the current or future projects (depends on contract details...) which can mean not having enough money to pay everyone's paycheck. So I recommend going into an interview with a better answer than that, and realize that part of what you will be paid for is to handle stress and pressure. The lowest stress/pressure jobs where I work are also the lowest paid - a PhD is WAAAAY overqualified for them - and I suspect that the resulting financial pressure at home that goes along with that is worse than what I have to deal with when I bring my work home.

I wish you the best in your job search.

jason

 

[homeomorphic]

Sorry to jump in the middle of this, but as an engineer who has been in industry for well over a decade the "nothing puts you in the spotlight like teaching" comment is interesting. When an engineer has to give an important presentation to a customer, doing a bad job can result in the customer backing out of the current or future projects (depends on contract details...) which can mean not having enough money to pay everyone's paycheck.

Okay, point taken, but how often do you have to do that?

With teaching, you have to do that several times a week. That's a key point. If you have to do it once a month, that's a whole different ballgame. I actually like giving math talks because it's a one shot deal, usually. Of course, there's no denying that lower pressure talks are more pleasant, but even the one that I gave at the conference was a cool experience. True, there were no huge consequences for not doing well, but it was in front of a very large audience of people I didn't know, so I definitely felt a lot of pressure to not make a fool of myself. So, the frequency of having to be in the spotlight is absolutely key to the reason why I don't like teaching. It's a little subtle.

 

[jasonRF]

I really do understand where you are coming from - if I ever have the opportunity to become a manager I will try to gracefully decline since those jobs have the majority of the "bring home the bacon" responsibility. I seldom have to give the high stress presentations - my bosses do it often.

You just need to think of clean, concise answers to these lines of questioning so that your interviewer moves on to the more useful topics, like what you have to offer, how you are interested in working for their company for reasons x,y,z, etc. I would have loved teaching, but the tenure track was such a long shot that I didn't even bother. My response in interviews was along the lines of, "teaching has its appeal, but I am planning on a carreer where I use my skills to more practical ends." Your response will be different, but having a response is important.

I wish you the best!

jason

 

[eigenperson]

I like teaching, but when I have to talk to people about the challenges, I say something like this:

Teaching well is a bit like doing stand-up comedy, except you have to do a completely new routine every time, you have to do this 3-5 times per week for 13 weeks (10 if you're on the quarter system) in a row, and to make matters worse, only half the audience actually wants to be there.

If that rings true for you, tell the interviewer something like that, and emphasize that you would have been fine with being on stage every once in a while -- maybe even once a week, or with repeating the same performance a few times in a row -- but you were ground down by having to turn in a completely new, fully polished stage performance 3 times a week for 13 weeks in a row.

 

[AlephZero]

With teaching, you have to do that several times a week. That's a key point. If you have to do it once a month, that's a whole different ballgame.

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

Assuming you can stop the class from rioting, they don't have much influence on your career prospects. The brightest kids will probably get A grades whether you actually teach them anything or not.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

The same goes for reports that have to be signed off (which is likely to pretty much all of them, when you start). If you end up as the guy holding up the rest of the project, the team leader isn't going to lose much sleep over just giving your task(s) to other people to redo. And don't imagine that everybody on the team (and on other teams around the company) won't get to know about it.

Do that a few times, and you have a reputation to live with...

And on top of that, if you are working for a "high tech" company, sooner or later you get to be the guy with your neck on the line when you said a test costing say $100,000 was going to work, and it doesn't. Sure, they don't take the $100,000 out of your salary, but there are other not-too-subtle ways of reminding you who wasted the money (plus the extra time it takes to redo it right).

 

[micromass]

I don't like the direction this thread is going to. People are starting to act like teaching is some easy job, while engineering is the toughest job of the world (obviously this is a hyperbole, but some people sure act this way here!)

I don't think this thread is the best place to decide which job is the toughest or hardest job. So let's stop these kind of silly comparisons of jobs please.

 

[Physics_UG]

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

Assuming you can stop the class from rioting, they don't have much influence on your career prospects. The brightest kids will probably get A grades whether you actually teach them anything or not.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

The same goes for reports that have to be signed off (which is likely to pretty much all of them, when you start). If you end up as the guy holding up the rest of the project, the team leader isn't going to lose much sleep over just giving your task(s) to other people to redo. And don't imagine that everybody on the team (and on other teams around the company) won't get to know about it.

Do that a few times, and you have a reputation to live with...

And on top of that, if you are working for a "high tech" company, sooner or later you get to be the guy with your neck on the line when you said a test costing say $100,000 was going to work, and it doesn't. Sure, they don't take the $100,000 out of your salary, but there are other not-too-subtle ways of reminding you who wasted the money (plus the extra time it takes to redo it right).

I'm guessing you've never taught a university class before.

 

[micromass]

I'm guessing you've never taught a university class before.

I said it before, but please stop comparing the toughness of various careers. New posts on this subject will be deleted.

 

[MarneMath]

I'm not trying to say that if you dislike teaching that you'll dislike being an engineer. I was merely letting you know what impressions you answers gave me. Therefore, I think you should rethink your answers and try to be positive. It's very off putting to hear anything negative from someone you are interviewing. We're all human, and if you ever make it to an interview room, it would behoove to to spin your bad experiences in a positive light or withhold yourself from saying negative comments. Heck, it's perfectly ok to tell a white lie.

If someone asked me why I didn't want to teach, I would simply reply with, "While I found the work of teaching young minds rewarding, I learned over time that I would prefer to use the analytic skills I learned at graduate school to help solve tough problems in field xyz and bring forth results."

Remember, every question someone ask you is a chance to sell yourself. If you focus too much on just answering the question and not selling yourself, you're doing it wrong.

Anyway, I'm still surprised you haven't gotten any interviews at all. I think your strategy of job hunting is clearly flawed. You don't have to meet every requirement for a job listing, and applying for only jobs online is generally a bad idea. I remember seeing a job listing online asking for a programmer for 5 years experience with android os in 2010. At the time, the OS hasn't even been out for 5 years. To further illustrate the point, a few months after I left my old job, I looked at usajobs at the posting they had for it, and turns out I don't qualify for it :D!

 

[homeomorphic]

Okay, I hope Micromass can hold back because I not comparing toughness of different careers.

That sounds like teaching is a soft option compared with engineering. In industry, for practical purposes you are "selling" yourself 100% your working time.

That's got to be a bit of an exaggeration. If the industry can't take advantage of a good mind with less than stellar sales ability, they must be doing something wrong.

In industry, even at an "ordinary" in-house meeting where there are no customers, your peer group and their managers are judging you, all the time. If you are so badly prepared you are wasting everybody's time, you won't have the option of just "surviving" to the end of your time-slot. More likely you will be told to sit down and shut up - and don't expect anybody to forget that fact quickly.

Ah, peer group. Totally different scenario. Students are not peers. You have a grad student approaching the frontiers of knowledge talking to math-phobic trigonometry students. That's not even close to a peer-to-peer situation. It's taken me years of tutoring to even BEGIN to understand the bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds. I was hardly ever badly prepared for teaching, as far as just being able to present the raw information (well, maybe the delivery could have been better, but the contents were there). That wasn't why the students were upset with me. They were upset with me because I had such a poor understanding of THEM. Talking to peers doesn't scare me.

 

[homeomorphic]

We're all human, and if you ever make it to an interview room, it would behoove to to spin your bad experiences in a positive light or withhold yourself from saying negative comments. Heck, it's perfectly ok to tell a white lie.

See, that's where I have a lot of trouble. I'm a pretty honest person. The idea that I have to hide things and not just be myself is disheartening to me. I can put a spin on it, but I don't want to lie. If I just say, "academia is awesome, but industry is even better," I don't think that's going to make sense to anyone, anyway.

The fact that I left, by itself, is a bit of a give-away, in terms of indicating that I wasn't happy with it. I don't know why anyone would leave it after putting so much work into it if they didn't think it kind of sucked. I can't hide that, anyway.

Anyway, I'm still surprised you haven't gotten any interviews at all. I think your strategy of job hunting is clearly flawed. You don't have to meet every requirement for a job listing, and applying for only jobs online is generally a bad idea.

As far as only applying for jobs online, it's not so much an idea as it is the default of wanting to do SOMETHING. I'm not very good at other ways of doing it, and the job market in the particular town I live is not good for the kind of jobs I'm looking for, to put it mildly. I've had some opportunities come up from networking, but they didn't lead to anything. I'm not very good at it. I can try to apply for jobs where I don't meet the requirements, but it has to be only a minor violation or else I think I'm wasting my time. I went to a couple job fairs, but those tend not to be that productive. They usually just tell me to go to their website and apply.

It's only been a few months since I finished my dissertation, and I started working on things right away, like reading about different jobs, but I didn't start applying to stuff until December. Hasn't been that long.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If the industry can't take advantage of a good mind with less than stellar sales ability, they must be doing something wrong.

There is a very famous saying: "Nothing happens until something gets sold." In business, everything is about sales, and marketing is first and foremost about selling ideas, not products. Deciding you want to be in the business world and not being interested in sales is like wanting to play baseball but not being interested in the little white ball.

The very first idea you have to sell is that it's better for Company XYZ to have you in a nice, air-conditioned office than in a hot warehouse moving boxes from one part to another - or working for another company entirely.

It's taken me years of tutoring to even BEGIN to understand the bizarre workings of non-mathematical minds

I'll give you your first lesson in sales now. In all probability, the person that decides whether to hire you or not probably has a "non-mathematical mind". If you dial back the contempt a few notches, you will go farther.

 

[eigenperson]

What is happening now is a special case of a more general phenomenon that you will encounter when you do get an interview. That phenomenon is as follows. At some point the interviewer will ask you something like "What are you looking for in a job?" If your answer contains phrases like "I'm looking for a job that doesn't involve doing X," then regardless of what X is, the interviewer will say "Well, actually, in this job, we do have to do X."

This isn't because they enjoy watching the interviewee get flustered. It's because if you say "I don't want to lift heavy objects" they immediately think, "Well, we obviously don't do that much, but there was that one time a year ago when I had to put the widgets on top of the thingimabob... if this guy had been in my position, would he have had a panic attack? He clearly cares a lot about not lifting heavy objects if he brought it up in the job interview."

So, don't say "I don't want to do this" in the job interview, or on the cover letter, or elsewhere.

The fact is, at many companies, you will not be asked to do any sales work. But you still might have to! What if the client is invited to come visit the office and just happens to pop into your cube? What if you are out to lunch with the boss and his friend at Company X sees you and your boss invites her to join you? If you make the interviewer think you aren't suited for sales, he or she will instantly think about that kind of scenario.