I earned my PhD in Engineering in 2023 and have been doing postdocs since then. I’ve worked across a fairly wide range of topics, but at the end of the day my job boils down to sitting behind a screen for ~8 hours a day.
Honestly, I feel like I can’t do this anymore. I’m currently applying to jobs in the private sector, but given my background, most of the roles I’m considering look almost identical to what I’m already doing.
What I would like is a job with more human interaction, such aw working with customers, clients, and teams.
The problem is that whenever I apply to these kinds of roles, I don’t get shortlisted. I’m told that I “lack experience,” and I’m competing against long queues of people who have been doing this type of work for years.
So my question is: how is anyone actually supposed to switch careers or roles in today’s job market? And has anyone here successfully moved from academia / highly technical roles into something more people-oriented? I’m
I’m currently moving from trucking to cybersecurity. So far I’ve had interviews and interviews but not a job.
Main reasons I decided to change careers is family time and concerns about future prospects for my kids to look up to for their careers. Also I wanted to do something that is more mindful, research and analysis.
It’s extremely hard and at times depressing for me since I’ve been looking for a job for the past two years with no luck, I’ve been ghosted, rejected,lied to by employers many times than I can count.
It’s a really frustrating period and you have to go through a downturn before you come back to your current income levels. You’ll drain your savings and that will affect your ability to even focus on your new career. You’d think about going back to your old job many times in the process.
so my humble opinion would be don’t do it if you can live with your current job and it’s not horribly difficult for you to stay.
If you decided that you absolutely have to do it, don’t let your current role go, take a step at a time by looking if there’s a role within your current organization that works for you if not see if you can find one through your connections. If not you can start as part time in a %100 commission based sales jobs to see if you like it. There’s tons of commission only sales jobs on indeed.
Good luck!
Product manager, tech sales, project management, customer facing data scientist/analyst(consultant sort of role). You can probably do a couple projects you can put on your resume.