One of the problems with following a simplistic job search strategy (i.e. see a job advertisement, send a résumé, and wait for a response) is that there is little to no feedback. So, if you are inadvertently doing something that wrecks your chances of being considered as a serious candidate, then you might never know it. This sort of situation is particularly common during an academic to industrial career transition. Here are three things I see all the time that could derail your chances of industrial physics job application success:
1. Sending a CV Instead of a Resume
Sending a long-form academic-style curriculum vitaes (CVs) in response to an industrial job advertisement is not the best plan. Sending a targeted resume gives a better chance of generating interest and a reply. What is the difference between the two? CVs are generally a catalog of all the things you have done. Résumés, on the other hand, are best thought of as marketing material to get a buyer (the employer) interested in a product (you). Because they have different goals, résumés should have different content and format. Here are a few of my tips:
- Length: CVs are usually long and (good) résumés are typically short. The problem with sending a long CV for an industrial job application is that the extraneous detail dilutes the message you are trying to send. It also marks you as “academic” and potentially naïve about private industry. A shorter résumé (one page if you are just starting out, maybe two later in your career) helps on both counts. Remember, your résumé is essentially a sales pitch. Its only purpose is to get a potential employer interested enough to contact you so you can advance to the next stage in the process.
- Focus: CVs are typically an encyclopedic record of your education and career. Chances are that a lot of what you have done over the years is not directly applicable to a particular position you are seeking. Therefore, the résumé you send should include only your most relevant qualifications. For example, most hiring managers are not particularly interested in the conference poster you did years ago on an unrelated subject.
- Advantageous Details: Make sure to include any optional details that work to your advantage and exclude any that do not. Do you live near the job you are applying for? Great, then it is probably wise to include your address so they know you live nearby, which makes it easier to bring you in for an interview. By the same logic, you might want to leave your address off if you live a thousand miles from the job. Are you a citizen of the country the job is in? If you are, then put your citizenship on your résumé so they know they can hire you without a bunch of immigration paper work. Alternatively, if you need a hard-to-obtain visa to take the job, you might not want to lead with that fact. Also, be aware of differing national standards. For example, items that may typically be included on résumés in Europe (photograph, age, marital status, etc.) are not appropriate on résumés in the United State due to the local norms regarding anti-discrimination practices.
2. Expecting the Perspective Employer to Figure Out Your Appeal
Do not expect a potential employer to spend time figuring out why they should hire you. Instead, improve your odds by being as blatantly obvious as possible about why you are a prime candidate. When I get résumés sent in to a job advertisement, I spend literally a few seconds looking over each one before deciding if it warrants further consideration. I believe that I am fairly typical in this regard and a few seconds is not a lot of time to engage someone’s interest.
Your résumé should be very clear, uncluttered, and emphasize the exact qualifications listed in the advertisement. It also needs to be comprehensible to a non-physicist because someone in human resources will likely be the first to see it. At a minimum, that means no acronyms or technical jargon unless it directly matches terms in the job advertisement.
One way you can accomplish all of the above is starting your résumé with a “brand statement” in plain English. This should come directly below your name and contact information and consist of a professional title that characterizes you (which is not necessarily the title you have, but should be aligned with the job you are seeking) followed by four or five lines describing the value you add to the world in clear terms. For example, my official job title is currently “Lead Scientist” and I have done many different things along the way to that position as you can see on my LinkedIn profile. One version of my succinct and comprehensible brand statement based on all that information looks like this:
LEAD PLASMA TECHNOLOGY RESEARCHER
For the past 15 years, I have worked to develop various types of plasma and electrical arc discharge devices. My current work focuses on translating nuclear fusion theory into practice. I direct the efforts of a 16 member sensors and diagnostics team in hardware development and simulations to help realize the first practical fusion reactor for power generation. As part of my work, I often serve as the interface between physicists, engineers, computational scientist, and management at both the line and c-level. I also have extensive experience in presenting and communicating research results to both business and technical audiences.
The beauty of this approach is that it takes a lot of the guess-work out of the equation for the person reviewing your résumé. You immediately set their mental image of who you are and what you do (i.e. your brand) at the outset, and then use the following detail to support it. That is a lot more compelling than laying out a lot of detail and hoping they form the desired picture of you on their own.
3. Not Following Up
If you are interested enough to invest your time applying for a job, then it is smart to maximize the chances of that investment paying off by following up. By following up I mean doing your best to contact the people making the decision about hiring for the position, either directly or indirectly. This is vitally important because becoming a person in the minds of the people doing the hiring, rather than just an application, automatically and drastically increases your chances of getting to an interview and ultimately getting the job. The few seconds of résumé review mentioned above can easily become minutes or longer if someone goes to the trouble to contact me or someone on my team in a reasonable and appropriate way. I recently hired someone whose résumé I would never have seen if he had not reached out to a friend at my company because his original application was misrouted.
Making contact by utilizing your network is easier than you might imagine. I recommend starting on an informational interviewing campaign at your company of interest immediately after identifying and applying for a job there (if not before). Check out my guide to informational interviews for details on how to get started.