Check out the following recommended literature for tips on career development and successfully obtaining your Ph.D.
The Power of a PhD: How Anyone Can Use Their PhD to Get Hired in Industry (2022)
Dr. Isaiah Hankel
Imagine never having to work in another dead-end academic position, or being able to tell the world you are in a leadership position within a thriving company. PhDs are in demand in industry, but often, these PhDs are invisible to potential employers. Dr. Isaiah Hankel, leverages his expertise as the CEO of the world’s largest career training platform for PhDs, Cheeky Scientist, to help PhDs overcome their biggest obstacle: obscurity.
The Power of a PhD is the stepwise blueprint that 18 million PhDs worldwide are seeking. Dr. Isaiah Hankel’s eight core steps within The Power of a PhD include: Industry career options for PhDs, Communicating the right skills, Writing industry résumés, Mastering LinkedIn profiles, Networking and job referrals, Generating informational interviews, Acing industry interviews, and Negotiating your salary.
This eight-step approach provides a consistent and proven methodology that allows PhDs to transition into industry without suffering the painful process of trial and error. You could be the next PhD hired at Amazon, Google, Apple, Intel, Dow Chemical, BASF, ERM, Merck, Genentech, Nestle, Hilton, Tesla, Syngenta, Siemens, the CDC, UN or Ford Foundation!
Our Doctoral Journey: A collection of Black Women’s Experiences (2022)
Data from the Education at a Glance in 2019 states that less than 2 percent of the United States’ and world’s population holds a doctorate degree. Germane to this fact, the National Center of Education statistics reported that, in the 2018-19 academic year, of the doctoral degrees awarded to women, only 10.9 percent were awarded to Black women compared to 63.6 percent awarded to White women in the U.S. Black women who are interested in pursuing a doctorate, already in doctoral programs, or in their field of doctoral work are in crucial need of resources, community, and support. For too long, Black women have faced many systemic barriers and various forms of racist exclusion and oppression in educational settings, which has often led to burnout, low sense of belonging, and low retention rates. This memoir, “Our Doctoral Journey: A collection of Black women’s experiences,” serves as a resource and toolkit for Black women doctors, future doctors, and professionals. Prepare yourselves to read transparent and ground-breaking stories from 24 co-authors, ranging from doctoral students to doctors to professionals, who, with great tenacity, have chosen to share their doctoral experiences. Undeniably, this memoir will give you hope, motivation, and determination to choose what is best for you and persist in your program or in your field of work. As the saying goes, “We’re all that we’ve got.”
Next Gen PhD: A Guide to Career Paths in Science (2018)
Melanie V. Sinche
For decades, top scientists in colleges and universities pursued a clear path to success: enroll in a prestigious graduate program, conduct research, publish papers, complete the PhD, pursue postdoctoral work. With perseverance and a bit of luck, a tenure-track professorship awaited at the end. In today’s academic job market, this scenario represents the exception. As the number of newly conferred science PhDs keeps rising, the number of tenured professorships remains stubbornly stagnant.
Career Options for Biomedical Scientists (2014)
Most people who do a PhD and postdoctoral work in the biomedical sciences do not end up as principal investigators in a research lab. Despite this, graduate courses and postdoctoral fellowships tend to focus almost exclusively on training for bench science rather than other career paths. This book plugs the gap by providing information about a wide variety of different careers that individuals with a PhD in the life sciences can pursue.
Covering everything from science writing and grant administration to patent law and management consultancy, the book includes firsthand accounts of what the jobs are like, the skills required, and advice on how to get a foot in the door. It will be a valuable resource for all life scientists considering their career options and laboratory heads who want to give career advice to their students and postdocs.
Go for No!: Yes Is the Destination, No Is How You Get There (2014)
In a world inundated with sales books on getting to yes, this audiobook recommends just the opposite, focusing on how increasing your failure rate can greatly accelerate your movement toward ultimate success.
Go for No! chronicles four days in the life of fictional character Eric Bratton, a call-reluctant copier salesman who wakes up one morning to find himself in a strange house with no idea of how he got there. But this house doesn’t belong to just anyone! It belongs to him…a wildly successful, 10-years-in-the-future version of the person he could become if he learns to overcome his self-limiting beliefs and overcome his fear of failure.
Through the dialogue of the two main characters, the authors have fashioned an entertaining story to present the key concepts essential to sales success. Listeners learn: What it takes to outperform 92 percent of the world’s salespeople, That failing and failure are two very different things, Why it’s important to celebrate success and failure, How to get past failures quickly and move on, and That the most empowering word in the world is not yes…it’s NO!
Written to be intentionally short and to the point, Go for No! is a quick, fun listen with valuable lessons that can change the way you think, sell, and live!
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
Sheryl Sandberg
In her famed TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than eleven million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg, COO of Meta (previously called Facebook) from 2008-2022, provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home.
Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (1999)
Virginia Valian
Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women.
Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences—gender schemas—that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Those small imbalances accumulate to advantage men and disadvantage women. The most important consequence of gender schemas for professional life is that men tend to be overrated and women underrated.
Valian’s goal is to make the invisible factors that retard women’s progress visible, so that fair treatment of men and women will be possible. The book makes its case with experimental and observational data from laboratory and field studies of children and adults, and with statistical documentation on men and women in the professions. The many anecdotal examples throughout provide a lively counterpoint.