What I learned from doing a PhD

So. Doing a PhD is about becoming an expert on some topic, right? Well, to some extent. The other part of the equation is really that is also an education in becoming a researcher. One learns methodologies, the academic ecosystem, the jargon, and the whole “game” of academia. Although these skills are learned through academia, I’d argue that most PhDs, regardless of academic discipline, acquire a set of industry-useful skills.

“Okaaaay” followed by an awkward silence is not an uncommon response to get when you reveal to someone that you’re a PhD student. My translation of that is “(s)he must be working with things that I will never be able to grasp, nor find relevant to any “real” job”. That is so wrong! I argue that most PhD students acquire a number of highly relevant skills, which I will elaborate on in the following. Grab a cup of coffee because here goes a LONG READ :)

Analytical skills

No matter whether you’re analyzing the mating process of some obscure animal species or – as in my case – digital traces of consumers’ behaviors – doing a PhD means that you’ll be flexing your analytical muscles. First, one spends quite some energy finding out what is already known about the phenomenon of interest and then how which “gap” one is to fill and how it will be filled and not to mention WHY it should be filled. At the end of the day, a more or less coherent story about the project should emerge. This ability to tell the story of a research project is not much different from a manager communicating the establishment of a new department or a new strategy in a company. Or the layoff of employees. A well-founded argumentation has to be in place and to follow a logical common thread. Why are we doing this, on which grounds, and how will we do it?

Then the real work starts and the PhD student, in most cases, starts to collect and analyze data. Here, being able to see patterns and distill the knowledge down to manageable bites is something that academic researchers are constantly practicing. In my case, I have been developing the concept of ‘Electronic Word of Behavior’ (eWOB). The very first grains of that were simply seemingly random observations of a phenomenon which I then started to document. After some time, I was able to see patterns and variations in that documentation, which allowed me to distill these seemingly random observations down to the concept of eWOB. Further, I put that new concept in relation to already known concepts and theory which gave the new concept a context and a “home” so it was better understood by those new to it.   

Finally, to assist the analytical process, most PhD students take foundational methods courses (qualitative and quantitative methods, research design etc.), but also more specialized courses. In my case, I’ve supplemented the foundational courses with for example Python programming and Social Network Analysis. However, my personal experience is that the good old internet will be where you really learn your methods and tools. At least, that’s where you extend the basic knowledge gained in the courses; where you find those specific types of analytical methods that suits your specific challenge. I’ve learned so much just from being d*mn stubborn in terms of finding solutions to the problems at hand and seeking advice in geeky online forums. So, a PhD indeed also means continuously acquiring new skills and learning new tools, often in a very self-driven manner – and which organization does not appreciate such skills?  

Communication skills

The number one currency in academia is published articles. So, you write. A lot. And let’s just get it out there: academic writing is a genre of its own, true that. But the whole exercise of finding a journal that suits the message you want to convey and crafting the story and argumentation to fit the audience of that specific journal is a highly relevant one for so many other professions. Just think of the process of preparing a power point presentation. Who will I be talking to, what do they already know, how should I present my “big idea”?  Diligent PhD students will be trained in thinking this way.

Besides communicating findings through written articles, researchers travel around the world to present their work at academic conferences. So, while it’s true that we do spend quite a lot of time before our screens, we also do get out among other people and put together presentations where we seek to communicate our research to others, and actually often to people from very different backgrounds. So that, too, means serious consideration as to how to get the key message across, which again, is a highly transferable skill.

Finally, many PhD students also teach courses at their universities. Here, they are fighting the battle against all the Facebook, Snapchat, and breaking things happening on students screens (in the classroom). My experience is that this often requires alternative approaches as to how to get students involved, how to make the theory come to life etc. Much of which is more or less directly transferable to for example facilitating a workshop in a corporate setting.

Feedback skills

This might not be the most well-known academic skill, but a lot of time in a PhD is spent both receiving and giving feedback. One gets written feedback on one’s articles, for example. The weird thing here is that the feedback is given by anonymous reviewers. So, it’s an exercise in really trying to understand what their objections and suggestions are all about. That sometimes means having to investigate an area that you have a hard time seeing as relevant. But which might turn out to be super relevant! This exercise is also reversed. As a PhD student you also do such reviews yourself. Basically, reading articles and giving constructive feedback on how that paper can be Improved.

The same thing basically goes for conferences. Here, you put yourself out there and let others brutally attack your work and try to take it in in order to improve the work. Well, hopefully, it’ll all happen in a constructive atmosphere. And of course, PhD students also find themselves on the other side of the table where they give constructive feedback to presenters (to newbies as well as experienced academics). To sum up, the entire eco system of producing and publishing research is highly feedback-based. So if you’re lucky to hire a PhD at some point in your company you should expect that colleague to be able to quickly form an opinion of a piece of work and to give constructive feedback.

Networking

And now that we are talking of the underpinnings of academia, one such should not go unnoticed: networking. Academia is, in most disciplines, a global affair, and knowing the right people at the right time can be invaluable. Networking that might not right now be directly valuable can come in handy later on. So most PhD students ought to be adept in forming connections with other people (or just simply manage his/her way through an awkward lunch with a senior visiting scholar). Who would have thought that?! J

Stamina

Finally, doing a PhD involves a great deal of freedom. Freedom to pursue your own research interests, and to do the work when it suits you. But with all that, admittedly seductive, freedom also comes responsibility and sometimes lack of direction. Unless your PhD is part of a very specific research project with other researchers, the project is really ON YOU. Although I’ve had an awesome supervisor I have indeed felt so lonely at times. I’ve cried at the seemingly pointless of it all. Does anyone care? Which value will all of this time spent bring and to whom? But to me, quitting was just not an option. I had this very strong feeling that if I quit I would have this open wound for the rest of my life. Because I had already poured so much energy into it, and the thought of that just being (more or less) wasted was a major no go. So I kept on going, almost like Japanese author Murakami has described his mental approach when training for marathons thinking “I am a machine”. Sounds a little scary when I put those words down in writing! However, doing a PhD does indeed require stamina. And that skills (or trait, if you will) can be put to use in so many areas: academia as well as industry, entrepreneurship, sports and hobbies; you name it.

On a closing remark, doing a PhD has been quite an adventure for me. It has come with sacrifices so big that I am 100% sure I would not have started it if I had known these on beforehand. But at the same time the PhD has also made me so much wiser - not only on my specific topic, but also on who I am and what drives me as well as other people. And as I have hopefully conveyed in this post, it has also equipped me with a handful of universally applicable skills.