Research Adjacent meets Papa PhD (Episode 68) | A special double-header episode – Sarah interviews David Mendes, and David interviews Sarah
This episode of the Research Adjacent podcast is a special double-bill. First up Sarah meets David Mendes, aka Papa PhD, medical writer/translator and host of the Papa PhD: Beyond the Thesis podcast. Then the tables are turned and David interviews Sarah for the Beyond the Thesis podcast.
For Research Adjacent, Sarah and David talk about
- How networking led to both the career and podcast he has now
- The origin story of the Papa PhD podcast
- Why the podcast has helped him feel more confident
- The emotional and practical challenges of the post-PhD journey
Then for Beyond the Thesis, David and Sarah have a conversation about
- How Sarah transitioned from research to research-adjacent post-PhD
- Advocating for research-adjacent professionals
- Research-adjacent jobs and where to find them
- Why PhD graduates who want to become research-adjacent need to reframe both their skills and their expectations
Find out more
- Connect to David on LinkedIn
- Listen to the sister episode released via Papa PhD
- Visit the Papa PhD podcast website
- Follow the Papa PhD podcast on Instagram or X
- Connect to Sarah on LinkedIn
Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay
Episode Transcript
David Mendes 00:01
And I thought, if I share these stories people who are in this doubt, in this fog of the end of the PhD, not knowing what comes after, and being anxious, there’s nothing better than hearing the story of someone who navigated that and actually came out on the other side, happy and is fulfilled. The PhD three letters that are the same around the world, but no PhD as a person and as a job candidate is like the next one.
Sarah McLusky 00:28
These research adjacent jobs make a phenomenal contribution to research actually happening and being successful and getting up in the world and having an impact, but they don’t get credit. And I thought, what can I do to help shine a spotlight on these people and the incredible work that they do? And that’s what led me to start the Research Adjacent podcast.
Sarah McLusky 00:55
Hello there. I’m Sarah McLusky, and this is Research Adjacent. Each episode, I talk to amazing research-adjacent professionals about what they do and why it makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space is where the real magic happens.
Sarah McLusky 01:16
Welcome to a very special episode of Research Adjacent. Today is a double bill in collaboration with the Papa PhD Beyond the Thesis podcast. First up, you’re going to hear me interviewing David Mendes, aka Papa PhD, and then stay tuned for David interviewing me for the Papa PhD podcast. The same episode is going out on the Beyond the Thesis feed as well, with the order reversed. So if you are really keen, you can listen to both. So first up, you’ll hear David sharing his career journey and the story behind the Papa PhD podcast. David is much further on in his podcasting journey, and has 300 episodes in the bag, some in English and some in French, but the story behind both our podcasts is similar. David started his podcast in 2019 as a way to offer support and inspiration to PhD graduates navigating the transition into work, and like me, he also has a day job. His is as a freelance medical writer and translator. Alongside podcasting, we talk about the power of networking, how the podcast has helped him become more confident and outgoing, and why the transition from PhD to work can be so challenging and emotional for everybody.
Sarah McLusky 02:26
And wait there’s more. Hang around to the end of my conversation with David to hear the flip side. The tables are turned, and David becomes the interviewer and I become the interviewee. I tell David all about my post PhD journey, why I started the Research Adjacent podcast and my advice for PhD graduates exploring the wide world of research-adjacent job opportunities. You won’t be surprised to hear me say that one of my top tips is to narrow down the options by taking the research adjacent careers quiz at researchadjacent.com/quiz, and then using the results to explore the research adjacent podcast back catalog, but don’t go there just yet for now, listen on here. First up is David story.
Sarah McLusky 03:10
Welcome along to the Research Adjacent podcast, David. It’s fantastic to have you here. I wonder if we could begin by hearing a bit about who you are and what you do.
David Mendes 03:20
So my name is David Mendes. One of the reasons I’m here today is because both of us are academic ecosystem podcasters. I’ve been now almost for six years running the Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD podcast. On that side of things, I’m part of this great community of people who are trying to give back to the academic community. We’ve been part of it. We went through graduate school, and we’re trying to share whatever we have. You know, we have done learned in our post academic or post PhD journey, sometimes academic too. For me, it’s really been about hearing – I’ve done almost 300 interviews with people such as you, but a lot of other people – about their post PhD journey, and it’s about getting young researchers to tune up a little bit how they tell the story of what they did, so that it allows them to have quicker and better outcomes professionally after they get the degree, be it to become a professor, but we know that’s 1/5 of people who can go that path, but especially the other ones who need to transition to different professional ecosystems where they’ll have to advocate for themselves and learn a new culture, a new language, etc. So it’s trying to help them, to mentor them and coach them to do that. Then the other side of what I do, it has to do with what I’ve done professionally, even before starting the podcast, and that has been so the space where I’ve been developing my work has been medical communication, so medical writing and translation and always in the scientific medical domain. And if we go a little bit back, my PhD was in cell biology. I have a PhD from the University of Coimbra in Portugal. The lab work was all done here in Montreal, where I ended up staying at the Montreal Neurological Institute and before that, so I did my undergrad and Master’s in Portugal in genetics and microbiology. My path was not linear. I didn’t go straight from the Master’s to the PhD. It’s interesting to look back and make sense of how things happened, even though a lot of them were serendipitous.
Sarah McLusky 05:41
Yeah that’s one of the things I love most about this podcast is often people comment on that, that is, I’m giving them an opportunity to almost look back and make sense, yes, the path that they’ve gone on. So a PhD in cell biology, then you got, I mean, I’m imagining it wasn’t straight into doing this medical communications work. How did that come about? Why was that an area that interested you?
David Mendes 06:04
That’s a great question, because these days, I have been talking directly to graduate students a lot about networking and the importance of it for them, even while they are in graduate school. And when I finished and in my presentation, I show this kind of image. I don’t know if you’ve been in a if you’ve been to, like, cornfield maze. I don’t know if
Sarah McLusky 06:25
Yes I know what you mean. They sometimes call them a maize maze here,
David Mendes 06:28
Amazing. Yeah maize squared. So I had been to one in the Fall. All the corn was brown and kind of gloomy in a certain way, kind of Halloweeny, Halloween esque. And I filmed that. And I actually, I used it in my presentation, because it kind of looks like a little bit scary and lost. And I was lost. I hadn’t built up any social capital outside my close network of people in the lab, maybe the institute, but no further than that. And then my friends, family, etc. And actually my first job while I was floundering to understand what was going to happen actually came through friends and family. So the mother in law of my partner’s friend, actually needed people with my profile to do distance education tutoring for for people who needed to kind of complement their secondary school curriculum with, I don’t know, chemistry, physics. It was always science related. It’s people who wanted to do medical degrees, not MD, but nursing or something related more to health,
Sarah McLusky 07:36
Allied health stuff.
David Mendes 07:37
Yeah. And so I did this almost a year, not full time, something I had done before, something I enjoyed. But the thing is, this was not a full time job. But the cool thing about this story was it came totally out of the blue. My partner says, Hey, by the way, and my friend says that her mother in law needs someone like you. I was like, Okay, that’s interesting. So the point of that story is that, yeah, when we talk of networking, it often scares people, because, no, I have to go buy a suit and go to this event. And sometimes networking happens organically in the network that you already have that’s not even related to academia, because you never know whether this person knows someone who might actually have an opportunity for you. So that was the first job. But because it didn’t, you know, it ended up not filling up my schedule. I kept looking, and then I was more like intentional. And I went back to my Institute, where I had done the lab there, I noticed some people weren’t there anymore. And I started asking, Where are they? And thinking, Oh, they probably masters, went to PhD, or PhD, went to postdoc, and two of them had gone to work in this domain that I had never heard of, which was called medical writing. And so then it was really just a question of, okay, well, I’m not a very extroverted person, but I still said, you know, this sounds interesting. I’ve always liked languages communicating science is always something was part of the process of graduate school that I always liked. I particularly liked creating figures. But anyway, there was something there that piqued my curiosity. And then talking with these two people who actually were at the same employer, I said, Okay, this has potential. And they said, if you are interested, there’s a kind of an internal referral program. Let’s look at your CV, tailor it, and I can pass it on. And the rest is, yeah, and then I actually spent almost five years at that company going from junior to senior medical writer.
Sarah McLusky 09:40
Yeah it’s this it’s, as you say, it’s amazing how sometimes just these connections and networks and people that you know, just opportunities come up, and however much you plan out your career, however much you think you know where you’re going to go, there’s always something that comes up just out of left field and you just go all right. Yeah, let’s do that. I mean, there’s people I’ve interviewed on the podcast, you know, who’ve ended up in a certain career just because there was a boss that went in that direction. So they looked at what employers there were along that bus route. You know, when that sort of thing, you just end up where you end up. It’s fascinating, but, but, yeah, as you say about networking, I’ve had Jeni Smith, previous guest on this podcast, a couple of episodes that are worth going back to if people are interested on networking. She’s got some fantastic tips there about how, as you say, it’s not about going to some stuffy event, and, you know, making awkward conversation. There’s lots of different ways of approaching networking. So you find yourself in this medical writing field getting really established there. What was it that made you want to come back and start sharing stories of people in their post PhD journey? What made you want to start the podcast?
David Mendes 10:56
What was actually the starting point of this reflection of that led to starting beyond the thesis in 2019 once I was kind of like you said, starting to be established in that medical writing space. I started being invited here in Montreal to different career events, career panels, and then hearing the questions of current graduate students like, and this would be like, three years after my PhD, 5, 10 years after my PhD, and and understanding that some of the issues that I had had by the end of my PhD, the end was like, not super pleasant in different ways, like, like, monetary wise, and anyway, there were different things, like technical difficulties in my experiment that led me to, you know, to have a tough time of the last year or so, and then also to be writing while I was, while I was doing that tutoring work that I mentioned, etc, and then defending eventually after. But so two things happened. First, I understood, okay, these things that I was like putting on myself or blaming myself for at the end of my PhD, that you know, and that feeling of okay I got into the PhD because I wanted to teach. I got into the PhD, because I love being in the lab and doing research, and now I’m leaving academia, and there’s a feeling of maybe failure to a certain extent that I had and thought belonged just to me, and also of leaving a tribe that you were working to be part of all these years. And when you get to the PhD, it’s been a bunch of years, and but seeing that, the doubts, the difficulties that I had, were then echoed by one to 10, 20 people each time I was going to a career event. First, maybe kind of rethink the the self blame mindset that I was in, and takes kind of some distance from it. That’s where the genesis of the idea of the podcast comes eventually, at a certain moment, I had this opportunity. I had the material because I had a good mic. I had material to do that, and I had friends from the lab who were now not also not going for postdocs, but starting their startups or being science communicators. And I thought, if I share these stories people who are in this doubt, in this fog of the end of the PhD, not knowing what comes after, and being anxious, there’s nothing better than hearing the story of someone who navigated that and actually came out on the other side happy and is fulfilled. There’s nothing better than that to help lower this anxiety and these negative feelings. And so yeah, that was it. In 2019 I had more time at a certain period I saw and I think it was a it was an article on Facebook saying why you should start your podcast in 2019 and, you know, think things align. I had this people, this, this community I wanted to help. I had this idea of what could help. And I also had the material, the gear to actually start something, a podcast that could bring that message out to people, and that’s how it was born. I never thought I’d be like behind a mic in front of a camera, and here we are, almost six years later, and more than 300 episodes later, and I it’s something I you know, until there are no more people out there needing to hear these stories, I see myself continuing to do this, and there’s an aspect that you mentioned that I also feel it’s also fun sometimes to see how the guest takes pleasure in revisiting time that we talk about, because often they haven’t thought about it since then, you know, and they get a chance. To take stock of things and sometimes reframe things anyway. It’s it’s a lot of fun for me. So while it’s fun and while it’s helping people, I’ll keep on doing it.
Sarah McLusky 15:09
Yeah. I mean, I have to say 300 plus episodes is an amazing achievement, and certainly, the story behind how Research Adjacent started is very similar. It’s like, there’s these people I want to help. I know some people who I could get to talk. I know how to make podcasts. Let’s just do it. That’s one of the things about podcasts, isn’t it? You can just get on but, but those things that you were saying about, you know, coming to do something different after your PhD and starting to think, Oh, does this make me a failure? Or who am I if I’m not part of this community, they come up so often with people that I speak to, whether it’s people who are currently PhD students, whether it’s people who’ve moved on, because some of those feelings can take a long time to oh yeah process as well. So it is really valuable to share those stories and to help to give people, as you say, different people resonate with different stories. So having all these different examples of people who’ve done things and done things a different way. So as I say, 300 plus episodes is very impressive for us, as we sit on what I think this is going to be about number 70 or something, this one when it comes out, for me. So over that time, whether it’s with the work that you’ve done around the medical writing, whether it’s around the Papa PhD podcast, I always like to invite my guest to tell us about a couple of really nice examples of things you’ve done that you’re really proud of, that you feel have made a difference. What would you like to share?
David Mendes 16:33
One thing that’s changed for me in the last year or so is that I decided to well also, if we go a little bit back, there was COVID. So what I’m gonna say was not possible, but because I’m an introvert, I wasn’t going to in person events and accepting invitations like that so much. And since the last year and a half, two years, I’ve started to do so. I say it because from my conversations with graduate students introversion or awkwardness in social situations is, you know, there’s a bunch of them who come to me with with those types of questions and and I just want to say that that decision of, if there’s someone interesting, I’m gonna go introduce myself and show my interest or appreciation for what they shared. It really has been a game changer for me in terms of opportunities, of collaboration, of projects that have come up from that. And I know it’s not exactly what you were asking for, but if we’re thinking of inspiring the people who are listening, if you’re not going and meeting people out there, you may not suspect you know what sort of unexpected results and positive impact on your professional, academic and personal life may come from that and and so one of the things is that is I have, and, of course, I think, actually, I’m sure that having done this exercise of podcasting and be of meeting people almost weekly who are who I don’t Know and with whom I have an hour of conversation has helped me kind of develop or strengthen that muscle of extroversion. There’s really a before and after, allowing myself and pushing myself to go out and meet people, and it’s really had like, like tangible impact on what beyond the thesis is today, but also, you know what help and what contribution I’m actually able to bring directly to graduate students here in Montreal or Quebec City, it’s really been because of this kind of pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So I think it’s not exactly
Sarah McLusky 19:02
You say that’s not answering the question, but I think it’s definitely something to be proud of. Yeah, if it’s clearly something that you’ve done that for you was challenging, and it’s had these, these benefits for yourself and for other people, then I think that’s a fantastic example of something to be proud of. And, yeah, it’s interesting. I do often say that podcasting is probably the most intense form of networking I’ve ever done, because it is, yeah, let’s just invite somebody to come and sit in a room with me for an hour and tell me their life story. Yeah, it’s a pretty good way to get to know people. So yeah, if you need to do more networking, start a podcast or,
David Mendes 19:39
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And podcast is a way to go, but it could take other forms. It can be get together with your colleagues, you’re, let’s say, in graduate school, and start a seminar series where you invite alumni.
Sarah McLusky 19:53
Yeah, yeah, that’s it. It just gives you that reason to reach out to these people that you want to build a relationship with,
David Mendes 20:00
reason and platform also,
Sarah McLusky 20:02
yeah, great examples. I think one thing that I would love to ask you about is now you know you’ve spoken to not just all the people that you’ve had as guests on your podcast, but as you say, you now go out and give talks and give advice to students who are currently in that position. What are some of the main pieces advice that come up, whether it’s from your guests or whether it’s the sorts of things you know, distill and share with people. What advice would you give to people who are just either coming to the end of their PhD or coming out the other side?
David Mendes 20:33
I’m going to start with a fairly simple one and frequent which is the question that comes up is, should I be on LinkedIn? And how pretty should my profile be on LinkedIn? And I would say you’d be surprised how many people from the academic community are on LinkedIn, academic, academic-adjacent, you know, etc, people who have done research and are now either in academia, industry or government, they are on LinkedIn, it’s easy to to learn about them just by seeing their profiles, etc, also seeing what they post, but then to interact with them, react to what they post, maybe add some value. So my answer to the first question is, you should be on LinkedIn? Yes, because the barrier to entry is very low, but you know, you should try to, you know this little things don’t leave the little gray, kind of nondescript image for your persona or your icon. If you need to take a selfie and put it there, at least have your face there.
Sarah McLusky 21:34
My LinkedIn profile for the last three years has been a selfie. So, yeah, selfies are OK.
David Mendes 21:39
They’re okay. They’re okay. It’s just so that’s one being on LinkedIn. And then, yeah, no pressure. So be there, be try to be authentic, try to not be too academic in the way you you use it. Learn how to change that the way of like presenting what yourself, your experience, etc, is, of course, there’s, there’s content out there that kind of teaches you on YouTube, etc, but see whichever profiles inspire you and see, you know, take from each one something that you find cool and use it on yours in your own way. That’s, that’s one of the big ones. The other one that that’s the larger question, let’s say, because the answer is not straightforward, is how? How do I, as a recent PhD position myself in the job market so that I’m attractive to employers, and it comes in different forms. It can be. How Do You Know What do employers seek? Are there jobs for PhDs out there? What are employers looking for in PhDs? And that’s a more complex question, of course, because not employers are looking for PhDs in some domains. Of course, if you did a PhD in pharmacology or different biochemistry, going to R&D in a pharma company is quite straightforward. The the also the scientist in a startup, is also straightforward. But then there’s a host of ecosystems in the job market where there’s no straight line, you know, there’s and there’s no culture or habit of hiring PhDs. When you meet that person, they look at your CV, then they’ll say, so you’ve done a PhD. Why are you here? And it gets emotionally complicated, because here you are with the highest academic degree that you can get. Thinking now all the doors open and there’s this job posting that you find interesting, but now the person in front of you may say something like you may be overqualified, or I don’t know that I can pay what you want given your degree, I don’t know that we can fulfill your salary expectations. The PhD, it’s three letters that are the same around the world, the world PhD, but no PhD as a person and as a job candidate is like the next one. We all have different projects. It’s not easy for employers who haven’t already found, oh, PhDs actually love having them in my team for this or that aspect. It’s hard for them to understand how they’re going to fit you in. It falls onto us to learn how to tell the story of what we did in a way that they’ll see, okay, I understand, and actually I see how you fit, but, and that’s why I talk about strategic storytelling. When we come out of graduate school, if we haven’t done any like Three Minute Thesis type things, and haven’t dipped our toe in the lake of science communication, we tend to be very cold in the way we present our journey, because it’s very data driven. It’s very, you know, it’s the way you do in the science conference, because you need to actually let the data speak for themselves. But it’s not the same when you leave academia.
Sarah McLusky 24:59
Ive certainly done a lot of recruitment. Yeah, can really resonate. And people who are fresh out of PhDs or who haven’t quite got their head around it, they present themselves that it’s all about the qualifications and it’s all about the publications, and then that should speak for itself, and it doesn’t. That’s something we could do. Well, maybe we will get into when we turn the tables. But yes, thank you for that. I think both of those really useful piece of pieces of advice. So yeah, get on LinkedIn and think about how to present yourself and your skills in a way that’s going to make sense to employers. So yeah, both really useful things. And yeah, definitely stuff that’s come up a lot. So to wrap up this part of our conversation. If people want to find out more about you, find the podcast. Find anything to do with that. Whereabouts would you send them?
David Mendes 25:49
You can go to LinkedIn and look for David, David Mendes, PhD, or Papa PhD for the podcast. The website of the podcast is papaphd.com on the site, you’ll also find links to Apple podcasts, Android, etc, all the other platforms where you can listen Spotify. Look for Papa PhD. You’ll find the version just with episodes in French and the original Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD, where it’s bilingual, there’s some episodes in French and some in English. So for the podcast, whichever platform you use, plug in Papa PhD or Beyond the Thesis, and you’ll find it, yeah, on Instagram if you’re there and I share some content there. The username is @papaphdpodcast
Sarah McLusky 26:31
Fantastic. Well, we’ll certainly get the links and put them in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for coming along, telling us about your journey and your podcast as well. Thank you.
Sarah McLusky 26:45
Wait. Don’t go just yet. Whether this is your first time listening or your 68th you might be wondering exactly who I am and why I’m doing this. Well, here’s your chance to find out a bit more about me, my career story, and why I started this podcast. Listen on to hear me being interviewed by David for the Papa PhD podcast.
David Mendes 27:07
Welcome to this special episode of beyond the thesis with Papa PhD. This is a two sided episode, and you’ll see what this means as we talk today. I have the great pleasure of having with me Sarah McLusky of the Research Adjacent podcast. Sarah McLusky is a freelance consultant, trainer and facilitator specializing in research, events and communication. Sarah launched the Research Adjacent podcast in 2023 and it’s a podcast celebrating all the amazing people who go into making research successful, not just researchers. In the podcast, Sarah shares her career stories and strategies to help people thrive in their research adjacent careers, and she has been herself research adjacent for over 20 years. She has worked for universities and research projects, science centers and museums, learned societies and education providers. Sarah’s academic background is in plant pathology and biochemistry, but she has worked across a huge range of disciplines, including all the sciences, plus the arts, humanities and social sciences. Sarah McLusky, welcome to Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD.
Sarah McLusky 28:19
Oh, thank you very much for that welcome. It makes it sound like I’ve really been round the houses but yeah, I’ve been at this stuff for a long time now. Thanks for having me
David Mendes 28:26
Yeah, it’s my pleasure. So Sarah, Research Adjacent. I love the name of the podcast. I’m super happy to have you here today, because I think this research-adjacent space is somewhat opaque to a lot of people, especially people just coming out of graduate school, and the people I have talked with who are now like in research-adjacent jobs, have kind of found about it, often serendipitously or in very convoluted ways, with a lot of randomness and not too much of a linear path towards it. You know, of course, like thinking of myself, I got into the PhD thinking of teaching and doing research, and then, you know, no one ever presented me all the careers that could come after the PhD, including this research adjacent space. Can you talk a little bit about it and share how that space caught your interest and led you to starting the podcast?
Sarah McLusky 29:30
Yeah, sure. So I think the first thing to say about it is that if people have never heard about research-adjacent space before, partly because I made it up, it’s not a term that, but yeah, I mean, as you’ve said, you like you like the name. And it’s partly because I found myself the name came from I was organizing a careers panel and for for PhD students and post and early career postdocs. And they wanted people who were doing jobs that were not in academia. And so I had to come up with a name for the careers panel. And the name I just was out for a walk one day. It’s how these things happen, isn’t it? It kind of popped into my head. I was like, research adjacent oh, it’s good, so we’ll call it that. So I called the careers panel that. And then actually, I was just like, this name is too good. I have to do something with this name. And it really fitted in with a bit of a passion that I had at the time, which I guess is is kind of there’s a bit of a story there. So I’ve been doing these jobs without having a name for them for about 25 years now. So as you say, I did do a PhD. I did my PhD in the late 90s, and I was one of those people who did I did very well in my undergrad, and everybody said I should do a PhD. So I did a PhD without really giving it much thought and without really having much of a career plan in mind. My supervisor could probably see I was never really destined to be an academic, because whilst I was doing my PhD, I got sent on lots of courses, so to do things like, you know, media training and science writing and things like that. And the world was a little bit the world was slightly different then. And so when I came out of my PhD, there was also the tricky thing that I did an interdisciplinary PhD before it was fashionable. They’re very fashionable now. They were not fashionable in the 90s. I was also doing a form of biochemistry, though it’s biological chemistry really, which, again, natural products and things like that, which was not fashionable in the 90s. It was all genetics. So when I came out with my PhD, I had like that experience I think a lot of people do. I hadn’t finished writing up. I’d run out of money. I had to go and get some jobs to keep me ticking along and wrote my PhD on the weekends. The jobs that came up, I had done a lot of work in customer service roles as I was studying. I had done like a bit of event management stuff for the Student Union. So I had some of these skills to draw on, and that combination of kind of customer service, event management, science communication, I ended up going into science centers and working in science centers, and started off on, you know, minimum wage, just enough to pay the bills and get me through whilst I was writing up my thesis, and at that point, I still thought maybe I would go and do something in academia. But actually, I reached a bit of crossroads, where in the same week, I was offered a fast track job interview at AstraZeneca, a big biotech company, and I was offered a full time education science communication job. And for you know, this is how we make decisions sometimes, and that the science education job was in the north of England. And I’m from Scotland, if people might be able to tell my accent might not I’m from Scotland. The job was in the north of England. The biotech company job was in the south of England, and I wanted to stay near home, so I took the education job without really giving it much thought. Actually, that’s still what I’m doing now, 25 years later, it’s gone through various kind of guises, but still in that form. And I think what I would say is so I never originally aspired to go into this kind of work. And the reason, as you said, that people maybe haven’t heard of it, it’s because a lot of these jobs didn’t exist. So a lot of them are really new. Even 25 years ago, when I was coming out for my PhD, only just then was science communication becoming a job. And at that point, there were no, there were no masters courses and things like that that there are in it now I was very lucky in the point that I was coming into it is that they were desperate for anybody who could do some of this stuff, because it was exploding. So it got me a foot in the door at that point. But a lot of the jobs that there are now, and the sorts of things that people that have on guest on research adjacent, they’re jobs that have on some degree some of them have existed for a long time, like research management jobs, but some of them are very recent jobs, like in the UK, there’s a lot of stuff around research impact and knowledge exchange. Those jobs have only really existed for maybe 10 years, and that will be why people haven’t heard of them. And they also, again, it’s that thing that when people are in, and I know you’ve talked about this in previous episodes, when people are in the academic space, all they see around them are other academics. So they don’t necessarily get that sense of what else might be out here. So really, what led me down to start the research adjacent podcast was partly because I wanted to help people who were coming out. I was working a lot with PhD students who were coming to the end of their studies and were just you. Were so lost in terms of what they wanted to do next, and they could see that there were no jobs, particularly in the arts and humanities at that point in time, they could see that there there was a real shortage of jobs. And I was on recruitment panels where we would get, like, 50 applicants for one job. And I wanted to do something which would help people like that, and help them see that they had options, and they were hugely employable, and that knowledge of research could be really valuable in different roles.So partly there was that side of things and that real desire to help. The other thing was I had a little bit of a bee in my bonnet, and that is because these research-adjacent jobs make a phenomenal contribution to research actually happening and being successful and getting the world and having an impact, but they don’t get credit, and they don’t get their names on papers, and they don’t get career progression the same way. There’s no such thing as like tenure track or whatever for people in these research-adjacent roles, and so they’re just not getting credit in the same way. And I thought, what can I do to help shine a spotlight on these people in the incredible work that they do? And that’s what led me to start the Research Adjacent podcast.
David Mendes 36:24
It’s an amazing story, and it’s funny how it kind of aligns with the evolution, also, of the of the space, because a lot of these things now, like said science communication or or even science illustration, now that, you know, there’s masters courses around that in my conversations on and off the podcast with people who are are post PhD and doing different things. I have talked with people in the university contributing to, like you said, the research in different ways. So some of them helping the researchers with their grant writing, some of them with getting the science and the discoveries to go outside the walls of the university and to get talked about on in news or on different platforms. And also, there’s people who are working in policy, you know, who can be at the level of university, but also, you know, someone in the states who’s actually working at the federal level, in terms of university policy, and these are all people who love staying abreast of what’s happening in research, but who no longer are at the lab. And while I was in graduate school, like you said, I never heard of them. Yeah, for me, it was the graduate students, the lab technicians, the postdocs, the PI and that’s what makes University and then I discover that there’s a host of people who are really working their ass off to get the grants funded. So a host of people who are passionate about science, passionate about research, but who chose to not go the way of actually being a PI and being a researcher, etc, but to contribute in a different way? And so can you please, for the people who are listening and who think, oh, this actually could be interesting for me, because I do want to stay close to academia, you mentioned research managers, and you mentioned science communication offices. What other job descriptions or job names that people don’t know about that could be really good fit?
Sarah McLusky 38:33
Yeah, there’s so much out there. And I think even when I started the podcast, I don’t think I quite got my head around how much was out there. I tend to think of these roles in two camps. There’s the jobs that are involved in making research happen. So that might be the research managers and administrators, that might be people who work on grant funding and things like that. It might even be people who do support roles like technicians or looking after people who work in the library, people who are doing software, you know, things like that, and looking after health and safety, you know, all that sort of stuff that helps the research to get done on that kind of practical role, that sort of internal sense. And then there’s all the roles which are about taking research out into the world, and that includes the communication type roles that we’ve talked about, which is certainly the route I started through, and I know that’s the route that you’ve come through as well. But there are policy jobs, as you’ve mentioned, there are people who work in what in the UK we call impact, but that can be around building partnerships with people who are outside of the research organization. It’s not just about universities as well. And so there’s people are involved in doing partnerships. There might be people helping industrial relationships for universities, spin out companies and startups and things like that. So there’s all those people that are involved in making research happen. And I mean, I’ve had people in the podcast, things like people who are lawyers, who work on intellectual property, people who are exhibition designers who make exhibitions that are based on research. I’ve had people who work in archives and museums. You know, just the range of roles is absolutely vast, and there’s something for everybody depending on what it is that they’re interested in. And then, as I say, the other thing that’s really interesting as well is that these jobs are not just in universities, so they are also in places like government so as you said, the kind of policy, jobs, library, Information Services, all that kind of stuff. In the UK, we’ve got some civil service research organizations. There’s places like what we call Defra, but it’s like agriculture agencies and environment agencies and things like that. There’s people working there. There are charities, particularly medical charities, that have people involved in research, communication type roles, also in funding roles, you know, all sorts of stuff. So museums, local councils, it’s it’s not just about higher education, and I think that’s another thing that’s really interesting. And the thing about all these roles is that having an understanding of the research and understanding of the process of how research works can be really, really helpful. It’s by no means essential. And I would say that about 50% of the people that I interview on my podcast don’t have PhDs, but about 50% of them do, and having that knowledge of research can help you to understand the process and get up to speed very quickly. And I’ve often seen people with PhDs get promoted very quickly in these roles, even if they have to start kind of at the entry level, if it’s something that’s a bit new to them. So yeah, that’s an overview of everything that’s out there.
David Mendes 42:07
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I was gonna ask you a question that you ended up answering, which was, where do PhDs fit, and why you just said it, but now you just finished with something that is it’s a hard pill to swallow for people, but it’s very important, which is, because there is no straight path. Maybe in 10, 20, 30 years from now, there’ll be more like bridges built from the PhD to specific spaces in the different ecosystems. But today, because these bridges don’t happen you as a PhD, need to advocate for yourself. You need to learn how to talk with these people. My take is that the best way to learn is to before you’re looking for a job, talk with people who are doing those things and learn and hear how they talk and hear what terms they use. But today, you know, especially if you’re going into a position that’s brand new, maybe a position where or a place where PhDs are not traditionally hired, yeah, one other thing that will happen is that the the pay for that first job, yeah, will probably not reach what you had envisioned for yourself at the end of the degree, you know, thinking, now I have this degree, it’s the best degree, so now I can make this much per year. And yeah, and you, and you mentioned this question, and like I said, it’s often depending on the personality of the candidates, it can be a hard pill to swallow of starting at an entry level and then evolving. Do you have more reflections to navigate that and how to have those conversations in a way that actually leads you to a good outcome and to not exclude yourself? Because what people do is like, Oh, this is too low. And then they they’re maybe losing a great opportunity, because they would then evolve quickly.
Sarah McLusky 44:08
Yes, I think that’s it. So, yeah, it can be, as you say, a bitter pill to swallow. But if you’re looking at with looking at these things, you need to look at it, even though there might be research in the job title. So say it’s like a research manager job, just because it’s got research manager job and you might know the research bit, that doesn’t mean you know the manager bit. And I think it’s really important to separate those things and recognize that PhD students, PhD graduates, have got incredible transferable skills, but you need to learn how to transfer them, and you need to learn how to take those skills and use them in a different setting. And sometimes I would say to people is like, which of these things would you prefer hanging around for a year, applying for jobs and not getting anywhere, or maybe going into a job at a lower grade but that you can get experience, you can get to know people, you can get a foot in the door, and you will get promoted quickly. And certainly, when I finished my PhD, I couldn’t afford not to, so my first jobs out of my PhD were pretty much minimum wage, but I got foot in the door. I got experience. I got promoted very quickly, and so sometimes swallowing your pride going into it, this advice I give with anything PhD graduates, one of the main skills you’ve got is curiosity, because that’s what led you into doing a PhD in the first place. And I think it’s always encouraging people of how you can approach your career path with a bit of curiosity, and think about what can I learn in any situation. I did voluntary work as well to get experience when I was coming out of my PhD, you can learn something from every opportunity if you go into it with an open mind. But I always will counsel people, you probably will have to start at a lower level, but you probably get promoted quickly, but you can get promoted to kind of similar levels. So to give, just to keep it in the university, if that’s what familiar to people, a project manager role like research project manager will probably be paid about the same as a research assistant, then a research manager is probably similar to an assistant professor, and then once you can get up to kind of, you know, heads of units and things like that, and then you’ll be starting to get paid at the same level as a professor. So there’s opportunities. That doesn’t mean that you’re destined to be on minimum wage forever, but you have to go through the process and demonstrate your skills. And it’s because I know this is something you talk about a lot on your podcast as well, is I have had people I’ve done a lot of recruitment. I’ve been on a lot of recruitment panels, and you get people who apply with a PhD, just assuming that the PhD is enough and that I’m somehow gonna know, you know, look, I managed a PhD project, so therefore I can manage this project, but it’s, it’s up to you, up to the candidate, to show that, to demonstrate, to think about the examples of how they can demonstrate their project management skills. And it’s not as straightforward as just, you know, here’s my PhD certificate. Give me a job. It’s still thinking about how you transfer those skills over, and really thinking about those transferable skills is how people will find the right niche for them. Because, as I said, this is a huge area of work where having the research knowledge is really valuable, but you might have amazing communication skills might be your special thing. So you might look at the research communication side of things. It may be that you’re great on the financial side of things. So maybe you look at research funding or finance management. It may be that you’re really good at connecting people and building partnerships. So then you think, right, I’m going to look at knowledge exchange roles and policy roles where there’s lots of partnership working. So I think it’s really important to do a bit of an inventory of like, what am I really good at? A, what am I really good at? And B, what do I really enjoy? Beyond just this subject matter that you’ve been studying for the last 3, 4 5, years.
David Mendes 48:21
Yeah and I’d say, once you’ve done that work of telling all of that to try to find one or two stories from your graduate school journey that illustrate that, because some people, you’ll just say that, and it’ll still not be enough, they’ll want to see okay, but what does that look like in real life? You have a story to illustrate that. That’s the next step. Is look back and think, How can I demonstrate that I’m really good at connecting people? You know, if you want to talk about a transferable skill, you cannot just name it. You need to illustrate it through story, some narrative and so, oh well, actually. So when I was in my postdoc, I had this budget with which I had objectives. I ended up reaching my objective, objectives at 70% budget, do some more effort in making tangible how you did those things that you’re saying you did.
Sarah McLusky 49:17
There is an episode on my podcast where I talk about this, about how when you go for research adjacent jobs, often you’re being scored so often your application is being literally marked out of whatever depending on what they’re looking for. And that’s exactly what they look like. So it might be that there is a line in job description that says excellent communication skills. If you just say, I have excellent communication skills, that might get you like a one, but what’s going to get you a five is if you say, when I was doing my PhD, I organized an outreach project for some local school children, and we did these things and this was the outcome of doing that, and then be like, oh, yeah, actually, they’ve demonstrated their communication skills there, you know? And then you would get a higher mark if you give that example of how you’ve done it and whether you need it for the job application or whether you need it for the interview when you go for research adjacent jobs, it’s all about so it’s all about give an example of a time when you have helped to be part of a team to make something happen. Give an example of a time when you’ve dealt with a really challenging situation, and it’s looking for those really concrete examples. Nobody, once you get, you know, maybe on the list it might say, Oh, you need a degree, but that would just be like, tick, whatever. Then nobody’s going to ask about your qualifications. Again, they’re not interested. They don’t particularly want to hear about your research either, unless you can tell again, a really compelling story about how you demonstrated some of these skills through the research, or through how you dealt with a challenging situation that came up during the research. So that’s incredibly important to do that
David Mendes 51:02
And it applies to any well, first, I would say it’s important even for people in academia, but it gets more and more important because of the distance and the culture mismatch. The less adjacent you are, you know, the more you go into industry, etc, yeah, you really need to do more of that work, definitely, yeah, and don’t do more effort retelling or learning how to tell that story. Yeah, Sarah, we have a few minutes left. I have one more question for you. I know of your podcast, but people who are listening maybe don’t, so I’d really like you to take a couple of minutes saying where people can find you, be it on LinkedIn, etc, but also your podcast and all the other places you’re at so that they can explore research adjacent and learn more about you and and you know what, what motivates you, but also what they can learn from you and how you can help them, if, if they
Sarah McLusky 51:53
Yeach absolutely. So yeah, the the podcast is Research Adjacent, you’ll find it on any podcast app. If you just search Research Adjacent, you will find it. The website is researchadjacent.com and that’s where you will find all the back back catalog and things like that. And now the back catalog is getting quite sizable so there is a little quiz on the website as well, which is, if you go to researchadjacent.com/quiz, and you can answer some questions about things like your transferable skills, what you’re interested in, and it will give you some suggestions of certain podcasts that might be interesting for you. And it also will help to potentially narrow down the areas of research adjacent work that you might be interested in. So that’s a really good place to go and check out if people are just not sure where to start, it’s all a bit much. All of the people who have guested on the podcast will be really happy when you say about reaching out to people who’ve done it before everybody who’s been on the podcast will be really happy for people to get in touch with them, ask questions about their job and find out a bit more. So if there is something that piques your interest, then definitely go and connect with them. And the same goes for me as well. I’m really happy to help people in any way I can. The main place I hang out is on LinkedIn, so it’s Sarah McLusky. The main tricky thing is to get the right spelling of my surname, which is m, c, l, u, s, k, y, and then you will track me down on LinkedIn and come and connect and say hello there. That would be fantastic.
David Mendes 53:23
So with all your experience in the space and with the podcast and these conversations, I’m always interested in my guests reflections about key transferable skills for the years to come, your job didn’t exist when you started it at the you know, back then, when you finish a PhD, and again, today, people who are in graduate school very probably the exact job they’re gonna do in three, four or five years is not something that exists yet in that complete and complete form. Maybe there’s something that’s kind of emerging towards that, but so also key or important or valued, transferable skills also evolve.
Sarah McLusky 54:06
Definitely, there’s a lot of people in the research adjacent world at the moment a little bit nervous about AI, particularly when it comes to things like, you know, writing and so on. Maybe I’m in denial, but I’m not hugely worried about it. But as you say, thinking about from that point of view is, what are the skills that are going to endure? And I think the main things, I would say, particularly from life and research adjacent – curiosity, is the number one thing, and it relates to other things like growth mindset and so on, but always trying to go into a situation and just thinking, what can I learn here? And even when it’s a challenging situation, I’m just thinking about, what’s the lesson? What can I learn? What can I get out of it? So I think that is an incredibly valuable skill to cultivate, also just flexibility, which I think is really important a lot. People in the research adjacent world do jobs where they do a bit of everything. So being willing to get stuck in give it a go, being flexible, being willing to maybe try something and have it not work out the first time, but just giving it a go. As you said, we both started podcasts pretty much that way, just like, yeah, let’s see what we can learn from it. Let’s just give it a go and see what happens that we’ll learn as we go. So I think that curiosity and flexibility are probably the biggest ones. A huge number of research adjacent roles are really about people. So they might, on the surface, be about doing grant applications or something like that, but at the end of the day, it’s about how do you convince somebody? How do you tell a story that’s compelling to another person? How do you help to support somebody through that journey? How do you build those partnerships that are going to be essential, and I think those interpersonal skills are incredibly important, because also, as we do see this increase in AI, what’s going to be more and more important at work is people and how we interact with each other. So I think that that’s the other one that I would say is really important.
David Mendes 56:10
I love it. So curiosity, flexibility and people, interpersonal skills. I love these three. I think they’re a great way to close this conversation, to end this part of the interview, Sarah, thank you so much. It’s been great. I love your story. I love the way you put your energy into your work, and the passion is clear. And I really appreciate having had the opportunity to chat with you in this special two sided episode.
Sarah McLusky 56:36
Yeah thank you so much. It’s been an honor. It’s been really fun. Thank you.
Sarah McLusky 56:45
Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check you’re subscribed and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music studios on Pixabay. And you, yesyou, get a big gold star for listening right to the end, see you next time.
