Start your industry career as an academic – 3 ways how to

Is it time for you to start your industry career? You completed your university education, your doctorate, and even a few years as academic scientist. But now you decided to pursue a career in industry.

How to go about starting an career in industry? Did you apply for typical industry jobs? It didn’t work?

Here are three alternative ways to find your way into industry:

Do an industry Postdoc

Do an industry Postdoc to start a corporate career. At first glance, doing a Postdoc after your doctorate seems counter intuitive if you don’t want to pursue an academic career.

However, starting at a company as an industry Postdoc is the perfect transition from academia to an industry career. In fact, some Postdoc positions in companies are well suited to do that. Those are not Postdocs in the literals sense. Read more about the different kinds of Postdocs.

Complete an extra training course to start your industry career

This tip might seem counter intuitive, too. Do you really have do get another qualification after completing a long academic education?

The clear answer is – it depends on. But let’s be honest, a lot of academic degrees don’t prepare you for an industry job. Thus doing an additional training course in preparation for an industry career might make sense. Read this blog post to answer the question whether you should do such a training course.

Work for a staffing agency

Signing up with a staffing agency is a very common but also a very unglamorous way to start an industry career for academics.

You have a great academic education, graduated with honors, or even are a PhD. Chances are that signing up with a staffing agency was never at the top of your list of career goals. Still, it might make sense for you. It could be workable way to get your dream industry job. This article helps to answer the question if you should work for a staffing agency as an academic. Also, read here facts about staffing agencies academics are not aware about.