Erin White

Finding a job outside of academia

This page has been online in some form or another since 2023 and is now making its appearance on my dot-com. This page is in perpetual draft. Last updated April, 2025.

Jump to: Jargon translator, Transferable skills

Prepare to leave

There are a lot of logistical and emotional components of job-hunting, applying, interviewing, and changing jobs. That part alone is hard, and it’s plenty to have to do. But also prepare yourself for the inevitable grief of leaving your field, as well as the identity shift that happens when you leave.

Resources:

What do you want to do?

  • What are you good at?
  • What do you want to do more of?
  • What do you require?
  • Do you want a job or a career? How much heart/soul can you put into your work?

Ask yourself if your career actually needs to have a trajectory.

Sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense. What does “career success” look like for you? If it looks like climbing a ladder, you are probably not reading this right now.

It doesn’t have to be a forever-job. It can be a for-now job.

It can be really easy to search for the dream job/company that you’ll stay at forever! Sometimes, though, you just need a job to get you started, to pivot into another field or get you experience doing X, Y, or Z. Don’t stress yourself out looking for a perfect forever job.

Find a job you could do, that pays you enough to live, and that gets you the experience you need.

Resource: former librarian Alexis Logsdon wrote an incredibly helpful series of posts on planning your career transition.

Learn how to tell your story

Before you start applying for jobs, think about how you’d answer the question “tell us about yourself” in 1-2 minutes at the start of an interview. Tie your past work and interests to the thing that you want to do next. That is the story that you will tell your interviewers, your network on LinkedIn, and most importantly yourself as you’re moving through the job hunt process.

Resource: How to tell your story and enter the UX field from Michele L’Heureux

Gather the goods

What artifacts do you have that can help you tell your story?

  • Things you’ve written: articles, blog posts, policies, strategy documents, memos, project plans
  • Presentations you’ve given
  • Projects you’ve initiated, led, or contributed significantly to
  • Any other artifacts that represent your work.

Do your research

Use your strong research skills to learn how things work outside of academia.

Do informational interviews

Ask friends and friends of friends for informational interviews. People are so very generous! A quick half-hour call will give you a lot of insight into what a person’s job and workplace is like, what kinds of things they’re responsible for, and even the words they use to talk about what they do. Soak it up.

See what others are doing

Dust off your LinkedIn account. Start searching for people who are talking about things you’re interested in. Follow them, and follow who they follow. You don’t have to “connect” with them if you don’t want; you can just follow their posts.

Look for jobs

By looking at job ads you can learn what types of words/phrases people are using to describe certain skills. Refine your search as you find new keywords in job postings.

All job ads are aspirational. You won’t have 100% of the qualifications for every job. If you have half the qualifications, apply.

Resources:

Figure out your system

Dive in. Your process will emerge.

I recommend starting a spreadsheet to track each role you’re interested in, whether you applied, the employer, a link to the job, your application status, when you applied, and any other notes you want to make (salary? concerns?)

Where to look for jobs

LinkedIn is, unfortunately, a thing

LinkedIn is weirdly very important outside of higher ed, especially in the private sector.

  • Fill out your profile - add a brief bio (remember your story) and add more details about your responsibilities/accomplishments in previous/current work and volunteer experience.
  • Model your profile based on what others are doing - lurk and find folks whose profiles look good to you and note how they are using LinkedIn. Make any changes to your profile that feel authentic for you.
  • Make/strengthen connections - reach out to folks in your existing network and add new people that you know. LinkedIn is extremely creepy and knows who you know. Just add ‘em.
  • Ask for help - either as a post, or through messaging folks. Most folks are very eager to add connections, exchange messages, share links to jobs, offer referrals, and share information about their work.
  • Weak social ties are crucial for finding jobs - so don’t be afraid to reach out to acquaintances on LinkedIn.

Apply

Gird your loins

The job market, especially in UX and adjacent fields in 2024, is awful 🙂. No matter what field you’re in, though, be prepared to be ghosted at any point in the application process. Don’t take it personally.

Transferable skills

Your skills are transferable!

Here are some transferable skills I identified for myself:

  • Talking with people and building relationships
  • Managing projects and stakeholders
  • Recruiting, hiring, retaining, rewarding, and managing people
  • Facilitating meetings and workshops, and presenting to groups of all sizes
  • Writing for different audiences, including communicating “professionally”
  • Mapping out, clarifying, and streamlining workflows
  • Strategic planning
  • Understanding how technologies connect and how the internet works
  • Putting theory into practice for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
  • Research: survey design, interviews, usability testing, log analysis, data analysis, (light) statistical analysis
  • Writing: reports, policies, blog posts, project plans, academic papers
  • Instructional design
  • Web design, writing for the web, working with legacy processes and systems

Transferable skills for librarians

  • Reference/instruction/outreach librarians
    • Complex search strategies, keywords and advanced query construction; bibliographies; information-seeking across multiple complex databases
    • Event management, publicity, and facilitation
    • Curriculum development, instructional design learning assessments, public speaking
    • Digital content development; learning management platforms
    • Working with SMEs (faculty) to create/manage content
  • If you’ve used LibGuides, congrats! You have used a content management system with a variety of content types and complex user roles.
    • If you’ve managed LibGuides you have experience with content governance, information architecture, and (likely) web design.
  • Data management librarians
    • Any Python, R, data modeling, data governance, or data security work
    • Working with campus partners to help meet federal mandates

Resources:

Jargon translator

Here are a few terms that might help in translating your skills for a new context:

Academic word Private sector word Translation
Faculty member SME SME = Subject matter expert. Someone who knows a lot about a specific topic.
Administrators, deans, provosts Executive leadership, C suite In the private sector, like deans and provosts, the exec team runs things: CEO, COO, CIO, CTO - the C-suite.
Collaboration Cross-functional collaboration Cross-functional just means everybody has different jobs and you are able to effectively work with them.
Supervisors, external collaborators Stakeholders Stakeholders include anyone who is responsible or accountable, or who is informed or consulted, about your work.
Research findings Insights, learnings Yes, learnings is a word here.
Websites/web applications Products Is it a digital tool? It’s a product.
Writing and organizing documentation Knowledge management KM is an entire professional field and one to which academics in particular are well-suited.
Guidelines, policies, documentation Processes, procedures, SOPs SOP = standard operating procedure. If you’ve ever written documentation on how to do certain tasks, or how things should be done, you have experience with SOPs.
Teaching, instruction Guidance, training, instructional design If you’ve developed and taught a class, you’re an instructional designer.
Research Discovery “Do discovery on X Y Z” ⇒ Do research on it.
Grantwriting/grant-seeking Business development/BD  

ℹ️ I’d really like to expand this section! Please write me with any additions.

Prep your resume

  • Great advice from Alison Green on this. Big note: your resume is a marketing document.
  • Your resume should be 1-2 pages
  • Make it easily skimmable. No big chunks of text. Numbers where possible.
  • Where possible, match the language of the job posting with your resume
  • Tailor your resume for each job you apply for
  • Tailor your cover letter for each job you apply for
  • Keep a few different “flavors” of your resume depending on which types of roles you are applying for, then adjust as needed for each application.
  • In writing about what you worked on, focus on measurable accomplishments rather than listing duties.
  • Each job description should be shorter than the one before
  • No need to go back more than 10 years. “Recent work experience” is good!

Interview

Each interview should be a conversation and a learning opportunity, and a way to practice talking about yourself. An interview shouldn’t be an inquisition, and if it feels like one, that may be a sign to pull yourself out of the applicant pool.

Be prepared to go through multiple rounds of interviews spread out over several weeks. Again, prepare to be ghosted at any time.

Answer questions

Have a few stories at the ready: tell us about a conflict, tell us about an initiative you led from start to finish, tell us about managing up, tell us about working with a difficult client. Think about the projects you have worked on.

What stories do you have to tell about working with stakeholders in an organization, navigating competing priorities or compromising?

Ask questions

Ask a LOT of questions. You want to know what you’re getting into, and employers want someone who is curious and motivated.

Depending on the vibe of the interview, you might ask questions after you answer their questions:

“You asked about managing multiple competing priorities. How are priorities set and communicated here? Who would the person in this role work with to establish a good priority order?”

Here are some of my favorite questions to ask hiring teams:

  • I see that this is a (new role existing role). What does success look like for the person in this role? Why did the person in this role previously move on?
  • How will you work with the person in this role? How do you collaborate and what duties would you like to see this person take on?
  • What goals and initiatives does your company have around diversity, equity and inclusion? What are some challenges or opportunities? (If they don’t have a good answer for this, it’s a red flag.)
  • What are some growing edges for the organization? What are y’all actively trying to improve right now?
  • How do y’all support each other in both completing work and making sure you take care of yourselves outside of work? Do folks take their vacations here?
  • What questions am I not asking that I should be? What do you wish you’d known before you started work?

Resource: Carter Baxter has shared a comprehensive list of questions to ask potential employers.

References don’t really matter

A lot of places outside of higher ed and nonprofits don’t care about calling your references. Instead of calling references, they will simply make you go through a 4-6 step interview process!

In my experience, places only call to verify your former employment at an organization - not get a character reference.

Hang in there

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about leaving a specialized role in a field that encourages folks to achieve national recognition as an individual scholar, it’s that I’m not actually that special. But what I do have is the wisdom of seeing how institutions work and understanding what makes those gears turn. That knowledge translates very easily across sectors and organizations.

You are going to get there! Keep going.

Change log

  • 2025/04/27 Moved to this URL, added change log, updated markdown formatting

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