I put ALL my customer service experience on my CV throughout my early career. Used it to get my first research leadership role in a science organisation. Used examples of my management, interpersonal & conflict solving skills working as waitress, retail & in delicatessen/ seafood
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Sorry - don’t mean to talk over you
@OtherSociology - I’m just glad we talked about this tonight! I think it is an important area to get in open.
Absolutely a great discussion! I might start a thread with some advice for how to represent non-academic work - please chime in if you are interested. It really irritates me that academia is all cloaks and daggers about what we tell students about their careers!
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The advice thread for representing non-academic work on research CVs is here:https://twitter.com/OtherSociology/status/950592704458645504 …
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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We have our open faculty meeting to discuss applicants tomorrow. I’m going to be thinking about this!
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Just chiming back in the say how grateful I am for senior academics who lived through this and care about it deeply.
Thank you all for this discussion!!
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I suggest students list their non-science jobs (lift ops, line cooks & landscaping) noting they can endure weather, are responsible w $, contribute to team, are efficient...lots to be learned from these jobs. Just wish they didn’t need to work so many hrs per week.
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This is very useful - service skills directly applicable to coping with fieldwork research!
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I think it is odd to try and get people to pretend like they've only ever worked in academia/science because in reality a lot of those skills you gain in customer service roles transfer to scientific work in terms of relationships with colleagues/lab etc
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Agreed, this attitude is bizarre and unproductive. We want people with diverse life experiences in science.
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I'm sure you'd be a really knowledgeable scientist but science isn't just about the method. Being able to work within your team and lab and collaborate with others is probably as important as being able to follow the method!
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I had one person tell me to remove "irrelevant" tutoring, consultancy and admin work because it "cluttered" my CV. Did that and had another person ask why I was "doing nothing" for over a year.
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Spectacularly bad advice. I'm sorry this happened to you!
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A lot of this advice would be much more effective if people said straight-up that they're giving it because it worked for them personally or because it's what they, personally, would look for, instead of presenting it as some kind of universal truth.
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A story from industry: We got a resume for an entry level position in our lab. HR almost discarded it because it was a “bad resume”. The candidate had some lab work, but the majority of her experience was in a coffee shop. At a NY train station. In the morning.
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We took one look at that and were like “yes please let’s interview this person because she must be tough as nails to deal with uncaffinated commuters on the daily. So she came in.
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Hands down, the best candidate I had ever interviewed. We asked her about dealing with shitty customers, and what you do when 5 different people want 5 different things NOW.I pointed out to my colleagues that making a good cup is similar to lab work. You have to get it just right
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Great discussion. My rec: include the jobs & indicate the specific transferable skills that you gained rather than each specific task 1/n
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For example, if you worked multiple jobs while going to Uni (like I did), indicate how this shows you’re hardworking & have excellent time management skills. 2/n
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If you worked a managerial job in customer service (like I did), you gained experience supervising, scheduling, training, and managing a team... 3/n
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...if that team included difficult personalities or unreliable people, even better, because you can indicate how you dealt with that. Lab teams can have these issues so you can be the great scientist with great people skills who can deal with this. 4/4
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