Sell your PhD, Problem Solving

Since I started working in the industry 6 months ago now, I have realised how essential it is for us PhD students to sell our skills. Many industries highly value the skills that we acquire throughout a PhD, however many do not understand that a PhD provides such a wide variety of sought after skills.

The first skill we should all sell is our ability to problem solve.

Problem solving is a skill that is relevant to a wide variety of industries and is something that we keenly develop as PhD students. It is very unusual for a PhD project to go smoothly, because science and research is very rarely linear. The success of a PhD does not rely on research going to plan, it relies on PhD students identifying issues and then developing viable, effective, and efficient solutions to the problems. Often, as PhD students, we come up with solutions to problems every single day.

The ability to problem solve is not something we should take lightly. It is experience that many employers want their workers to have and therefore it is important that we find a way to discuss this is our CVs and interviews.