To succeed in getting a job in industry, explain the skills you acquired in the laboratory in terms that industry recruiters will understand.Credit: Portra/Getty
I loved the intellectual challenge of my PhD and the idea that my research into immune cells in human skin could one day contribute to better patient care.
But solitary hours at the laboratory bench, early-morning starts and late-night finishes were not for me. And I wanted to work with people, not pipettes. I asked myself: what else can I even do with my PhD?
After talking to various people, I learnt that my doctorate could open many more doors than I had ever imagined, but I had no idea how to get through them. The skills I’d acquired (data analysis, managing multiple projects, collaboration, presentation, critical thinking, persistence and handling ambiguity among them) weren’t the problem.
The problem was knowing how to communicate them in my CV (or résumé) to try for roles in industry, a sector that often measures success in a different way.
Academia rewards scholarly achievement: publications, awards, conference presentations. By contrast, industry rewards impact. So an academic CV might not get you anywhere when it comes to winning industry roles.
I now conduct workshops across Europe and the United States on CVs for industry, after founding Alma.Me, a company that helps PhD holders transition to industry. Co-founder Angela Priest, who has two decades of experience of industry hiring, and I have helped hundreds of early-career researchers, some of whom have landed roles at companies such as pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, the US mortgage association Fannie Mae and online-payment processor PayPal.
We’re constantly asked about academic CVs and their suitability for industry roles. I respond by saying that academia cares more about where you studied, what you published and which conferences accepted your work, whereas industry cares more about outcomes: can you deliver results and contribute to team success? Understanding that difference is important because it affects how you present yourself in each environment.
One workshop attendee had spent months unsuccessfully applying for industry jobs. She was exhausted, frustrated and starting to doubt herself. She restructured her CV, adjusted the language and reframed her PhD work so that it spoke to an industry audience. Within weeks she was getting interviews, followed by a job offer soon after.
Here’s a list of top tips to follow.
Make the CV structure easy to scan
In academia, a CV of six or more pages signals thoroughness; in industry, it signals the opposite. On average, industry recruiters spend around six seconds scanning a CV before deciding whether to read on. Length doesn’t impress them; clarity does. So aim for at most two pages, and see it as an opportunity to demonstrate that you understand concise communication, a highly valued skill in industry.
Include lots of white space, signal a clear hierarchy using bullet points and use a single font and no colour. A single-column layout reads more cleanly than one with multiple columns, and is more reliably parsed by electronic applicant-tracking systems. Put your name, LinkedIn handle, Github account, e-mail and phone number in the header.
I’m often asked about including a photo. In my view, you can never go wrong by not including your picture. Photos are hardly used on CVs in the United States and United Kingdom and are becoming less common across other European countries because they can elicit biases. I suggest that you do some quick research about the convention in the country where you are applying. But when in doubt, leave the photo out.
Put a professional summary at the top
Instead of leading with educational achievements, put a four-to-six-line professional summary at the top that gives an immediate sense of who you are, what level you’re at and what you can bring to the role. A generic “experienced researcher with a PhD in molecular biology” tells a recruiter almost nothing.
Connect your background to the role and name the skills that matter most to it, by establishing your identity, demonstrating your capability and signalling your direction.
For example: “Detail-oriented, methodical research scientist with 4+ years experience designing experiments that advance drug-discovery programmes. Expert in single-cell RNA sequencing, CRISPR–Cas9 and flow cytometry, generating reproducible, high-quality data under demanding timelines. Driven by biological questions with real therapeutic consequence. Brings deep bench expertise and a collaborative mindset to an industry environment in which scientific rigour shapes the pipeline.”
Add a skills section next
Rather than listing every lab technique you have ever used, group skills under broad categories with specific examples, and use no more than one-third of a page.
Something like “molecular biology techniques: scRNAseq, ELISA, Western blot” is immediately scannable without losing depth.
List professional experience after that
I suggest three to five bullet points under this heading. Put your PhD details here rather than just in the education section.
Remember that you weren’t merely sitting in lectures. you were identifying problems, designing solutions and producing results under uncertainty.
Add your university’s or institution’s name and underneath put either “doctoral researcher” or “PhD researcher” as a first heading with a summary (one or two sentences) of each element of your professional experience to give context to the bullet points.
Many industry jobseekers describe what they did, not what they achieved. Instead, start with a strong verb, say what you achieved, explain how you did it and always end with the result. Swap technical jargon for plain language; you are writing for recruiters and hiring managers, not a reviewer in your field.
For example, during my PhD at the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, I optimized a cell-recovery protocol. Writing “Isolated cells from human skin samples” would have told a recruiter nothing about the result I achieved or its value.
Instead, I wrote: “Optimized skin isolation protocol to recover 30% more cells per sample, reducing experiment turnaround time and enabling downstream analysis.” This shows I created value; I made something better, faster, more efficient. That’s what industry looks for.
The same logic applies beyond the lab. Perhaps you organized a careers fair. You could write: “Organized a careers fair for PhD students.” But what actually happened because of you? How about “Organized a career fair attended by 150 PhD students and 30 companies, achieving a 20% candidate-to-company matching rate.”? Now a recruiter can see scale, initiative and outcome.
Similarly, saying “Presented research at conferences and lab meetings” tells a hiring manager little, unlike “Presented findings to audiences of up to 300 scientists across three international conferences, translating complex immunology data into accessible insights for non-specialist audiences.” This shows a range of experiences, confidence in what you do and demonstrable communication skills.
Early-career researchers often undersell committee work. “Served on the PhD student committee” is easy for a recruiter to overlook. What is harder to miss is “Negotiated with university leadership and the union to secure a 5% salary increase for all PhD students at the institution.”
That single line demonstrates stakeholder management, negotiation and the ability to drive change at an organizational level — exactly the kind of evidence industry is looking for.
I also recommend omitting the years when you graduated to reduce the risk of unconscious age bias in the early stages of screening.
As for publications, they don’t belong in a CV for industry, but if you want to add them, put in links to them. Sometimes a job advertisement will seek evidence of high-impact publications. If so, focus on two or three, but don’t be tempted to include your entire publication list.
