Summer is the season when hundreds of Political Science graduate students and recent PhDs get in gear to go on the academic job market. Having been one of this miserable lot, not once but twice – thrice if you count the predocs and fellowships year – I think of this as the “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” game (no relation to the Cold War spy thriller).

Faced with tough odds, these poor souls spend countless hours tinkering with their CVs, research statements, teaching statements, diversity statements, communist manifestos – you name it – until the documents are flawless. They mine the websites of huge R-1 universities, tiny New England liberal arts colleges, and mid-range directionals on the Florida-Georgia line in search of unique details to tailor their materials so to differentiate their cover letter from the pile of equally eager candidates. Of course, once the packet is out the door, we all inevitably find a typo in the first sentence of the most crucial document. And the chances all that bespoke tailoring makes a difference? Not great, Bob. Not great.

Nevertheless. They soldier on when their advisors give them the incomprehensibly useless advice of “apply broadly” – with absolute disregard for basic human agency over where and how one should live. And perhaps most shamefully, most of them, whether they admit it or not, obsessively peruse the dark corners of the internet, spying on the dreaded job board rumor sites, their friends and frenemies’ websites, department newsletters, obituaries and real estate listings in search of basic information about whether a particular search has been concluded and who the hell got that job if not me.

It’s a brutal game, and the chances are you are going to lose. I can say that because I played it and lost nearly 100 times.

True, you may be better prepared for the academic job market than I was – maybe you’re graduating from a top program, with numerous publications, glowing recommendations from famous and fabulously helpful advisors who introduce you to senior scholars at all the conferences. Maybe you have a killer research agenda, a grandiose list of fellowships and awards, and the ability to “fit” in a wide range of departments. Maybe you are a Rhodes Scholar who speaks 5 languages and can run effortlessly in 5 inch heels. If so, congrats and best wishes to you.

But realistically speaking, even the objectively strong candidates often fall by the sidelines, while us middle of the road shmos don’t really stand much of a chance to begin with. Unless, of course, you’re willing to drag your entire life across the country to work 80 hours a week teaching 4/4 and making the equivalent of an entry level STEM BS salary (and that’s a generous estimate). Hard pass on that from me, but to each their own.

There are two things I don’t intend to do in this post. First, I will not recount the bleak statistics about the trials and tribulations of landing a tenure track job in this cursed academic profession. Second, I will not attempt to provide advice on how to navigate the academic job market. Although I personally have had some success there, ultimately it was not the kind of success most would consider worthwhile to speak of in polite tenure-track and tenured society.

What I do want to say to my fellow aspiring political scientists going on the academic job market this summer is this: Don’t do it. Just don’t.

Do these three things instead to prepare yourself for a fulfilling and successful career outside of academia: learn the terrain, build skills and build relationships.

I can only speak to the world I know, or at least the world I wanted to be in when I decided to extricate myself from the hell of the academic job market. As such, this advice is geared primarily toward IR PhDs interested in Washington, DC type of jobs. That said, I spend a decent amount of time learning about all sorts of jobs and did a stint in a research and advisory firm so some of the insights might apply to those looking into industry jobs more broadly.

Learn the terrain:

Before I talk about skills and relationships, I want to spend some time on the DC landscape with the caveat that I am relatively new to this world and definitely not as well attuned to the character and pace of the city as many others. But if you knew those others, you’d probably wouldn’t need this rundown to begin with.

Now, one of the most preposterous sentences you hear from graduate students or recent PhDs going on the academic job market is “well, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get a think-tank job.” Yeah. Good luck, buddy.

Sure, you may think that your dissertation on how the offense-defense balance in multi-party civil wars shapes rebel alliances and governance strategies which uses survey experiments, causal modeling and Foucault’s conceptualization of center-periphery dynamics in quasi-democratic autocracies is low-key groundbreaking and totally “policy relevant.” But without name recognition and/or being thoroughly imbedded in DC or another major urban center pertinent to your field (but mostly DC), the likelihood that your resume will get looked at just because you have a PhD is about zero. Sorry.

There are few things worth knowing about think-tanks in the international relations world (broadly defined).

First, there are very few actual jobs at a think tank, even at the well-known ones, like Brookings or the Atlantic Council. If you go on their website, you will see a long list of fellows, adjunct fellows, visiting fellows, scholars in residence, non-resident fellows, etc. Somewhere between 10% to 40% of them are actual full-time, salaried, permanent employees.

Second and related to the limited number of full-time spots is the fact that most recent PhDs are overqualified for the Research Associate positions and under-qualified for the Fellow/Senior Fellow think tank positions.

The Research Associate level positions are highly competitive and usually occupied by clever and socially well-adjusted Georgetown graduate students (or SAIS graduate students, depends where you go.) At the same time, the permanent, full-time Fellow/Senior Fellow positions at places such as Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council, Stimson Center, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Center for New American Security, New America, Center for American Progress, etc., usually have relatively high-level government experience, some have military background and some have worked in various international organizations and places like the UN, NATO, World Bank, etc. I don’t have the statistics on this but I’d venture to say that few graduate students have similar backgrounds. And those who do, understand the unforgivable obliviousness behind a sentence like “I’ll just get a think-tank job.”

Third, the majority of think-tank openings are for administrative or staff positions rather than research positions. At any given time, at least one of these think tanks is looking for development and fundraising staff, public affairs/ media/communications coordinators, various IT roles, events staff, and other administrative personnel (often, these are pretty high-level positions with non-shabby paychecks). But again, unless your graduate career was much different from the standard research, teaching, writing fare, or if in your past life you’ve done public outreach for a major NGO or had serious administrative duties during your time in higher education (including pretty complicated budget stuff), it’s unlikely that you qualify for these jobs or that you are a better candidate that professionals in these fields simply because you have a PhD in some IR stuff.

Outside of think-tanks, IR research jobs can also be found at the various FFRDCs (Federally funded research and development centers), such as RAND, Center for Naval Analysis, and the Institute for Defense Analysis. Make no mistake though, these are also very competitive jobs. Moreover, CNA and IDA require security clearances as well as most if not all international and national security research jobs at RAND (could be different for their other areas of research though). These places do pretty rigorous research so they value academic training, regional expertise, foreign languages, and substantive knowledge in both conventional security topics and non-state/sub-state actors. Because they primarily do research for the government and especially DoD and the military to its various branches, these organizations also value good, clear writing and effective communications skills. So be prepared to demonstrate both.

In addition to the think-tanks and the FFRDCs, there are numerous strategic and political risk firms and defense/strategy/business consultancies that also do IR research (to various degrees of breadth, depth, and purpose). These range in size, culture, mission, clients, the nature of the work they offer, how closely they work with the federal government and include places such Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE, Guidehouse, a million other defense contractors, Eurasia Group, and smaller outfits such as Albright Stonebridge Group and McLarty Associates.

I am less familiar with this lot but I do know that it’s important to learn who their primary client is to understand the type of candidates they tend to hire. If they primarily advice Fortune 500 companies about business conditions in politically unstable regions, then they’re likely to hire people with a political economy background rather than hard security types. If they chiefly cater to the federal government, they’ll probably value policy experience and their security and defense consultants will predominantly come from the IC and the military, and would need to either have a clearance or be able to qualify for one.

Learning the terrain of the city, whether it's DC you’re aiming for, or Boston, New York or Chicago, is a critical first step toward making the transition from academia. It’s a process that requires patient and thorough research, networking, and perhaps most of all, humility. But it’s necessary and eventually pays off.

Build Skills

When I started applying for jobs outside of academia, one of the toughest things I had to do was to translate my academic CV into a resume. While a CV showcases your accomplishments, e.g., publications, awards, conference presentations, a resume focuses on skills, namely, it tells your potential employer what you can do, e.g., research, analyze, synthesize, code, design surveys, teach, present in front of diverse audiences, write and publish impactful work, speak a foreign language, coordinate multi-stakeholder workshops, conduct qualitative interviews, etc. Translating your graduate school accomplishments into a skill set is harder than it sounds, so the earlier you start the better. Doing so will allow you to figure out your strengths as well as identify your areas of weakness while you still have some time to work on those.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and one of the things I wish I did in grad-school was learn survey methods, even at the basic level. There is so much you can do with that set of skills, for instance, work at political strategy firms such as the Global Strategy Group or social science research firms/organizations like the Fors Marsh Group, Pew Research Center, Public Religion Research Institute, etc.

On a related note, I also wish I’ve taken some coding classes. SQL or Python is basically a must if you want to do anything intelligence analysis related, or something in the cyber security field, whether defense related or in industry more broadly. To be clear, I’m not talking about the type of jobs that explicitly seek data science PhDs. Rather, if you’re interested in cyber policy, the intelligence community, threat detection and analysis, even basic literacy will open doors since they can train you in more sophisticated software and applications once you’re there.

At the same time, qualitative methods training and experience demonstrate top-notch critical thinking skills. You just need to figure out how to package it depending on the job you want. For instance, having extensive experience conducting interviews and field research is an absolute asset when it comes to client-facing industry jobs where you need strong communication skills and cultural literacy.

Perhaps one of the most important skills to develop before exiting academia is writing for a broader audience. This one is a doozy because you just spent 5-6 years learning how to do the exact opposite. Academic writing is highly specialized and often inaccessible. If you want to continue working on your research topic or general area of interest outside of academia, you will need to learn how to write like a human person addressing other human persons (clearly, my non-academic writing is still a work in progress).

Writing for a broader audience also helps establish you as an expert in your field, build credibility, build new relationships and networks, and hopefully open doors. People outside of academia will be 100 times more impressed with a War on the Rocks post than a journal article because they can actually read the War on the Rocks post and understand it, while the journal article is probably behind a pay wall and is unreadable to anyone besides the 10 other people studying your topic. While landing an op-ed with the New York Times or Washington Post would obviously be pretty cool, there are so many other great outlets where you can send your work and get noticed.

Two last things about skills. First, effectively every prospective employer I spoke with asked me about working as part of a team or having experience in leading a team. This is a tough one to answer coming out academia where solitary work is the standard. I emphasized collaborative projects I was a part of, e.g., co-authored papers and prepared to talk through navigating the challenges of team work and the rewarding aspects of the process. I also often referenced teaching in response to questions about leading a team; although not a direct comparison, there are useful tidbits about planning, time management, accountability, and dealing with different personalities that still apply more broadly.

Second, identify and leverage skills that complement rather than replicate those of your potential colleagues. Transitioning from academia to a job that doesn’t require a PhD can be challenging because it’s tough to know what is that you bring to the table, and its often the case that there are other applicants who meet the basic requirements of the job better than you. This is in part why I tried to emphasize skills and qualifications that made me stand out rather than fit in. For me, foreign language proficiency and regional knowledge were strong selling points. International background, whether personal or professional or both is attractive to many empowers as well, especially if you are applying to companies with a global presence and a diverse client base.

Build Relationships

Some academics believe that in academia you get a job because your work speaks for itself. As such, networking is viewed as beneath academics and relationships as irrelevant for success on the job market. This view is self-indulgent, naïve and wrong.

Your institutional affiliation, advisor, committee members, coauthors, fellowships, undergraduate institution, and previous work experience are all networks. When a hiring committee looks at your CV, they make an instinctive judgement about your networks and relationships based on the aforementioned factors, and one of the first things they consider is how your network fits in with theirs. Without even getting into the ‘boys club’ of some subfields or the intellectually incestuous hiring practices of some institutions, networks and relationships are simply the means by which people discern basic levels of credibility, competence, and compatibility. They matter in academia just as much as in the real world, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.

I often joke that after six years of graduate school, it took me six months to be able to make eye contact again. Sure, like many people in academia, I was somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of networking. But that’s mostly because I used to interpret it as an almost sleazy, self-promoting practice which was the wrong way to approach it. Some people are great at working a room, facilitating introductions, advancing conversations and keeping up with a wide range of acquaintances and interests. Others are better in smaller groups, or one-on-one. The key thing is to find the approach that highlights you at your best rather than attempting to fit into a narrow definition of what “networking” should look like.

Indeed, if there is a ‘one weird trick to getting a job outside of academia’ it's building relationships. Over the past three years or so, I’ve had dozens of conversations about navigating the transition from academia with people in Washington DC as well as others working in policy or industry jobs elsewhere. All of their personal stories and valuable advice have a relationships and connections thread running through them. Whether it’s being offered a job through a former boss or a college or grad-school mentor, finding out about a cool opportunity after reconnecting with high-school or college friends, or getting coffee with a friend of a friend who happens to work at a company where you’ve applied for a position and getting valuable insights when prepping for an interview, relationships are key to a career shift.

Building relationships requires a decent amount of work and initiative. The most natural place to start is by asking people you know and trust to introduce you to others. Your professors and fellow grad-students likely have friends who work in think-tanks, policy, or industry, and in my experience, most people are happy to give you 30 minutes of their time to provide some general advice or answer more specific questions about their line of work. These conversations might feel a bit forced at first, but more often than not, you’ll have many substantive interests in common and its great practice for future interviews.

LinkedIn is not a popular tool among academics, but its indispensable when you’re searching for a job in many other professions. A simple search of a company where you want to work will surface people connected to others you already know, and will give you somewhere to start. It’s also very useful when you need to research the people who will be interviewing you if your application moves forward.

The main thing is not to be afraid to reach out, even to people you don’t know. The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t hear back. And is that really that bad when you think about how many academic jobs you’ve applied to and never heard back from, or received a generic rejection e-mail, or a rejection letter a year after the application deadline? There is no harm in trying to connect, and more often than not, the conversations you’ll end up having will be interesting, engaging, and might even lead to job opportunities.

So this summer, do yourself a favor, and spare yourself the misery of suffering through another pointless round of job applications that even in the best of scenarios will likely lead you to a job at a place where you don’t want to live, work insanely hard, and are shamefully underpaid for your level of expertise. Spend your time learning about different professions, honing your skills, and cultivating relationships. And be in touch if you want to talk it over – I’m more than happy to share my experience and help you as much as I can.