Outside the gates of the working world... I can so relate to this, Josh. I have been there. I often think of it as the "professional wilderness." You're outside the gates of the city, in a place that many others are afraid to visit. But their fear does not have to be your fear. Your integrity brought you here, and your integrity will guide you on. Although pragmatism says you should get back on the payroll as soon as possible, try not to rush back to the city. The wilderness offers more possibility. "It's opener here in the wide open air, where things can happen and frequently do, to people as brainy and footsy as you" (Dr. Seuss, surely misquoted).
On a more practical note, I offer that if getting a job depends on networking, and networking depends on relationships, and relationships must develop naturally, then networking can't be forced. It can't be a meetup or a mixer. It has to be kickball or sewing club or something like that. Let other people see you doing something you love. You at your best. I think you're already doing that by sharing your writing. The rest is in time's hands
Thanks, Blaire. This is a good reminder of how important fit is. And you're right -- I stand where I do because I chose to embrace growth rather than cling to a bad situation out of fear. I remain hopeful that something better waits on the other side.
It feels wrong to me that a job should be a "prize" -- it feels to me like a destructively misleading mixing of metaphors. A job may be something you compete for, but it's not a reward, it's a contract to work for remuneration. A job application is a "bid," and an interview is a demonstration, getting the job is always contingent on performing the job, and the job can be done perfectly but the contract still canceled because of external factors. No one should tie their sense of self up in this uncontrollable game, even if one chooses to play. Humans have been hustling and pivoting and exploiting for as long as we've existed. Rather than getting hung up on tethering by contract to an institution with the idea that the institution will protect and relieve the stress of life -- even if that means moving 1900 miles away, or bolting yourself to a laptop for hours a day -- we should look at the ground we're standing on and see what needs to be done or made or sold here. My kids are great at this: they have no concept of working for a company and don't want to move away. They want to breed expensive dogs and raise alpacas and sell eggs and mow lawns. If they follow these instincts I suspect they'll be happy. Anyway, just a counter-thought to add to the mix. :)
Good luck in your search, it’s tough out there. I have been looking for jobs for over a year (since before I voluntarily left my safe but toxic and soul destroying corporate job) without much luck besides patching together temp academic gigs and a little contract work. In my case, extremely restrictive non-compete and similar agreements have made me radioactive, a topic I’ve written about on my Substack 😔 I agree that the most manageable way forward is realism with a touch of optimism to keep your sanity ❤️
Eric, I appreciate the solidarity and wish you all the best in your own search! Hopefully some of the interviews I'm putting out are helpful. They have been to me.
Thank you for the Barbara Ehrenreich reference, Joshua. I would love to read it but I also know that, right now, it would strike me too hard in a place that I’m working hard to keep alive: my optimism - about pretty much anything and everything!
Searching for a professional job is really tough at the moment, for everyone but especially for those of us pivoting out of academic careers.
I originally wrote a long screed about how unfair that is, how many of the popular perceptions about us (that we work slowly, that we’re haughty and easily bored, that we have no clue about or experience in business contexts) are WAY off for those of us who’ve spent years grafting at the equivalent of 3 people’s jobs making and delivering $millions for neo-liberal universities. About how frustrating it is to have to keep finding ways of telling that story better on 1 or 2 sides of 8.5”x11”. Add in the difficulty for former academics (and immigrants like me!) of ‘using your connections’ - the standard advice now and deeply problematic for diversity.
Instead, I prefer acceptance - and to focus on positive steps. For me, that means continuing to develop new technical skills, making new connections and acquaintances, and taking breaks from the whole catastrophe to create and achieve things that recall myself to myself, including/especially in my personal relationships.
On a practical level, I’ve also been steeling myself and gathering ideas to start writing on LinkedIn, a prospect made daunting by my English reserve and generational regard for privacy but clearly a necessity of sorts. And I’ve been carrying out the job search more locally now - almost literally knocking on people’s doors and letting them now I’m right here, ready to get stuck in.
Things will find a way. Right now, we’re in the numinous space of possibilities - exactly what we wanted for ourselves - even if it doesn’t always feel like it. Solidarity.
I hear you Sarah! Writing on LinkedIn is daunting, especially when you follow great writers like Joshua. I felt better when I got the advice that your first LinkedIn post won't be good, because almost no one's is:)
Thanks for the compliment, Jennifer :). But you're right -- I spent a while just posting pull quotes and links on LinkedIn. Writing a post for LinkedIn itself is quite another matter, and took me some time to learn (still learning). But the advice you received is good. The reality show Alone, which I find appalling and yet can't stop watching, begins with a quote from Lao Tzu: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." :)
Thanks for the reminder to do things that "recall myself to myself." Yes and yes. Also, I love your closing point, which resonates with what Blaire wrote in this thread. The "professional wilderness" is also "the numinous space of possibilities." And you're right -- I/we chose this over a fixed mindset and clinging to self-eroding certainties. Thanks for your support, and I send solidarity your way, as well.
oh wow, this is gut wrenching. My brother - a VP in his field when his entire division was retired - was out of work for 6 months. And, at 61, that is even more terrifying (ageism really does exist). It's terrifying under any circumstances. And frustrating AF.
As usual, Josh, you write about my exact experience but with more honesty and insight than I have access to at the moment (or maybe ever-ha!). I am in the same boat as you and have absorbed much of the same advice--and have the same sinking feeling about my chances.
Right now, I’m trying to build my network. It’s been pretty wonderful to learn about all the options out there--but I think most if not all of those connections have been through mutual acquaintances. I’ve been completely unable to meet with anyone I’ve approached for a “coffee chat” cold. I’m especially interested in coaching, but no one in that space will meet with me.
I no more think the broader job market is a meritocracy than I do academia. In fact, I think it’s more about who you know out here, as you mention above. As for keeping it up for 6-12 months, I am hoping that having a few passion projects on the side, and working on a few small contract jobs, will keep me motivated and bring in a little income.
Thank you so much for this post. It’s demoralizing to feel so totally out of sync with the optimistic view of coaches and advocates on LinkedIn and Twitter, and it means a lot to know that I’m not alone in that experience.
Thanks, Liz. I've made some headway with cold LinkedIn connection requests. Greg Roche has some good free materials on this, using 1st degree and 2nd degree connections and then filtering by company. You also want to check how recently the person has been active (if it's been months, they likely won't respond). Not all of those requests bear fruit, but some of them do, and every conversation is better than silence.
I hope the takeaway from this post is not demoralizing. Vigilant realism doesn't have to be defeatist. It's just a way of not being delusional. If the odds are correctly identified and the challenge accurately sized up, I think that can be motivating. For me, the most enervating thing is when I realize that I'd inaccurately estimated my chances or that the mark was nowhere near where I was aiming. Course corrections are part of the process.
Happy to talk more about coaching. The trick there really is amplifying your visibility or identifying a pipeline of sorts. I'm still working on that. Growth takes time. And I think narrowing the kind of coaching services you offer, so there is a clearer hook and a more identifiable audience, can be useful (or so I've heard!).
Pretty much everyone I've talked to says the same. The Hamilton soundtrack might offer some good inspiration -- even if you can't "outrun," perhaps PhDs are better conditioned than most to "outlast."
Thanks for sharing such vulnerable truths whilst also illuminating the ways to exist in between their lines. I’m mostly going to react here to the fact that a lot of people in digital-style work, who believe in the strength of a resume and references and strong on-paper hireability (why isn’t this a word?) are very proud of their past accomplishments but are less vocal about their interpersonal skills.
So much of my experience in finding random jobs in academia or elsewhere were 100% decided based on somehow developing a human connection (and quickly) with whoever was interviewing me. Most humans don’t care about MA degrees or how successful we were at X or Y company--they care about whether or not they’ll be able to stand hearing our voice and seeing our faces five days a week. Especially post Covid, in a world in which even PhDs can’t find work, being overly proud of past accolades or degrees or why we’re “the one” for the job seems paradoxically at odds with finding work, especially in industries wherein cultivating the human is at an all time premium as the robots continue marching onwards.
Right on, Samuél. I was riffing about "cultivating the human" with someone recently (whose interview I'll be posting before long), and we were noting the distinction between "training" and "teaching." This is one of those contrasts that has kept me from exploring instructional design, because real learning requires the ability to question the premise, have emotional reactions, and perhaps even work through things like anger and denial before accepting a new concept. Corporate models of learning, so far as I understand them, are fairly linear and driven by correct answers. I had a taste of that near the end of my faculty tenure, when we were increasingly mandated to complete plug-n-play trainings on Title IX, etc. The human in most of us rebels against those rigid (and inherently smug) methodologies for learning, and so the only purpose I can see for spending money on them is reduced liability. Rather a tangent, but it's this kind of thing that I'm frequently bumping up against in thinking about how to market myself in a business context. I realize that there are similar absurdities in higher ed right now, such as writing professors trying to figure out how to either catch students who are cheating with AI or to integrate bots into writing instruction. But one does rather want to feel sincere and to believe in one's enterprise. And so the search continues.
Sincerity and belief. A life without those is tantamount to a scam. It seems we’re in an extremely volatile moment for how the humanities will survive the roboticizarion and commodification of so much of what we’ve considered throughout human wisdom to be wisdom. This year as an adjunct, I have been asked, lo and behold, to “teach” creative writing online. My only solace is that the absurdity of the premise guarantees that I can make the learning experience absurd. The Sorbonne will have to contend with a student (and faculty) body which, like in ‘68, is beginning to question what the purpose of higher education is when it only intends to serve lowest common denomination concepts of “work force” and “economics.” To your point re: training, if we end up foregoing teaching for that oh-so-corporate notion of education, let’s just charge CEOs and financiers exorbitant amounts of money to be trained by us and laugh our way to the bank. “Consulting” has become at least a temporary way for teachers to start fighting back at the system .
Dammit, Samuél, your allusion to '68 has me all distracted now. It does feel like we're in a similar period of upheaval. I can really relate to my parents and their generation, who rejected a large share of what they'd been raised to see as the American Dream. If you're interested, have a listen to this podcast episode I produced with Dominique Serrand, of the famed Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis. Dominique came of age as an artist in Paris during that famous 1968 revolution, and I was struck by how much of his story resonated with my own disaffection with academe. No wonder that if the corporatization of academe pushed me away, I have a hard time finding a place for myself in the corporate world, eh?
Outside the gates of the working world... I can so relate to this, Josh. I have been there. I often think of it as the "professional wilderness." You're outside the gates of the city, in a place that many others are afraid to visit. But their fear does not have to be your fear. Your integrity brought you here, and your integrity will guide you on. Although pragmatism says you should get back on the payroll as soon as possible, try not to rush back to the city. The wilderness offers more possibility. "It's opener here in the wide open air, where things can happen and frequently do, to people as brainy and footsy as you" (Dr. Seuss, surely misquoted).
On a more practical note, I offer that if getting a job depends on networking, and networking depends on relationships, and relationships must develop naturally, then networking can't be forced. It can't be a meetup or a mixer. It has to be kickball or sewing club or something like that. Let other people see you doing something you love. You at your best. I think you're already doing that by sharing your writing. The rest is in time's hands
Thanks, Blaire. This is a good reminder of how important fit is. And you're right -- I stand where I do because I chose to embrace growth rather than cling to a bad situation out of fear. I remain hopeful that something better waits on the other side.
It feels wrong to me that a job should be a "prize" -- it feels to me like a destructively misleading mixing of metaphors. A job may be something you compete for, but it's not a reward, it's a contract to work for remuneration. A job application is a "bid," and an interview is a demonstration, getting the job is always contingent on performing the job, and the job can be done perfectly but the contract still canceled because of external factors. No one should tie their sense of self up in this uncontrollable game, even if one chooses to play. Humans have been hustling and pivoting and exploiting for as long as we've existed. Rather than getting hung up on tethering by contract to an institution with the idea that the institution will protect and relieve the stress of life -- even if that means moving 1900 miles away, or bolting yourself to a laptop for hours a day -- we should look at the ground we're standing on and see what needs to be done or made or sold here. My kids are great at this: they have no concept of working for a company and don't want to move away. They want to breed expensive dogs and raise alpacas and sell eggs and mow lawns. If they follow these instincts I suspect they'll be happy. Anyway, just a counter-thought to add to the mix. :)
Good luck in your search, it’s tough out there. I have been looking for jobs for over a year (since before I voluntarily left my safe but toxic and soul destroying corporate job) without much luck besides patching together temp academic gigs and a little contract work. In my case, extremely restrictive non-compete and similar agreements have made me radioactive, a topic I’ve written about on my Substack 😔 I agree that the most manageable way forward is realism with a touch of optimism to keep your sanity ❤️
Eric, I appreciate the solidarity and wish you all the best in your own search! Hopefully some of the interviews I'm putting out are helpful. They have been to me.
Thanks Josh! Yes, I have really enjoyed your interviews, they are one of my favorite parts about your Substack 👍🏻
Thank you for the Barbara Ehrenreich reference, Joshua. I would love to read it but I also know that, right now, it would strike me too hard in a place that I’m working hard to keep alive: my optimism - about pretty much anything and everything!
Searching for a professional job is really tough at the moment, for everyone but especially for those of us pivoting out of academic careers.
I originally wrote a long screed about how unfair that is, how many of the popular perceptions about us (that we work slowly, that we’re haughty and easily bored, that we have no clue about or experience in business contexts) are WAY off for those of us who’ve spent years grafting at the equivalent of 3 people’s jobs making and delivering $millions for neo-liberal universities. About how frustrating it is to have to keep finding ways of telling that story better on 1 or 2 sides of 8.5”x11”. Add in the difficulty for former academics (and immigrants like me!) of ‘using your connections’ - the standard advice now and deeply problematic for diversity.
Instead, I prefer acceptance - and to focus on positive steps. For me, that means continuing to develop new technical skills, making new connections and acquaintances, and taking breaks from the whole catastrophe to create and achieve things that recall myself to myself, including/especially in my personal relationships.
On a practical level, I’ve also been steeling myself and gathering ideas to start writing on LinkedIn, a prospect made daunting by my English reserve and generational regard for privacy but clearly a necessity of sorts. And I’ve been carrying out the job search more locally now - almost literally knocking on people’s doors and letting them now I’m right here, ready to get stuck in.
Things will find a way. Right now, we’re in the numinous space of possibilities - exactly what we wanted for ourselves - even if it doesn’t always feel like it. Solidarity.
I hear you Sarah! Writing on LinkedIn is daunting, especially when you follow great writers like Joshua. I felt better when I got the advice that your first LinkedIn post won't be good, because almost no one's is:)
Thanks for the compliment, Jennifer :). But you're right -- I spent a while just posting pull quotes and links on LinkedIn. Writing a post for LinkedIn itself is quite another matter, and took me some time to learn (still learning). But the advice you received is good. The reality show Alone, which I find appalling and yet can't stop watching, begins with a quote from Lao Tzu: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." :)
Thanks for the reminder to do things that "recall myself to myself." Yes and yes. Also, I love your closing point, which resonates with what Blaire wrote in this thread. The "professional wilderness" is also "the numinous space of possibilities." And you're right -- I/we chose this over a fixed mindset and clinging to self-eroding certainties. Thanks for your support, and I send solidarity your way, as well.
oh wow, this is gut wrenching. My brother - a VP in his field when his entire division was retired - was out of work for 6 months. And, at 61, that is even more terrifying (ageism really does exist). It's terrifying under any circumstances. And frustrating AF.
Terrifying and frustrating, yes. Although I really am trying to hold onto realism and positive steps.
which is all you can do. Trust that everything is unfolding as it is meant to. One foot in front of the other. (Hermey the elf had that right!)
As usual, Josh, you write about my exact experience but with more honesty and insight than I have access to at the moment (or maybe ever-ha!). I am in the same boat as you and have absorbed much of the same advice--and have the same sinking feeling about my chances.
Right now, I’m trying to build my network. It’s been pretty wonderful to learn about all the options out there--but I think most if not all of those connections have been through mutual acquaintances. I’ve been completely unable to meet with anyone I’ve approached for a “coffee chat” cold. I’m especially interested in coaching, but no one in that space will meet with me.
I no more think the broader job market is a meritocracy than I do academia. In fact, I think it’s more about who you know out here, as you mention above. As for keeping it up for 6-12 months, I am hoping that having a few passion projects on the side, and working on a few small contract jobs, will keep me motivated and bring in a little income.
Thank you so much for this post. It’s demoralizing to feel so totally out of sync with the optimistic view of coaches and advocates on LinkedIn and Twitter, and it means a lot to know that I’m not alone in that experience.
Thanks, Liz. I've made some headway with cold LinkedIn connection requests. Greg Roche has some good free materials on this, using 1st degree and 2nd degree connections and then filtering by company. You also want to check how recently the person has been active (if it's been months, they likely won't respond). Not all of those requests bear fruit, but some of them do, and every conversation is better than silence.
I hope the takeaway from this post is not demoralizing. Vigilant realism doesn't have to be defeatist. It's just a way of not being delusional. If the odds are correctly identified and the challenge accurately sized up, I think that can be motivating. For me, the most enervating thing is when I realize that I'd inaccurately estimated my chances or that the mark was nowhere near where I was aiming. Course corrections are part of the process.
Happy to talk more about coaching. The trick there really is amplifying your visibility or identifying a pipeline of sorts. I'm still working on that. Growth takes time. And I think narrowing the kind of coaching services you offer, so there is a clearer hook and a more identifiable audience, can be useful (or so I've heard!).
I have some very specific ideas about the coaching, and look forward to running them past you!
Thanks for posting Joshua! It helps to know that the job search is just difficult, period, right now
Pretty much everyone I've talked to says the same. The Hamilton soundtrack might offer some good inspiration -- even if you can't "outrun," perhaps PhDs are better conditioned than most to "outlast."
Thanks for sharing such vulnerable truths whilst also illuminating the ways to exist in between their lines. I’m mostly going to react here to the fact that a lot of people in digital-style work, who believe in the strength of a resume and references and strong on-paper hireability (why isn’t this a word?) are very proud of their past accomplishments but are less vocal about their interpersonal skills.
So much of my experience in finding random jobs in academia or elsewhere were 100% decided based on somehow developing a human connection (and quickly) with whoever was interviewing me. Most humans don’t care about MA degrees or how successful we were at X or Y company--they care about whether or not they’ll be able to stand hearing our voice and seeing our faces five days a week. Especially post Covid, in a world in which even PhDs can’t find work, being overly proud of past accolades or degrees or why we’re “the one” for the job seems paradoxically at odds with finding work, especially in industries wherein cultivating the human is at an all time premium as the robots continue marching onwards.
Right on, Samuél. I was riffing about "cultivating the human" with someone recently (whose interview I'll be posting before long), and we were noting the distinction between "training" and "teaching." This is one of those contrasts that has kept me from exploring instructional design, because real learning requires the ability to question the premise, have emotional reactions, and perhaps even work through things like anger and denial before accepting a new concept. Corporate models of learning, so far as I understand them, are fairly linear and driven by correct answers. I had a taste of that near the end of my faculty tenure, when we were increasingly mandated to complete plug-n-play trainings on Title IX, etc. The human in most of us rebels against those rigid (and inherently smug) methodologies for learning, and so the only purpose I can see for spending money on them is reduced liability. Rather a tangent, but it's this kind of thing that I'm frequently bumping up against in thinking about how to market myself in a business context. I realize that there are similar absurdities in higher ed right now, such as writing professors trying to figure out how to either catch students who are cheating with AI or to integrate bots into writing instruction. But one does rather want to feel sincere and to believe in one's enterprise. And so the search continues.
Sincerity and belief. A life without those is tantamount to a scam. It seems we’re in an extremely volatile moment for how the humanities will survive the roboticizarion and commodification of so much of what we’ve considered throughout human wisdom to be wisdom. This year as an adjunct, I have been asked, lo and behold, to “teach” creative writing online. My only solace is that the absurdity of the premise guarantees that I can make the learning experience absurd. The Sorbonne will have to contend with a student (and faculty) body which, like in ‘68, is beginning to question what the purpose of higher education is when it only intends to serve lowest common denomination concepts of “work force” and “economics.” To your point re: training, if we end up foregoing teaching for that oh-so-corporate notion of education, let’s just charge CEOs and financiers exorbitant amounts of money to be trained by us and laugh our way to the bank. “Consulting” has become at least a temporary way for teachers to start fighting back at the system .
Dammit, Samuél, your allusion to '68 has me all distracted now. It does feel like we're in a similar period of upheaval. I can really relate to my parents and their generation, who rejected a large share of what they'd been raised to see as the American Dream. If you're interested, have a listen to this podcast episode I produced with Dominique Serrand, of the famed Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis. Dominique came of age as an artist in Paris during that famous 1968 revolution, and I was struck by how much of his story resonated with my own disaffection with academe. No wonder that if the corporatization of academe pushed me away, I have a hard time finding a place for myself in the corporate world, eh?
https://www.midamericana.com/podcast/journey-into-the-new-dominique-serrand/
Oh wow this is right up my alley. It’s getting the royal “remember to engage with this treatment” I.e. sending myself an email.