PhDs: How to quantify your resume
And highlight what actually matters
If you have a PhD and you are trying to build a resume, you may have heard that you need to quantify the content in your resume for it to be effective. But what does that mean, and why is it helpful?
A quick note on the meaning of success
Before we dive into that, there’s something that I need to point out about the academic system of achievement that you probably already know, but never really thought about before:
Success in academia is homogenous
What do I mean by that? Well, every academic job requiring a CV from the person they are hiring measures how qualified a candidate is in the same two ways, by asking:
- How many publications does this person have in high-impact journals?
- How relevant is this person’s area of study to what we do here?
And when you read another colleague’s CV, you basically just look at #1.
Sure, you may be looking at where they got their degree, their teaching awards, whether they speak at public events, what organizations they’re a part of, etc. But their publication record is the most important metric BY FAR.
Furthermore (and this is very obvious if you have a CV), every single publication is listed in the same way for everyone. It’s standard. By design.
And that illustrates my point about homogeneity; everyone cares about the same metric (publications), and the way that a publication is communicated is the same for everyone because no other details matter.
Guess what? Outside of academia, the details are the ONLY thing that matter.
More on that later. First, let’s get into resumes.
Resume writing 101
I’m going to lay a little bit of groundwork in case you’re new to resume writing. Obviously the formatting is different, but that’s not all. There is a different philosophy and intent behind the approach to writing.
Focusing on the “experience” portion of the document, you’re going to have to write down what you did in the past, and it’s not super clear how to write about that because there’s no required formula.
This is because the types of jobs that exist outside of academia are so diverse that there’s no single definition of success.
Let’s start with how to describe your experience in the first place. There are 3 broad things you want to include, ideally in each bullet, to describe each thing you did:
- What you did
- How you did it
- The impact of your actions
Formatting-wise, it’s often better to begin with #3 (the impact) followed by the other two: “Accomplished X by doing Y using Z”
Imagine Sam, an imaginary person whose job it is to jump out of a helicopter into wildfires to save white rhinos. Sam could feasibly write something like “Preserved the white rhino population from extinction by extracting rhinos from wildfires via helicopter-bungee missions.”
- Sam’s accomplishment: prevented rhino extinction
- What Sam did: plucked rhinos from wildfires
- How Sam did it: aerial bungee jumping
I hope Sam is real and that resume exists.
Adding meaningful numbers
Quantification is taking the extra step to make sure the reader understands how big of a deal the information is. Some people like to modify the sentence structure to “Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z”
So how do you “measure” something, exactly?
There’s no single right answer. It’s all about what you want to emphasize.
In an academic CV, all your publications are in the same format because each publication is just more of the same thing (unless you published in a super-impressive journal). Each paper means you did 1 unit of publishable work, and that’s a currency that academics are familiar with. You’re essentially already quantifying your background, just not in a way that’s applicable outside of a university.
As I mentioned before, the details don’t matter in academia.
Did you spend 5 years designing and collecting the data you needed to run that study? Did you have to navigate legal, political, or social barriers to even get permission to do it? Did you have to collaborate with colleagues across language barriers or build your own apparatus to make the study possible?
This information is considered fluff in academia and doesn’t appear on CVs. But they’re gold in resumes.
Most jobs outside of academia don’t require you to publish academic articles, but they do care about what skills you bring to the table and the way that you solve problems, face challenges, and describe your work.
On a resume, if you are applying to two different jobs, you will have two separate resumes and the descriptions might look different between them even for the same activity. The reason is simple: different details are relevant for each unique job.
Let’s talk numbers
Let’s go back to the skydiving firefighter rhino savior for a moment. Imagine Sam gets bored of this job, and decides to explore other career options. Sam decides to apply to two very different jobs. Job option #1 is working for a nature conservation group. Job option #2 is at the manufacturer that makes helicopter bungee cords.
Recall the fictional resume bullet I shared before, “Preserved the white rhino population from extinction by extracting rhinos from wildfires via helicopter-bungee missions.”
If Sam is writing the nature conservation resume, this sentence might need very little modification to quantify, perhaps something like “Preserved the white rhino population from extinction by extracting 5 of the 7 existing rhinos from wildfires via helicopter-bungee missions.”
On the other hand, if Sam is writing the resume for the bungee manufacturer, the numbers that should be added to the resume in this same sentence might be very different, like “Extracted 5 white rhinos (avg. weight ~4500 lbs) from wildfires via helicopter-bungee missions using the X-treem bungee cord.”
Do you see the difference? Do you understand the point?
Asking the question “How do I quantify my experience” is not a question you can answer in a blunt, universal way for everyone because the context matters.
Choosing what you quantify means choosing what you highlight. And you can highlight whatever you want.
Here’s the rule: Each bullet on a resume should emphasize at least one skill, achievement, or quality that you have, that you believe will be relevant to the job you’re applying for. Whatever that is, find a way to communicate how big of a deal it is.
What if all I’ve done is publish articles?
This is a real struggle for PhDs trying to make the leap to a new industry. I’ve been there. It’s hard enough to think about “what is my impact?” because you’ve never had to flex that muscle before.
For most academics, impact is defined as how many citations you have, or the impact factor of the journals you published with. And you were probably told to just focus on pumping out more journal publications in order to succeed, which is only remotely true in the academic world.
The first hurdle to overcome is to avoid focusing or quantifying the things that only matter in academia. Publications, citations, and subject matter expertise on your niche subject are rarely going to be important.
If you’re a biochemist who studied drug interactions in graduate school and are going to work at a pharmaceutical company making that drug then yes, go wild. Attach your CV if you want. Show how much you publish in the field, how much of an expert you are at the thing you’re being hired to do.
This article is (mostly) not for you.
For every other PhD…
The details that matter
When it comes to what you want to emphasize, there are some pretty universal factors that most hiring managers want. Whether your PhD is in a STEM field or not, the job you’re seeking outside of academia is looking for someone who, like you:
- Has skills that are hard to teach quickly (problem solving, project management, people management, etc.)
- Is adaptable and can learn technical skills quickly
- Can communicate in different mediums and to different audiences
These are pretty general, but they’re a good starting place. More specific desires are job-specific, and you should focus on figuring out what’s valued in the industry you’re trying to enter, so you know how to highlight what’s special about you that makes you a good hire.
I use the word “highlight” very intentionally. A CV is a bibliography. A resume is a curated collection of passages. More is not better, it’s just extra effort to read.
Examples, please!
Here’s an example of a bad, generic resume bullet for a scientist: “I conducted and published a series of studies on X topic”
Good for you. So did lots of scientists, probably. What makes you different?
Let’s say you wanted to focus on…
- Impact and recognized expertise: “published 5 articles on X in the top journals in X field, amassing 300 academic citations over 4 years”
- Scale of work and experience with a method: “Led 10+ studies on X using the Y technique, including interviews with a total sample of 300+ people”
- Technical skills: “designed 10+ studies on X with [software/hardware/language], managing and analyzing [data type/amount] using [software/techniques]”
All of these are variants on the same original bullet! I hope you can see that the structure, framing, and storytelling between the alternate versions of the bullet can make your experience look far more valuable and relevant to a particular job, which is the ultimate goal.
Quantification isn’t that hard, it’s all about identifying exactly what you want to communicate and answering “What did I do that shows I have this in spades?”
And just in case it needed to be said, show through examples, don’t just say you have a virtue. “I’m a hard worker” never impressed anyone.
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