If you listened to the interview I did with Daniel Mullin at The Unemployed Philosopher, you might already know this, but my next project is building what I’m calling a CV to Resume Translator.
One of the biggest psychological blocks to leaving academia is the belief that your experience doesn’t translate into the “outside world,” that you have nothing to offer. The CV, which of course only includes academic experience, becomes the symbol of that belief. After all, who outside of the academy needs a Dickens scholar?
Quite a few people, actually — but not necessarily for the knowledge of Dickens. When you start from that sense of not having anything to 0ffer, it’s really hard to translate your academic experience into non-academic language. It’s even harder to resurrect the non-academic experience you probably have, but have discounted or outright forgotten.
That’s where the Translator will come in. It’ll be a form that asks you to input all kinds of information, including but not limited to the stuff on your CV, and it will spit out a comprehensive resume draft you can then frame in all kinds of ways for different applications.
I’m really geeked out about this!
If you want to know when it goes live (and maybe be a beta tester!), you can sign up for the notify list by clicking here and filling out the handy-dandy little form.
Daniel Mullen of The Unemployed Philosopher was kind enough to interview me on his podcast series. He asked a number of thoughtful questions about the process of leaving academia from the humanities, and it was great to be able to articulate what I do and why I do it.
You can hear it all here: http://theunemployedphilosophersblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/episode-6-julie-clarenbach/
I’d love to hear your responses.
Hello my beloved Escape Artists.
Whoever you are, whatever stage of things you’re in, I’m wishing for you a 2013 that blows your expectations out of the water, a year that is a thousand million times better than 2012. Even if your 2012 was fabulous.
love,
Julie
Hello lovely Escape Artists! I hope you had a lovely winter holiday season, complete with a renewing and rejuvenating turning of the Gregorian calendar.
I took a bit of time away to rejuvenate myself and think about what I wanted to bring to you all this year. In addition to the one-on-one coaching and resume writing (which I suspect will always be a staple of what I do), I’m working on an ebook about tools to help you decide if you should stay in academia or leave and home-study versions of the two classes I teach, Choosing Your Career Consciously and Becoming Post-Academic. (A new round of the latter starts next week!)
My goal this year is to provide practical, useful tools for every stage of the post-academic journey. Thanks for having me along on yours.
Hello, escape artists!
I seem to have taken an unscheduled hiatus from the blog, and I apologize for not warning you in advance. Remind me not to believe doctors when they tell me I’ll be able to work from home 48 hours after surgery, would you? We’ll simply say my brain was not functioning.
I’ll be back in the saddle next week.
With flooding in the East, fires around Austin, and massive power outages in the Southwest, how about we all stay safe?
love,
Julie
Part of the isolation of struggling with academia comes from not knowing other people’s stories.
For every other major transition, you have people around you who tell you their story, or their best friend’s sister’s story, or what have you. Breakups, moves, marriage, parenthood, college graduation. But leaving academia? Who tells you that story so you can feel more comfortable in your own?
There’s so much more out there now than there ever has been to support you, but sometimes you just want to hear the stories.
So I’ve created a separate part of the site for people to share their stories. It’s new, and I’d like to invite you to share your story, whatever it is right now, so we all know we have traveling companions in this journey.
You can do by clicking here or by using the Tell Your Story tab at the top of the site. I hope you’ll share, and I hope you’ll come back to read other people’s stories.
Many of my clients get stuck right at the point where thoughts and dreams move into action — and for good reason. Leaving academia and entering a different career or job trajectory is more than a workplace change. It’s a cultural shift, and it brings along all of the baggage and translation problems and confusions that come with cultural shifts.
That’s why I’m really excited about two new courses I’m offering in the next few months and I wanted to let you know about them.
Overcoming the 3 Barriers to the Post-Academic Job Search
The first, Overcoming the 3 Barriers to the Post-Academic Job Search, is a free 90-minute teleclass designed to give you the practical tools you need to make the transition from academia to a post-academic job.
- 5 primary ways academics are misunderstood and how to demonstrate your difference
- Strategies for identifying and translating academic experience into non-academic skills and accomplishments
- 6 steps to running a successful job search outside of academia
You can read more about it, and sign up, by clicking here.
Becoming Post-Academic
The second, Becoming Post-Academic, is a six-week teleclass designed to help you craft a comprehensive and successful job search. It includes the following:
- Concrete action steps that get you to your goal
- A system that tells you which steps to do when – and that you can use whenever you decide to change jobs
- Evidence of your experience, skills, and accomplishments
- Strategies for researching companies and translating your talents into their needs
- Ways to succeed at interviewing
- Non-scary strategies for networking
- 9 steps to simplifying negotiations – and getting what you want
- The confidence to move forward and actually step into a new career
You can read more about it, and sign up, by clicking here.
Two weeks from today, Jo VanEvery and I are starting another round of our Choosing Your Career Consciously course. If you’re wondering what, besides academia, you could do with your life, we’d love for you to join us.
We started the class because we kept encountering smart, talented, skilled people who were convinced that they weren’t worth anything outside of academia. They’d say they had no experience or training or ability to do anything else, and so they felt either doomed to stay or completely at sea out there in the non-academic world.
But they aren’t doomed to stay in academia, nor were they actually rudderless in the non-academic world. And neither are you.
Academia can make us believe that it’s the only job we’re fit for, that it’s the only place that will make us happy. Occasionally, that’s true. But only occasionally. Most of the time, in fact, there’s a whole set of interesting, fulfilling, compelling, righteous jobs and careers that you would rock.
Finding that set, though, that’s where people get stuck. And that’s what this class addresses. We help you figure out what you have to offer, what kinds of jobs and situations you’re actually interested in, and where those jobs might be hiding.
If you’re considering leaving academia but don’t know what else you could possibly do, join us for this six-week class. We would love to help you find out. Just click here to find out more and sign up.
Questions? Drop us a line at joandjulie@joandjulie.com and we’ll get them answered.
Hello escape artists!
I missed you this month — it was really strange not to be talking with you! But I’m excited about two new things — one that’s already here, and one that’s on it’s way.
First, I’m offering a new service focusing on helping you write job materials — master resumes, targeted resumes, and cover letters. It’s something I’ve done in bits and pieces for a while, but now it’s got a shiny new streamlined process. I’m also focusing more on master resumes, which I believe are foundational for long-term career success. If you want to know more about the service, click here.
Second, I’m doing a massive overhaul of the resources section of the site. Some of it is outdated, and I want them to be much more robust for people at different stages of the process. I had intended to get them done in February as well, but, as often happens to me, my reach exceeded my grasp. So that’s going to be March’s project! If you’ve got resources you’ve found that are just invaluable to your process, please share them with me in email so I can include them.
That’s about all the news that’s fit to print around here. Regular blog posting commences now, and I look forward to being back in the writing groove.
best,
Julie
Hey escape artists!
I’m going to take a little break from the blog while I keep cooking up some fun stuff behind the scenes. I’ll be back on March 1 with a roundup of the February news.
Julie
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Have a CV and need a resume? I'm currently building a CV to Resume Translator. Click here to sign up to be notified when it's live. Free Teleclass! Overcoming the 3 Barriers to the Post-Academic Job Search. Learn more by clicking here.Sign up for the newsletter!
Myths and Mismatches eCourse Now Available! Jo VanEvery and I have put together a free eCourse on the most common myths and mismatches we see in people who are unhappy in academia.
It's one lens through which you can examine your own unhappiness and better diagnose the problem -- which makes finding a solution that much easier.
Find out more by clicking here!
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