Welcome to Growing Up Comm, a production of the ICA Podcast Network. In this series, we talk about topics primarily relevant for students and early career scholars. I’m your host, Cecilia Zhou, and I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Today, I am speaking with our guest, Dr. Lisa Hurwitz, the Director of Impact Research at Newsela and graduate of Northwestern University’s Media, Technology, and Society PhD program. In today’s episode, we will talk about transitioning from the academy to working in industry.
Hi, Cecilia, and thank you for having me here. My name is Lisa Hurwitz and I received my PhD back in 2017 from Northwestern University's program in Media, Technology, and Society. I had a postdoc, but I've spent most of my post-PhD career in different industry research positions, largely with a focus on what's referred to as efficacy research. And so in my different roles, I have taken a look at whether products are having the outcomes on users that they are intended to be having. Right now, I work for an edtech company called Newsela. They kind of got their start making news for kids and have since expanded, where now they include fiction content and all sorts of content. And I am charged with engaging in research on the product and its impact on students and teachers.
Great. So can you walk us through a little bit about your journeys? Why did you choose to work in the industry in the first place? When did you start to have this feeling of how you want to work in the industry instead of working in academia?
I came into graduate school leaning more towards wanting an industry as opposed to an academic career. I had been working in basically the same space I'm in now prior to getting my PhD. And I was at a time in my life where I could move across the country to go to whatever PhD program was the best I could be getting into. I wanted to be gaining higher level skills. I wanted to be leading projects and not assisting them someday. And I thought a PhD would lead me towards that path. I wasn't someone who was unhappy with my industry role at the time, or coming into my PhD program thinking I wanted to be a professor.
Right. What were you looking for when you were transitioning from industry into a PhD or graduate program? Are you looking for honing your research skills, and how does PhD itself help you to to achieve that goal?
That's what I was looking for, yes, honing my research skills. I was engaged in research in a topic area I was really interested in, but I didn't have much quantitative training. All of my qualitative training was on the job. And I really wanted sharper methods to be doing justice to the kinds of projects that I was getting in my former role, and/or, again, to be able to lead as opposed to assisting on projects. And so that was what I was trying to get out of my PhD program. And then I think a pleasant surprise that all the theory and deeper thought you learn along the way as well. I wasn't looking for or expecting that, but it certainly enriches my practice today.
I know that engineers, science field, you can imagine what kind of industry job might be okay, computer science as well. All of those tech jobs are definitely okay. But for graduate students in humanities, social science, communication, what kind of industry job is actually out there? The only one that I can think of is actually just research jobs. I myself have a very limited understanding of what industry jobs there are out there.
That's a really good question, and I think the answer will be helpful to a lot of people. In a world where we're dichotomizing industry versus academia, jobs and government organizations that are reviewing grant applications and reviewing progress towards grants, I think we tend to categorize as industry. Those types of jobs might be a good fit for you if you're someone who really enjoys reviewing colleagues’ work and evaluating study design but if your priority isn't necessarily actually being the one to engage in primary data collection. There are some jobs also tending to be in government organizations or different nonprofit think tank kinds of places where your job might be just helping to be producing giant literature reviews and white papers on different topics. If that's the part of your PhD experience you love, you can be seeking out jobs where that could be one of your major areas of responsibility.
For ICA, maybe the most common industry position that people go into would be in the user research space, where there, you'll be working in partnership largely with different design teams, who will be designing different features that will be built out in technology. And you'll be engaging in research to be testing if they're on the right track, and/or the impact that these features are having. You might, in this role, also be engaging in what they call landscape research, where they might want to know what do kids like in video, for example. And you're not researching a specific product, you're engaging in research where the aim of the research, at the end of the day, is to be helping to be designing better products.
I work in an evaluation space, where I tend to be working a little more with finished products and evaluating if finished products are having the impact that they should, so a lot of experimental work complemented with different mixed methods approaches being layered in. Sometimes there'll be companies that will hire someone who will be in charge of contracting research, but not necessarily conducting it originally. So if those are skills that appeal to you, again, you could be seeking out different roles that would be allowing you to be exercising your favorite and your strongest skill sets.
I also heard that, for example, if your research is about diversity, they might hire you in HR. And then if you're in game studies, the game industry itself is where you're going to be.
Yeah, I think realistic backgrounds for ICA graduates and with social science backgrounds is that you'll often be a subject matter expert. Similar to the kinds of roles I was describing where you'd be writing white papers and literature reviews, sometimes companies will hire you to just be an internal source of knowledge, advising on major decisions they're making. So I can speak most concretely to my specialties in children's media. And there is a job called a learning scientist. And different places define that differently. But a big part of that person's job is less engaging in empirical research, but more adult learning and teaching about what the research says, and partnering with even in-house researchers to be making sure that all the teams who are supposed to be acting on the research really understand what it is the research is saying. And so if you love teaching, those kinds of jobs where you're being thought of as a thought leader and an expert could be really appealing. Less so for someone who's just graduated from their PhD program, but after you've been out of it some number of years, some people, a lot of what they do is external speaking. So different companies, in order to be establishing kind of their footing as experts and thought leaders, might hire folks with PhDs to be subject matter experts who just give webinars or attend conferences that aren't targeting academics but are targeting different lay industries and to be just a public speaker. So if that's the part of your PhD experience you love, you might have a little trouble doing that immediately right after graduating, but that's an absolutely viable career path as well.
When you were graduating from your PhD program, when did you actually start to prepare to work in the industry, and how do you actually prepare for it?
I tried to be doing the best research projects that I possibly could. I made an effort to be doing ones that were closely related to the space that I knew I wanted to do research in post-graduation. I also had one internship during graduate school. I got a certificate in management, which was something my university offered in the process of getting my PhD, which helped me get a little business experience that I wasn't getting in a university setting. And in addition, I started, especially during my postdoc year, taking on consulting projects here and there for different industry clients, which helped give me more recent experience I could be speaking to about applying my skills in an industry setting.
What would what would your suggestion be if somebody, prior to finishing graduate school, they don't have that much experience in the industry? Before, they always think about, “I want to be in academia, I want to be in academia,” but someday they change an opinion. And then they don't really know what it's like to be working in the industry, and then they don't necessarily have that much connection. What would your advice to them in this situation?
That could be a good scenario where trying to get an internship could be helpful. In addition, just engaging in informational interviews. If you go in either LinkedIn or in different databases through your university, you can find people who graduated, not necessarily from your program but from the university at large, who would be happy to talk to you about their job, what their day-to-day responsibilities are, what they like, what they don't like, what experiences they thought made them particularly qualified for that job. And people would be happy to be having those conversations with you. I've never intentionally declined anyone who was an alumni of my school who wanted to be getting that kind of career advice. That’s another good way.
I think also something I advise students to figure out is what kind of industry career they specifically want. Because I think sometimes in academia, people will talk about industry as this monolith, but different industry jobs can be really different in terms of your day-to-day responsibilities. And the more you have an ideal target, sometimes the more compelling you can be in an interview scenario, when you're then interviewing for jobs, where candidates tend to be less compelling if they're just like, “I don’t know, I want an industry job.” The flip side to that though, is sometimes if you're so picky with what you want, that makes it harder to find something. And so it's about striking a balance and having multiple criteria that you're looking for, being really concrete about that in your own mind, identifying jobs that meet some of those criteria, and then being able to speak to which of the criteria in terms of what you're looking for and in your own career trajectory. The more you're able to be doing that internal, you can only answer those questions, thought process, I think the more successful and purposeful you'll be in your career search.
Thank you. My next question is about the similarities and differences between working in industry and working in academia. What are the similarities that can transfer between these two fields?
I was looking for a research job that would be allowing me to be doing real empirical research. So for me, I'm using methods I was using in graduate school, and that was something I sought out. That wouldn't apply to all jobs, but that was the case for me. And so that is something that was intentionally similar for me, but it might not be for everybody.
I think differences– there's a culture where there's a lot of meetings and a lot of tighter deadlines than you might be used to, so adjusting to that. I also think understanding that the expectations can be different. So in academia, research that is just for the sake of knowledge generation can be really valuable and can be published in top journals. A lot of times in industry jobs, companies are paying you to be answering certain questions that, for business reasons, they need answered by certain times. And where I've seen people struggle is if they didn't understand that that is what was expected of them in this new environment. And which sometimes to be able to get answers in a certain timeline, that means you might scope a project down from what would be the best way to answer this that would be in New Media & Society and Journal of Communication. Doing the research at that quality might not be the priority if the priority is, okay, allow us to be making a business decision. And I think that difference in why you're doing the research isn't always intuitive to people. And to be successful in an industry environment, I think you need to quickly understand that and be able to act on it.
I've heard that from somebody else as well that research is quite different between industry and academia. And then sometimes you have to translate the research in a more understandable way and a problem solving way. Do you find that as well when you're doing research in the industry?
So for me in my role, where I'm hired by a company, I have a lot of different audiences with different research and data literacy. And I have been successful when I've understood who is this audience, what's the level of detail they need, and again, what their timelines are for my input to be useful. So sometimes I’ll have the exact same study. I’ll make a slightly different presentation for if I'm presenting to top executives who are really busy people who need it short, to the point, don't care about methods, versus if I am presenting to my company's data science team, who are fellow researchers, just with a different set of methodological tools. With them, I might dig deeper into the method.
From your experience, do you think that advanced, PhD-level education is actually something valued in some of the research jobs or in the industry? Or do you think that PhD students sometimes suffer from being overqualified?
I think how much the PhD is valued will depend on the work setting, and your role, and who is the one evaluating your qualifications for the role. I personally was more successful interviewing when I first graduated with my PhD when I interviewed at places where my future boss had a PhD themselves and appreciated my background, was able to differentiate someone like me who had publications versus others who had different-looking resumes coming out of their programs. There were some places where I was competitive against folks who had gotten an MBA instead of a PhD. But again, I personally tended to be the most successful specifically where they had a PhD.
Do you think some of the skills are transferable for graduate students into the industry?
So my background is children's media, where we'll talk about summative evaluation. In education research, they'll use the terms efficacy research or effectiveness research, accountability research, all different terms describing the same kind of thing. And I was working in my PhD program on gaining the skills I would need to be able to execute those studies. And where I was the most successful in the job market were jobs that would be allowing me to be engaging in the exact same type of research. I had done a lot of different methods. Any time that I was interviewing for a job that required me to implement some specific research method I had engaged in in graduate school, that was great, because then I had an example of, “Yes, let me tell you about a project where I implemented that method.”
I think it's all about how you actually narrate your story sometimes. You need to know your audience, and being able to translate your experience into what language terms that they use, basically.
And owning that you have a story. So if you're going in and assuming, “Well, I'm like a blank slate and starting from scratch,” you're not if you're graduating from a PhD. You have deep experience with research projects, probably longer and more involved than even the projects that you might be engaged in in a new role. So giving yourself credit for expertise you have is important.
I want to ask you, what kind of support did you get from your advisor or your graduate program to pursue the industry job? And what do you think the graduate schools should do to prepare graduate students for broader, non-academic jobs?
Yeah, I think my advisor was very supportive. But I think sometimes she just didn't know, in terms of couldn't give me advice, not because she wasn't trying to help me, she wanted to help me, it's just she hadn't walked down that path to know. And so where I was able to leverage her the most is in making a different introductions to people who did work in industry careers. If I ever reached out to anyone who knew her and said, “Hey, I am a student of…” and inserted my advisor’s name, that was another way I could open doors and talk to people who had the expertise that she didn't to be able to be advising me in my career.
In addition, I didn't talk to my university’s career services up until I had reached a point my last year of my PhD program where I was struggling. And they had shockingly good advice. But they had good general career search advice that I wish I had sought out sooner, because I think I could have had an easier time my final year, had I gone in for advice before I was struggling instead of afterwards.
And then in the postdoc I did, they sponsored a ton of workshops that were designed to be focused on transitioning careers from academia to industry. And I had things I thought I knew, because I had had an internship, I had had a couple years of entry level experience. But they had really good advice, some of the things I'm sharing now, but additional things I might not have thought of, like how to set up your LinkedIn to be catching the eye of recruiters who will know even less about research than anyone you'll actually be interviewing with. And those tips like that, workshops that they sponsored were great. So advice I have to current students is if you've decided you want to go down this career path, I think listening for those opportunities, and taking advantage, and not assuming they'll be too generic to be helpful.
We're approaching the end. But I want to ask you, what kind of advice would you give to students who are trying to get into the industry, looking back at your journey, or some of your friends’ journeys?
Figuring out whether you want an industry career and what career specifically you're looking for. Just saying I want industry isn't enough to narrow down the potential opportunities. I don't think an internship is essential to everyone, but I think can help if you either need opportunities to figure out what you want to do or if you just want a work example of a type of project that maybe you're not engaged in in your current role. Taking advantage of informational interviews and various workshops to be learning more about how to be packaging yourself and learning about what careers are like. I think that is helpful as well.
And then I alluded to this a little bit, make sure you have a LinkedIn. Because keep in mind, the way companies like any of the companies I've worked at function, they'll have a human resource department look through LinkedIn, searching different keywords, trying to be finding people who have research experience that would be meeting their different openings that are at the company. These same recruiters aren't searching across the entire internet to be trying to find you. So if you're not accessible on LinkedIn, if you don't describe any of your expertise, you're closing one door where actually people could be finding you, in addition to any outreach you were doing to be trying to find people.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing all of your experience. And I hope that our audience can learn a lot from your experience. And thank you.
Growing Up Comm is a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. Our producer is Kate In. Our production consultant is Nick Song. Our executive producer is DeVante Brown. The theme music is by William Van De Crommert. Please check the show notes in the episode description to learn more about me, my guests, and Growing Up Comm overall. Thanks for listening.
