Can a PhD hurt you job wise?

Graduate School
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<p>OK companies with R & D departments</p>

<p>I faced this dilemma years ago when I finished college. I thought I wanted to get a PhD in Education or Social Work. Then I realized I didn’t want to become a professor. If you have a non-sciences background, there isn’t much you can do with a PhD except teach and do research. Getting a relevant master’s degree in those fields is sufficient to what I want to do (management). If I have a burning passion for a question I would like to explore in the future, then I may go back for a PhD. I enjoy working now.</p>

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<p>Certainly the most straightforward approach of all is to simply not even get the PhD in the first place. </p>

<p>But presuming that you did, what are you going to do now, kill yourself? There are times - especially during a bad economy such as now - when you need a job because you have to put food on the table. Nobody should have to starve simply because he made the ‘mistake’ of getting a PhD in the past. </p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating that you claim degrees that you don’t actually have. I am simply saying that you don’t owe complete information to any prospective employer, just like any employer is surely not providing complete information to you. This is a pure business transaction, and no party within a business transaction is obligated to provide complete information to the other. For example, when Microsoft consummated the ‘Deal of the Century’ with IBM to license the MS-DOS operating system for the IBM PC, Microsoft was under no obligation to tell IBM that they didn’t even have such an operating system available yet and were simply going to buy it from Seattle Computer Products (otherwise, IBM would have simply bought directly from SCP and cut out the middleman). That’s how business works. </p>

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<p>Job application forms aren’t actual legal documents, in the sense that, unless applying for sensitive government jobs, there is no law requiring you to fill them with complete accuracy, just like there is no law requiring business partners to provide full information to each other. The only thing that can happen to you is that you may lose your job because your documents were inaccurate, but we are presuming that you wouldn’t have gotten the job anyway if you were truthful about your PhD, which means that you have nothing to lose.</p>

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<p>It can depend a lot on your field and career preference. For example, I am an engineer working in the aerospace / defense industry. We are dying for US Citizens with Ph.D.'s to lead research and development efforts. The only way the Ph.D. limits you is if your specialty has no application in the industry.</p>

<p>But we hire Ph.D.'s all the time.</p>

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<p>If you are wondering about this, you probably shouldn’t go to grad school.</p>

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<p>^ Wondering about whether to get a PhD or not? Its a very valid question, for those who have yet to go to graduate school, or are currently in a masters program.</p>

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<p>I guess the better question is should one get a PhD if they’re in the humanities/social sciences and has no intentions of becoming a professor.</p>

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<p>I guess the problem on this board is that everything depends on the specific field so general questions about “PhD” become useless.</p>

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<p>Yep, the humanities/social sciences follow different rules and expectations than the sciences and engineering folk.</p>

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<p>I agree, if we can all just decide that only advice relevant for sciences and engineering graduate degrees will be discussed we can eliminate some of this conflict. Just kidding. But boy am I glad that my interests see dramatically higher public funding than humanities research.</p>

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<p>Much of it also depends on what kind of job you’re talking about. Many employers, frankly, don’t really care all that much what your PhD is in. Consider the case of “Stefan”, who earned a PhD in philosophy and then became a management consultant at McKinsey, eventually rising to partner. </p>

<p>[Featured</a> Profiles:Stefan | McKinsey APD Recruiting](<a href=“http://apd.mckinsey.com/MEETUS/ConsultantProfiles/FeaturedProfiles/FeaturedProfilesStefan/tabid/2907/Default.aspx]Featured”>http://apd.mckinsey.com/MEETUS/ConsultantProfiles/FeaturedProfiles/FeaturedProfilesStefan/tabid/2907/Default.aspx)</p>

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<p>I’ve only heard of that happening in government jobs or perhaps highly regulated industries. The vast majority of companies are perfectly free to offer prospective hires whatever salary they want and whatever they can negotiate. If they want to offer minimum wage to somebody with a PhD, they are perfectly free to do that. If they want to offer a 7-figure salary to somebody who didn’t even graduate from high school, they are free to do that too. </p>

<p>Unless perhaps if you’re working for the government, you generally can’t sue your employer just because somebody else at the company is making more than you are. If you think your employer is not paying you what you’re worth, you either need to renegotiate your salary, or you should quit and find some other employer. I certainly don’t see any grounds for litigation.</p>

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<p>While it may be true that you need not include all information on a job application or resume, think twice before leaving something important out that could be construed to be misleading in some way. Such as was mentioned earlier, if the question asks about the highest degree obtained, then it would be a mistake to leave out your highest degree. It isn’t just that an employee can be fired for being dishonest on a job application, but what would you say when the next prospective employer wants to know why you left your previous job? And if you are fired for misrepresentation on a job application you can be certain that you can’t rely on that firm for good references.</p>

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<p>You should never lie on any kind of application, especially a job application. If a section asks for your highest degree and you write BS when you really have a PhD, that’s lying. It’s no better than lying on the section asking if you’ve committed a crime. Saying ‘it’s fine if I get fired, I’ll just get another job’ is just ludicrous; not only are you permanently severing ties on a negative note with a company, you never know how word might get around through networking about that one guy who fabricates (or in this case the opposite) things on his job applications. In fact, I have heard of this happening.</p>

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<p>Again, I would argue that this is not lying. This is marketing, and is no different from how companies market themselves to us every day through their advertising. What is advertising after all, if not ‘savvy lying’? </p>

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<p>Most companies nowadays dare not provide negative job references because they’re rightfully afraid of being sued. </p>

<p>More importantly, I also hardly see how it is ludicrous to get a job only to lose it for supposedly “lying” on your application. Practically speaking, that’s still better than not even having a job at all. Philosophically speaking, I still don’t see why supposedly ‘lying’ on your application is a bad thing, when the fact is, companies ‘lie’ every day. They lie to their customers when they advertise their products to seem better than they really are. They lie to business partners when they negotiate deals. In short, business is not really about honesty. That’s business.</p>

<p>Look, guys, I can appreciate that you guys want to be ethical. You want to do the right thing. I can respect that. But at the same time, you shouldn’t be patsies. Don’t let companies play you for fools. Companies are not your friends; they lie to their employees all the time. They’re not going to be completely honest with you, and so you don’t have to be completely honest with them.</p>

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<p>Sakky is right. I am always revising my resume. I don’t put down every single job on my resume either. Companies only want to know what’s important to them. You should always have multiple versions of your resume.</p>

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<p>Recovered/recovering academics that I personally know include one Ph.D. working in retail (yes, at the very bottom of retail for a large florist where she spends her days outdoors, watering plants, and advising customers on red vs. yellow pansies etc.), one working as a very high level very well paid office administrator organizing and maintaining the on-line records of a far-flung sales force, and one ABD who is now a corporate trainer.</p>

<p>There is life after the Ph.D.</p>

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<p>No it isn’t an outrageous question. And yes having a PhD can hurt your chances of being hired, and it doesn’t have to do with being ‘over qualified’ – although that happens too.</p>

<p>In R&D particularly when the emphasis is more on development (little R and big D kind of companies), many hiring managers have had bad experiences with PhD holding employees.</p>

<p>And of course I can also point to wonderful employees who hold a PhD, but the I’m talking about a stereotype. True often enough to give employers in some technical development groups pause in hiring. And it isn’t about the money! The difference in pay for a PhD and a Masters degree just isn’t that much in the big budget scheme of things.</p>

<p>Unfortunately many PhD candidates may desire to work independently and ‘study’ a problem more than coming up with an emperical ‘good enough solution quickly’. If you are trying to get product out the door, perfection is the enemy of good enough.</p>

<p>Also if you live to argue or pontificate more than working well with others, if you are hard wired to ‘defend your thesis’ – this is the sort of hire people are concerned with making.</p>

<p>I know many people who simply don’t put their PhD on their resume when looking for a job. It really depends on the industry.</p>

<p>In other industries I’ve worked in, a PhD is an asset for being hired. You really need to understand the job field you are going for.</p>

<p>After you have been out of school for awhile, no one in industry much cares about what school you went to or what your degree is in beyond the lightest possible inspection. </p>

<p>They care about what experience you have, what work have you done, and what sort of references do you have.</p>

<p>If you are the stereotype PhD who is living in the lab, doing good individual work, has no network, few interpersonal skills, and nothing but publications to show… You’ll have a hard time finding development work. But that isn’t strictly ‘because’ you have a PhD.</p>

<p>Make sense?</p>

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<p>I worked…now I back doing a PhD. It is a good question</p>

<p>Those PhDs that have no internship experience, no real work experience, and not even some post-doc experience are real trouble for corporations…especially for companies that focus on development and not research.</p>

<p>Then again, If you give hard core Research problems to engineers without PhDs, my experience has been to watch Millons get wasted and products and chips come back completly broken.</p>

<p>For many industries it is an asset to have a PhD, especially in EE. This is with the exception of a PhD with absolutely no experience.</p>

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<p>To answer the OP’s question, I don’t think a PhD would present a problem in the social sciences as there are opportunities in government and independent research institutes. Even beyond that, political science and economics will both give you VERY strong quantitative skills that would be valuable in the private sector as well.</p>

<p>As for what the main discussion has been about here…while I do not disagree that the overqualification issue very much exists in the job market, I also would not see having to go to great lengths to ensure your company never finds out that you purposely omitted key parts of your resume as being a good idea. Sounds like a recipe for digging yourself deeper into the hole over time…what kind of existence is that?</p>

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<p>Here’s another way to think about it: you earn a PhD for a reason, presumably for a desired career path and not just to be able to call yourself “Doctor.” If your career path values the PhD, then no, of course it won’t hurt. If a PhD doesn’t matter, then it might, depending on the specific job opportunity.</p>

<p>For example, if you apply to public education jobs with a PhD, it might hurt you because school systems generally have a pay scale attached to highest degree earned AND you can succeed in that field with only a B.A. But if you are applying for a high tech research position, a PhD will help; B.A., B.S., and M.S. employees usually hit promotion ceilings well before a person with a PhD will. PhDs are more likely to direct research groups than are those with lesser degrees. The biggest disadvantage may come when you change career paths (say, applying to management positions with a PhD in English) or when you apply for a position that doesn’t require a high level of independent thought. If you want to do consulting or public policy or any of kind of “think tank” work, a PhD is usually a plus.</p>

<p>The most important thing to consider is your specific field, what you want to accomplish in it, and whether your PhD will be highly regarded in the profession.</p>