Am I a Failure? Thoughts on Returning to Academia

Are you a failure if you decide to go back to academia after you've had a little bit of a stint in industry? Today, we're going to dive into that because it's a question I get a lot in the community and I think it's worth addressing because there are a lot of career paths and none of them are linear. I think the more I speak to people in our industry, really in any industry, the more I realize that there is no one linear career trajectory. I think it's important to highlight that a perceived step backwards could also be the way forward. So let's get into why you might want to consider it and what steps you might take to evaluate if it's the right thing for you to do in your career. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees. So I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach Podcast to give you simple, actionable speed, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're in the right place. This discussion comes up a lot because when I'm coaching people who are frustrated with their job searches, they think, oh well, maybe I should just go back to academia because I jumped into industry without doing a postdoc, or maybe I don't have enough experience and that might be fair. And here's why. In the 2021 timeframe, there was an explosion of jobs, there was a lot of funding, and we are now seeing a market correction. But we did see a lot of jobs created during that time and I almost couldn't hire people fast enough for my clients. If we liked a candidate, they probably had three offers. It was wild. And we saw a lot of folks leave academia without doing a postdoc and jump straight into really lucrative and fun industry positions. Now, fast forward a couple of years. A lot of those very same people have been laid off from companies because we are seeing a market correction. And it's not necessarily that the jobs have gone away, but the jobs have not grown year over year like they normally do. And so what we're seeing is that the folks that are trying to come out of academia are having a hard time getting into industry and those who are laid off are having a hard time getting a job because maybe they just have one year of industry experience. And there are plenty of candidates out there who have a couple more years of industry experience and who fit the job requirements that we were seeing, which are typically, you know, two to four years of industry experience for a senior scientist. So there are folks that are sort of stuck in this no man's land of one year of industry experience that are really struggling. And those same individuals might indeed benefit from doing a postdoc to bolster their resume and maybe get a little bit of a new direction on their career. So let's talk about how you might evaluate if that's right for you. Your PhD is honestly a fairly narrow experience. Yes, it is a long time. You were probably there for at least five years, and during that time you did a lot of different experiments. But we do see that PhDs are often fairly narrow in scope because you're responsible for one project. You are really trying to become the world expert on one little thing, right? And you may publish several papers on that. You may gain some breadth of experience by collaborating with folks, but you're only one person. So really, the depth of expertise that is required for a PhD means that your skillset is going to be a little bit narrower than if you also did a postdoc. Because when you're a postdoc, you. You're often now juggling several projects. So in the past year, I've worked with a number of people who have considered or pursued going back to academia from industry. So I'm going to highlight three different specific cases and what they chose to do and why so that we can give a little context to this conversation. I always say stories are really powerful because you connect to people through stories. So the first story I'll tell is somebody who worked in a really niche industry, so specifically a microbiome company, and this individual had worked in industry for a year straight out of their PhD, got that job in 2021, and then was laid off during a funding downturn. And after struggling to find another role in this field that they loved, it became clear that there simply were not enough companies in the area that were even doing this. And we needed to expand this skill set of this person so that they would have more opportunities with some different companies, some bigger companies, maybe agtech. There are actually a lot of companies doing microbiome work, but some of them are doing it more on the commercial side. It's just kind of an interesting time right now for microbiome companies for a lot of reasons. And so in the course of doing their normal job search, keeping both avenues open, they ended up applying for a couple of academic positions. And the one that really stood out was sort of a research scientist position. So not really a postdoc sort of a postdoc plus because they did have experience already. But this would be managing a number of people in the lab, a number of projects, and it was in a slightly different area of research with slightly different technology, meaning that their skill set would be expanded. And it's a really well connected lab, an institution where a lot of people found little startup companies. So the other motivation was to make good networking connections with founders of companies. And that is always a good thing to do because I can tell you from experience that as companies spin out of institutions, and here in the Boston area, there are a number of institutions that are notorious for spinning out some small startups. The people who get hired for those startups often tend to be the folks that are in the network that are plugged in already in the school. So this individual is very happy with their decision. And it sounds like a really cool role. The plan is to stay there for about two years and then jump back into industry. And that seems like a really good plan for this person. It keeps them employed, it keeps them motivated and excited and also building some leadership skills, which frankly that early on in industry you don't often get the chance to build. So when they're ready to jump back in, it's going to be with a new skill set and with newfound leadership experience and a better network. So all of those things are really net positives. The next example I'm going to give is somebody who actually has a medical degree and was from outside of the United States. So it's interesting because a clinician, even in the United States trying to jump into science, that's a hard jump to make. There are a couple of specific roles that we often see those folks getting into, but it's not a traditional career path. And so a couple of things, right, we've got a person who has a clinical background, working directly with patients with a medical degree from a different country and their practice in a different country, wanting to get into clinical research here in the US and the regulatory guidelines are a little bit different, similar, but different between the two countries. So there were a couple of things working against this individual because getting into an industrial position in the clinical space is already competitive. That's a very coveted career path. And there are a lot of people who have set themselves up and have a lot of prior experience in that space. So we thought a lot about their career path and how they could actually navigate their way into a role like this and taking into account that they're not a citizen and also would need visa support. The path of least resistance was actually on the site side. So being at a clinical trial facility, a hospital in this case, and working as a clinical researcher in a more academic setting, the benefit there is that this person will be interfacing with industrial partners who are sponsoring the trials and making great networking connections. That way they're also going to be easing their way into the system, working on their visa at the very same time and getting great experience. That's going to be very transferable. Because what I find is that my industry clients often want somebody with site side experience for their sponsor side roles in industry. That's because at the site you're really dealing directly with the patients and that's an amazing skillset to have. So it's a really nice career path for this person and really was the ideal thing to get into the industry to get exposure and also networking very efficiently and quickly while still doing something they love. Now I will say that actually after about six months they're already getting outreach from industry, thinking about trying to recruit them away into industrial positions. So I don't think it's going to be very long until they make that jump. Hey, I just want to cut in to say that if you are enjoying this podcast, you may enjoy the Building Biotechs podcast from our sister company Recruitomics Consulting, which is a talent acquisition strategy firm that specializes in helping small biotechs high hire exceptional talent. In that podcast we interview amazing people who are building biotechs. They are industry leaders in all different verticals and it will allow you to explore career paths in biotech and to get to know companies that maybe you've never heard about. So if you are a biotech fan, you are exploring careers in biotech. I highly recommend the Building Biotechs podcast. We'll link that in the show notes or you can search for it on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. All right, back to our show. All right, and the third little story I'll tell is about somebody who was working at one of these little baby biotech spin outs that came out of an academic lab. They were actually a postdoc in the lab and their PI founded a company I guess co founded a company technically and the company just didn't keep their funding. Unfortunately it's A story we've heard hundreds of times in the last couple of years. But unfortunately the company didn't make it. So what was this person to do? Well, the cool thing is that the lab still existed, the lab still had funding and the lab was still working on the critical IP that this individual was working on in the company. So they basically were able to just get rehired into the lab and essentially continue as a research scientist. This is unique because it gets continuity to their research and they were technically never unemployed. So the way we're spinning this on their resume is a continuous string of employment on this project. Now they get to put that they were working in an industry company. They will need to tell the story that this company did not succeed. Ultimately, they will also have some really interesting data that has been a through line through their postdoc into a company. And now as a research scientist, this is not the outcome that anybody wanted. Obviously it would have been great if the company succeeded and and they were able to continue their path in industry that way. As it is, they will be looking for a new job in industry, but at least they were able to continue on as they were in this lab. And I would say they learned something as well about how to evaluate some future companies and the financial stability of those companies. Recently I was interviewed for an article that appeared in Biospace. I'll link that in the show notes for you. And we talked about how to evaluate company financial stability through the interview phase. So definitely check that out. It has been a really unusual couple of years and we don't often see people jumping back into academia, but more and more we are seeing that as a very viable career path for any number of reasons, of which is you get to learn something new and build your resume. So if you are struggling with the current state of our industry and how difficult it can be to land jobs, especially if you were sort of new to industry to begin with, don't count it out. It might be a career path worth exploring. It's not for everybody, but if you feel that there's more you can learn from an academic lab, if you can build your network, if you can build your resume, it's not the worst thing in the world. There are a lot of academic positions out there and they're really good positions too. Now, if you have the luxury of being a little bit choosy about which positions to accept, I would try to go first and foremost for positions that are at the intersection of academia and industry. In other words, positions that allow you to interface with Industrial partners. Some examples of those would be like the one I mentioned earlier, a site side clinical trial position at a major hospital or institution. You would be able to interact with the sponsors extensively. Often those companies will remember the folks they worked with at the site side when it's time to recruit for some internal roles. So you're already going to be top of mind and it's a really good place to start to build your resume. Another great option is to work for a core facility. Core facilities also work extensively with industry partners. A lot of companies use academic core facilities because they're the best at what they do. So if you have a unique skill set like mass spec or sequencing, think about a core facility that really might be a way to introduce yourself around to get really good contacts. And those positions typically pay slightly better than positions within individual research labs. Not always, but that can be the case. Another great place to look for jobs are what I call the hybrids. So I think of institutions like the Broad Institute or the Gladstone as sort of these hybrids between academia and industry. And you'll find them in every single biotech hub. So look around. But these are institutions that work very heavily with industry partners. And again, this is a great way to build up your resume. I work a lot in the Cambridge area and I find that my clients love to recruit from places like the Broad because they know the folks there are going to be very customer oriented. They're already going to understand the faster pace of industry and they're going to be really well connected with the industry because they touch a lot of different companies and academic institutions. So I get requests specifically from my clients to look for candidates from the Broad fairly often. So that's also the case I know in San Francisco for the Gladstone and a couple of other institutions as well. And then finally think about institutions that are notorious for being a little entrepreneurial. They usually have an incubator ecosystem that comes straight through them. So I'm thinking of, for instance there's the MIT incubator. A lot of companies spin out of MIT labs and they have a built in ecosystem to support those companies. If you can postdoc or get a scientist position in one of those labs and then work that network continually build up your relationship. It will be much easier for you to slot into one of those baby biotechs as they spin out. My only word of caution there is much like story number three that I told you may end up with a very small company. And small companies can be a bit unstable. They're a lot of fun, but they also are a risk. And so you may end up in a company that is not as financially stable as you would ideally like. If you do jump into one of these small companies that are being incubated through the academic incubators, really, really early stage. That said, you will learn so much, you will wear so many hats, and it will be great for your transferable skills. So there's pros and cons to everything. All right, this was a little shorty episode. I just wanted to touch base on that one topic because it's causing a lot of angst for people. I think the biggest thing that I feel from people when they're talking about this is a sense of failure. Like, if they admit defeat and they go back to academia, what will people think of them? I will just say this. Your career is nobody else's business. Your career is your career. If you have more to learn from any place, whether it's academia, industry, or outside of biotech altogether, it is fine. Your career is all yours. I interviewed a fascinating person for the Building Biotechs podcast recently, and her episode will be coming out shortly. But she actually left biotech altogether to found a tech company. She founded and sold a SaaS startup completely outside of biotech, and then she came back to biotech, and now she's founded a biotech company. There are so many options for your career. There is no right answer. The only right answer is your answer. So if you feel that academia might be a viable place to head for a little while while our job market recovers, or to gain a new skill or to build your network or any other reason, that's your business and I'm here to support you in it. Because ultimately, you're the one who knows what's going to fill your cup and what's best for you. I truly believe that there is no backwards step in someone's career. You will learn something no matter what you do. And if you were to chart out people's career paths, they would look wild, right? Nobody has a linear career, so embrace that. It's just part of the fun, part of the challenge. And give yourself permission, if you choose, to go back to academia, to be very positive about it. All right, that's all for this week. Bye for now.