Dear Reader,
If you’re questioning your professional future, you might be spending a lot of time on LinkedIn and job boards.
You click the Jobs tab and start scrolling. You search for relevant roles using keywords.
In between, you tweak your resume for the nth time. In a low moment, you check out a graduate certificate program “just in case.”
Scrolling job boards can feel productive.
But it can also be a way of avoiding answering a harder question: what do you actually want?
Here’s what I said recently on a podcast, and I’ll say it again here:
Don’t start with LinkedIn (or Indeed, or HigherEd Jobs, or or or).
Do start with clarity.
And no, not the vague, aspirational kind of clarity.
I mean answering questions such as:
- What do I actually value in my work?
- What parts of my current role light me up (specifically)?
- What parts drain me, even if they look impressive on paper?
- What kind of security do I actually want? Job security or career security?
Because here’s what often happens instead.
You open LinkedIn for the first time in months and see your old “Assistant Professor” title sitting there like a ghost of your former life.
Your finger hovers over the edit icon.
Deleting that job title feels like erasing yourself. But keeping it feels like a lie.
So you scroll past your publications, feel that little jolt of nostalgia, then close the app.
If any of that seems familiar, your next step isn’t tweaking your resume, applying to 20 more jobs online, or signing up for an info session for an upcoming certificate program.
Instead, your next step is strategic reflection, the kind that will lead you toward career clarity.
Because you’re smart, you work hard, you’ve got amazing skills (and yes, they will transfer).
Academia trained you to prioritize external validation, linear success paths, and institutional (external-to-you) definitions of worth, eh?
And nowhere along the way did anyone support you in asking yourself:
“What do I want my work to look like now, irrespective of my job title or promotion status?”
Here’s the nuance:
Clarity is not a personality trait. Instead, it’s a skill.
And like most skills, it’s built through structured reflection—not spinning, not panicked action, and not collecting more credentials.
On the podcast, we talked about job security vs. career security, networking myths, and why academics often assume the “real world” is less meaningful than what they’re doing now.
If any of that sounds like your internal monologue, you might want to listen.
🎧 “Find Career Clarity Beyond the Tenure Track,” episode 101 of the Your Words Unleashed podcast, hosted by Leslie Wang.
Whether or not you do, I hope you take this with you:
You don’t need to rush into a job search to prove you’re serious.
You need to understand what you’re moving toward.
Cheers,
Jen
What’s Happening
- The PhD Career Clarity Program is open for enrollment! Perfect for professors, postdocs, and other PhDs who are ready to leave academia and land meaningful jobs where they’ll feel valued and respected.
- Free Wednesday co-working continues; sign up on my website.
- Headed out of academia, maybe? I’m participating in an exciting (for me, for you) event in a couple weeks called IMPACT 2026. More about that soon.
Cheers,
Jen
P.S. Want to explore working with me? Visit my Services page to learn about options, or reply to this email and let me know what you want my help with!
Jennifer Polk, PhD
Free Webinar Job search advice for professors, postdocs, and other PhDs ready to leave academia
