How to Stand Out as A PhD Candidate When Applying for Scientific or Engineering Roles?

Many small, medium and large science-based or engineering-focused organizations are currently experiencing problems when recruiting talented higher-level educated professionals for specialist or niche roles. The current recruitment landscape in all sectors in the EU, and beyond, illustrates the competitive nature of recruitment.

In this landscape, a job-seeking candidate, has the ability to pick and choose roles. However, there are key steps Ph.D.-level educated candidates can do to help stand out further to trade association bodies who are recruiting for specialist roles.

How to Match Your Personal Brand with Potential Employer Branding?

Organizations are investing more time, effort and money in nurturing and developing an “employer” branding policy. But what is employer branding? According to the CIPD, employer branding is defined as “a set of attributes and qualities, often intangible, that makes an organization distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those people who will thrive an perform best in its culture.”

As a job-seeker, you can find common ground, between a prospective employer’s unique branding and culture with your own “personal” branding. According to Everyone Social, personal branding has rapidly become a “must-have” and “essential” quality that any would-be candidate needs in order to help stand-out in a competitive employment landscape.

Personal branding is about leveraging how you “represent and promote yourself to others,” with your expertise, skills and experiences to help promote an ethos and culture that is linked to how you influence people – remember a personal branding isn’t about having loads of followers or being viral. It is about nurturing a personal branding based on organic growth that nurtures long-term personal growth.

Remember Your Transferable “Soft-Skills” Matter Just as Much as Your Hard Skills?

According to Forbes, Ph.D. Candidates can sometimes fixate on their “hard” skills – based on their higher-level education and postdoc work experience. Whilst this is seminally important to the job in question, forgetting to ‘up-sell’ your “soft skills” can prove to be disastrous in terms of getting past the recruitment screening process.

Identifying how skills like empathy, patience, problem-solving, time management, or communications skills can transfer across to a prospective new role can help you stand out as the right candidate. A deep dive undertaken by LinkedIn found that soft skills promote increased employee productivity – thanks to the ability of people who utilize soft skills to better understand people and communication management skills to help manage pressure, emotions, and more crucially, solve problems.

All of this is especially relevant for science or engineering-based organizations whereby the need to balance soft and hard skills is pertinent in terms of successfully delivering on the key objectives of a job role – especially in the realm of project management.

How to Leverage “Soft-Skills” and Personal Branding to Help Find the Perfect Science or Engineering Job?

By understanding how your “branding” impacts your candidacy whilst concurrently realizing the relevancy of your “soft skills”, you can stand out as a top tier postdoctoral candidate. Engineering or science-based businesses, big or small, are facing a global skill shortage and by understanding the importance of the culture and qualities of these organizations – and their goals – and leveraging the “personal branding” and “soft skills” necessary to succeed, you can stand out as the perfect candidate.

Disclaimer

The information in this guide is based on the personal opinions of the authors, and is presented in good faith. EuroJobsites do not accept any liability for errors, omissions or inaccuracies in this guide.

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