As our readers know, my experience over the years has included career advice to young people as well as to experienced executives. I have always enjoyed learning about what makes successful people “tick,” whether they be a PhD chemist postdoc or a CEO. And that’s great, because as a recruiter I am offered regular opportunities to go over career decisions and experiences with some very interesting people. In those conversations, often taking place over the kitchen table in the evening, my contacts share their ideas with me on what the future may hold for their job profile.

In those conversations, it’s clear that at some point in a scientist’s or engineer’s life they realize that while science is great, their career growth requires a move to “management.” But it’s so hard to do both, as management is not a skill that is simply added to one’s personal toolbox. It’s a completely different career move, and there are a lot fewer overall positions in those leadership roles. This leads to a subtle frustration for the person who wants to enjoy new career prospects.

In this month’s column, I want to make another possible transition very clear—one that will appeal to those who want the change of scenery but also a fast-track to leadership. This career transition is the move from a technical contributor role (scientist or engineer) to the business ranks. It may not start out as a leadership role, but in sales, marketing, or business development jobs, things can move very quickly.

The Science-to-Business Transition

A good friend of mine is Dr. Dick Woodward, a sales and marketing consultant who works from the Philadelphia area. Dick and I became acquainted many years ago when he was an executive with Ajinimoto, the large Japanese chemical industry company. Ajinimoto supplies many different categories of products to the home and personal products industry as well as the pharma marketplace.

At the time, I was on a very difficult search for one of my client companies in the lab testing industry. We were looking for a VP of sales and marketing for a growing specialty lab, and the need was to find a person who had the experience necessary to develop a marketing plan, roll out a sales force, and manage a highly specific technical services effort. To top it off, this job required a PhD in the sciences and a person who could speak the language of the marketing/sales department. Dick met those requirements and I followed his career for many years. He’s a great example of a guy who moved from the lab to business. With Dick’s permission, I’ll use some of his points from a presentation Dick gave called, “My Mother Cried When I Went Into Sales,” and add my own elaboration on a few aspects of our shared agreement.

Dick pointed out in his presentation that while a lot of people still enjoy science, they have found they have become tired of the lab. That’s understandable! The first thing you should know about a role in business is that your science doesn’t go away. In fact, the opposite is true. You approach business decisions and help companies grow and succeed by the very fact that you have this science or engineering underpinning.

There’s also a large group of lab residents who are not introverts and they feel the need for more interaction with others. Don’t be ashamed of that! Just because science careers attract lots of people who don’t need or want people interaction doesn’t mean that you can’t find a role where you meet and work with people of all different types across the organization. That’s one of the first things that former lab scientists mention when they talk about why they’re glad they moved to a business role.

Also, as Dick stated in his presentation, every one of us has skills that we don’t get to use in our present work. This may be the case for you if you’re hankering for a move up to a leadership role. You’ll certainly find that the business career can offer you the chance to “stretch” those unused skill areas. You’ll be far more involved in the “big picture” of how a company works. Whether you’re in the sales force, the company’s marketing arm, or the business development ranks, your contributions will have much more to do with the overall success of the company. Scientists often say to me that they really would like to have an impact that is broader, and which impacts the bigger picture.

A Few Cautions

Woodward also brought some interesting “don’t do this” comments to his talk, and they jive with my personal experience based on failed placements or in discussion with those who have not made this transition easily. The first that comes to mind is that if you’re simply looking to increase your compensation, you don’t need to look at this type of career transition. Being in it for the money is not the right attitude to get such a transition completed. Erase that from your thoughts. Also, if for some reason, a career on the business side seems to make you believe that you won’t have to work as hard as you do now, that’s a fallacy as well. Business positions, just like those in the lab, require a serious commitment.

Finally, if you believe that anyone with a PhD can run circles around those MBA types, I don’t think you should read further. That’s not the case. You’ll be working with a wide variety of people and educational backgrounds if you step out of the lab. Taking the “Dr. Smith” mentality with you and assuming you’re the smartest person in the room will not earn you any friends in the business world.

Simply put, right now there is a great demand for people who take with them the skills and career interests of multiple specialty areas. For example, IT and just about anything else. Or, in this case, science and business. I can tell you as an executive recruiter that the doors are wide open for you if you can show these hiring managers that you have the general aptitude and interests as mentioned above. But it’s a different kind of job search, so you must sharpen that saw as well.

Where Does the Tech Expert Thrive?

Here are a few of the job areas where a Masters or PhD could do very well, and a Google search on any of these will bring up job profiles and ads that will show you more about how to structure your resume to attract interest. Masters and PhD’s out of science/engineering jobs are hired regularly into sales, marketing, technology assessment, licensing and technology transfer, strategic planning and project management, or even business development roles.

I am often asked about these business opportunities in companies and I’ll mention sales and marketing first, as the distinction between these two terms is not very clear to a lot of technical staff. They get lumped together, and “sales” always suffers, because once you mention the word it sets up some very negative connotations (usually involving used cars).

I like to describe the difference between marketing and sales as much like the difference between “cooking” and “eating.” The marketing person will plan and strategize the launch of a new product, but if you don’t have a qualified sales force ready to go out and get it sold, nothing will happen. In short, sales careers can be a wonderful place to get a total career recharge, but you will really need to become a superb networker as this is the major way that technical people move into the business ranks. This is true as well for the marketing or business development role.

The Key Element to Your Job Search

When an open position is advertised, it is usually through human resources who will require the respondents to have just exactly whatever laundry list of skills that has been incorporated into the job description. This means that you’re likely to see “Requires 2 or more years of experience in a business development (or sales, or marketing, etc.) role.” Don’t worry, that’s what is required to get you through to the HR department. It may not necessarily be what is required to get to the hiring manager and impress her instead.

---

David G. Jensen
Contributing Editor
Dave Jensen is CEO and Founder of CTI Executive Search. He can be reached at (928) 274-2266 or via davejensen@careertrax.com; www.careertrax.com.