Land 6-Figure Industry Offers as A PhD
The average PhD -> industry job search timeline is 6 months to 2 years without mentorship. Some PhDs never land an industry job that pays what their skillset is worth.Through coaching, my PhD clients landed 6-figure industry roles between 2-6 months, with an average pay increase of 73K.Two ways I can help you:👇
1️⃣ "I need help acing my upcoming interview"
Another day, another "Unfortunately, we decided to move forward with another candidate".1. It is not enough to showcase you have the core skills for the job.You need to excel at answering intentionally vague product questions and demonstrate business savvy, something that PhDs without extensive industry experience commonly struggle with.2. To make the interview process more difficult, there is a unique set of questions each FAANG company likes to ask. Interview at enough places, you will be able to spot Meta questions from Amazon questions; tech companies' questions from those at financial institutions like Chase and Amex; large and mid-sized companies' questions from those from agencies and startups.Some companies like to ask questions that are more product-focused and tactical. Other companies ask questions that are more academic-flavored and strategic.It's not enough to look up questions on Glassdoor or YouTube. You need to master the specific criteria hiring managers use to assess your candidacy.3. By the time you walk into the interview room, you need to not only have the answers to "Tell me about a high-impact project you've done" and "How have you navigated divergent stakeholder perspectives" roll off of your tongue, but also position yourself as the "ideal fit", so that the hiring team can't wait to extend you an offer over the other candidates.If the way you present your skills and communicate your experience sounds like someone who has worked in industry for 10 years and increased your org's bottom line time and time again, the likelihood of you being hired shoots up dramatically.Take it from my students who aced their interviews:
2️⃣ "I need help translating my academic skills and landing interviews"
The current industry market is competitive, saturated, and employer-favoring. PhDs can no longer luck into a high-paying industry role based solely on their educational credential.Job search has become a second job in itself that requires intentional strategies and consistent efforts. It's an overwhelming process, where PhDs bump into roadblocks after roadblocks:🚧 You are unclear on which career path to pursue that is the most suitable for your skillset.🚧 You keep applying but get no recruiter callback.🚧 You keep networking but can't get referrals that result in interviews.🚧 You are interviewing for company after company, but can't get the final offer.You feel directionless, overwhelmed, dejected, burned out.After helping hundreds of PhDs with their industry transition, I distilled the lessons into Career Clear, a 6-week live PhD-to-Industry transition program:✅ LIVE curriculum that has landed multiple 6-figure FAANG offers✅ Workshopping, individualized feedback, small group coaching✅ Access to all session recordings, guides, and worksheets✅ Community support and accountability
After the program:🏆 You will hone in on a career path that suits your skillset, aligns with what you enjoy doing, and highlights your competitive advantage in a saturated market.🏆 You will have a step-by-step action plan to a successful job search, a tried-and-true roadmap that has landed multiple 6-figure industry offers.🏆 You will become fluent at “industry speak”, have a strong grasp of industry norms, and know how to market your skills to what employers understand and desire.🏆 You will build an authentic network that turbocharges your job search and amplifies job opportunities including referrals.*Enrollment for the current cohort has closed. Join the waitlist below. I will reach out when the next program opens in April:
"I feel lost in my job search and need help now."Book a first-time Strategy Session. We will analyze your current situation and develop a step-by-step plan to overcome your immediate roadblock:
Case Studies
🏆 Rachele went from endless unsuccessful cold applications to a 6-figure Microsoft offer in 3 months.Listen to her talk about the one networking strategy we used that made all the difference (2-minute clip):
🏆 After our intensive mock interview series, Hayley passed her FAANG technical screen + full loop (5 interviews + 1 research presentation) on her first try, concluding her job search with a 6-figure Meta offer:
🏆 Lily went from zero direction to revamping her application strategy, nabbing a Senior Researcher position in social impact that spoke true to her ethics.Lily knew in her heart of heart that she didn't want to go into big tech. But her initial application strategy was spraying and praying, hoping to land any position.We took a step back, identified her unfair advantage, and targeted her focus on a select few companies that matched her strength in the social impact space, a field that gives her true meaning and purpose.4 interviews poured in. She received an offer right away from the first company that interviewed her (3-minute clip):
🏆 Lucia went from lacking intellectual fulfillment to taking her industry career to the next level.Lucia is an academic at heart, hungry for intellectual depth and scientific rigor. She is not content with a run-of-the-mill corporate 9-to-5. After her transition to industry, Lucia still wants to do cutting-edge work and make a name for herself.She is now thriving in a stable, 6-figure tech role while being presented regularly with lucrative opportunities at the forefront of AI. Her inbox is filled with recruiters, founders, and academics vying for her talent. Jobs come to her, not the other way around:
"I don't know if career coaching is worth the cost..."
💡Unemployment carries a massive opportunity cost.PhD job seekers trapped in a yearlong industry search limbo lose out on 100K-400K in earnings.Worse, the costs of unemployment compound. A mid-level Individual Contributor who starts late faces significant delays in career advancement and up-leveling, missing out on pay increases of $50K–$100K.Beyond finance, being stuck in a constant state of confusion, uncertainty, and overwhelm takes a hefty toll on your body and mind.💡How would I know? I tried to do everything on my own and squandered a 302K-455K Senior Quantitative Researcher opportunity at Amazon 3 months into my job search.
I also bombed my interviews at Meta and Google the first time around by preparing with my friends who worked there. Though well-intentioned, my friends had little idea of the criteria hiring managers use to assess my performance.💡It took over a year for me to swallow my pride, stop cheaping out on "free", conflicting advice, and seek professional mentorship.Multiple career coaches and a mountain of therapy bills later, I ended up working for Amazon after all: a UX Researcher offer at 250K.Two years of missed earnings + sleepless nights + darkness of despair––and that's a happy ending.💡I learned the hard way: there is no "free" in the world."Free" was costing me high 6 figures."Free" was making me into a shell of myself: I lost confidence, esteem, self-trust, and vitality.I waited and waited until I felt ready to invest in my career. The moment of "ready" never came.💡Today, I see PhDs toughing out a tough market on their own, as if it were 2018, when tech companies were chasing after PhDs with competing offers and fat bonuses.Some PhDs failed interview after interview because they didn't know exactly what boxes to check to pass the hiring team's assessment.Others continued to submit hundreds of applications with few callbacks.Yet others grew defeated because their job search wasn't "working". They decided to spend more $$$$$ doing an MBA, getting more certificates, enrolling in a second PhD program, hoping more credentials will improve their job prospects.Not only does this not help with the job search, but it incurs more cost, more time, more drain of energy while doing irreparable harm to their career trajectory.💡As my client Hayley reflected after winning her 6-figure Meta offer: Coaching is a worthwhile investment in yourself.
A 200K job pays $3,846 in the first week.A week of employment at an average industry job more than covers your entire career education investment.My goal is to get you to your first week's paycheck as soon as possible, so that you maximize your return-on-investment and turbocharge your way to a more fulfilling job that pays what you deserve.
What You Get Out of Coaching
🧠 Clarity: Nothing derails a job search faster than a confused mind. Figure out who you are. Unearth what you want out of life. Identify your market strengths. Strategically select job positions that fit your unfair advantage instead of contorting yourself to fit their mold.
📝 Proven Strategy: No more "spray and pray". Learn and implement the behind-the-scene playbook on applying and interviewing that landed multiple 6-figure offers.
👥 Motivation & Accountability: The No. 1 factor that breaks a job search: Inconsistency. Stay motivated when the going gets tough. Track and manage your time effectively. Overcome lack of confidence by visualizing actual progress.
🏆 Success, Faster: Get to where you want to go in less than 1/3 of the time.
My Story
🎓 Three years ago, I turned down a 55K professorship offer to explore the world outside academia.I did what every other academic did: breaking into industry. 400+ applications and 60+ interview loops later, I nabbed 7 offers and accepted a 250K job at FAANG.It looked great on paper. But my perfect-on-paper resume belied a long and hard transition I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy: getting ghosted, rejection after rejection, offer retraction, discrimination, mass layoff, expiring visa.I was screaming into a void: What more can I do? Even when I did everything right, there was always a candidate who was a "better fit". My life fell into a permanent state of limbo. I felt dejected, powerless, exhausted.Coaches, workshops, trial and errors later, I finally cracked the code on how to stand out as the ideal candidate. In a competitive and saturated industry market, I was acing interviews and received competing offers, including Amazon, Meta, Toyota, Match, Alibaba, and many more.🎓 During my transition, I traversed the a multitude of industries, UX, data science, solopreneurship, content creation, comedy, Latin dance. If you look close enough, the same playbook applies in every field:Learn the behind-the-scene rules, steal the top players' 10,000 hours, streamline and fast-track your progress, win the game. When you have a tried-and-true roadmap, it becomes hard to fail. You attract opportunities to you, rather than contorting yourself to fit into a mold.🎓 Today, I stand in my own light. I'm no longer at a university, but I remain an academic at heart. I choose the best opportunities that come to me, not the other way around. I decide what I want to learn, who I want to work with, how, where, and when I work.Wealth is abundant. Paths are infinite. I am here to walk you through everything I searched so hard for during my transition, so you won't have to walk the path alone.
© Kaidi Wu