Kaidi Wu, Ph.D.

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Career Coaching

"I spent years trying to become a professor, only to discover how abysmal the academic job market has become. What should I do with my life?""I kept applying, interviewing, and getting rejected. What more can I do to get a job?""I transitioned to industry. But I'm not sure I like it. What now?"”I’m an international student with an expiring visa. I need to find a job in the next 60 days. Where should I start?”Career transition is tumultuous and overwhelming. The two biggest roadblocks are:
🚧 Where you want to go
🚧 How to get thereWhen you don’t know what exactly you’re spending time and efforts on, you will continue to get rejections, which lead to frustration, which lead to more rejections. The cycle repeats. With each cycle comes more frustration, hopelessness, and resignation.When you focus your time and efforts in the right direction... you will still get rejected. But you will be able to use the data to replicate what worked and get to your desired outcome much faster.I will help you discover the intersection of what you do best, what the market wants, and what makes your heart sing. We will then come up with step-by-step strategies on how to best prepare, apply, interview, and negotiate for the job you deserve.

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Looking for A Career Transition Curriculum with A PhD Community?

Academic Trailblazer is designed to be an all-in-one career transition program for PhDs:✅ 8-week LIVE course that meets weekly✅ Real-time exercises, feedback, and Q&A✅ Lifetime access to recordings, guides, worksheets✅ Community support and feedback throughout the curriculum*2024 cycle is now closed. Join the waitlist and get first access when the door opens for the 2025 program.

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What You Get Out of Coaching

My Story

Three years ago, I turned down a professorship offer to explore the world outside academia.I did what every other academic did: breaking into industry and getting myself a good ol' 9-to-5 at FAANG that paid me 250K. 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 visas.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:Find out what the behind-the-scene rules are, maximize your luck surface area, steal the experts' 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 their 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 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.