Retelling Your PhD Career Story With Kerri Twigg

This week on Papa PhD, I’m bringing you my recent conversation with Kerri Twigg, career development coach, TEDx speaker, and author of “The Career Stories Method”. During our conversation, we talked about her book and about how her approach applies to PhDs transitioning out of academia and wanting to learn how to retell the ir...

The post Retelling Your PhD Career Story With Kerri Twigg appeared first on Papa Phd Podcast.

This week on Papa PhD, I’m bringing you my recent conversation with Kerri Twigg, career development coach, TEDx speaker, and author of “The Career Stories Method”. During our conversation, we talked about her book and about how her approach applies to PhDs transitioning out of academia and wanting to learn how to retell their research stories. Kerri also turned the tables on me and put my career journey under the microscope, during our chat, which felt vulnerable at first, but was an interesting, refreshing exercice. I think you’re really going to like this one!

What you’ll learn about in this episode:



Why “brain only” career decisions often failImposter syndrome in graduate school and after a career transitionA post-PhD pivot is NOT starting from scratch – it’s reorganizing the arrows in your quiverThe power adopting practices that promote self-love and dial down negative self-talkWhy the academic CV doesn’t work outside academiaThe importance of changing your wordsWhy you shouldn’t wait to be done to reach out to people in industry

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Kerri Twigg is the founder of Career Stories. She has been helping people find and share their stories with confidence for nearly 20 years, seven in the career management sector. Kerri helps people figure out what makes them awesome and how that helps their career, whether they aim for a “job-job” or running their own business. And, if they’re not sure what kind of work, she helps with that too. She has taught at theatres, universities, and even a boathouse.

Thank you, Kerri Twigg!

If you enjoyed this interview with Kerri, let her know by clicking the link below and leaving her a message on Twitter:

Click here to thank Kerri Twigg on Twitter!

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Kerri’s pearls of wisdom:

“I don’t think you can start from scratch – I think it’s a romantic idea. It’s still there… I think it’s about finding what’s useful, so, what you can carry… What you can carry forward. And then there might be pieces that… There might be pieces that you let burn, right? And there might be dreams that you kind of go “Okay, that’s not it.” But that dream might have not even been really the dream any how. It’s it just the thing that was closest to it, to what you thought you wanted to do, and it led you on the path. That you didn’t get that doesn’t matter when something else might make you happier and you can have bigger impact with it.”

“A lot of academics, you’ll kind of talk about what you studied or the name of your paper. And when people are hiring you for a job, they want to know how you work and what things you accomplish. And they want specific examples that’s just not a name of a paper. Because you could have written a paper, but I don’t know if you’re a great researcher, I don’t know if you’re ethical, I don’t know if you met the deadlines, I don’t know if you helped people. So, on a resume, the how you work is more important than that you got published.”

This episode’s resources:



Kerri Twigg | LinkedInKerri Twigg | TwitterKerri Twigg | InstagramCareer Stories | WebsiteThe Career Stories Method | Book
















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You might also like the following episodes:

Chris Humphrey – Rebranding the PhD

Inês Campos Costa – Taking the Turn No One Expects

Jinelle Wint – Student Advocacy and Professional Development

Megan Kirk Chang – Bringing Down Stress

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The post Retelling Your PhD Career Story With Kerri Twigg appeared first on Papa Phd Podcast.