How should PhD students prepare for industry career? (+ REAL interview story) | IIT profs discuss

It is quite common for PhD students to only think of pursuing a career in academia. PhD supervisors also have a tendency to train their students only for a life in academia. However, all over the world and certainly in India, the number of academic positions available is fewer than the number of PhD graduates. Therefore it is high time that we think very seriously about training our PhD students for a life beyond academia in industry. Concurrently, there is a great need for PhD students also to acknowledge this reality and prepare themselves accordingly for an industrial career.

It is these burning issues that I discuss with Prof. Anandaroop Bhattacharya. Currently, a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur and formerly senior professional at Intel, General Motors, General Electric, Prof. Bhattacharya has had a unique combination of extensive experience in both industry and academia.

In this video he relates a very interesting anecdote from his interview with Intel just after his own PhD! Through this anecdote he points out certain key skills that industry is looking for in a PhD student.

A significant portion of this video is dedicated to the discussion of the key transferable skills that PhD students can develop to make themselves valuable to industry.

PhD students need to realize that in addition to their core knowledge and skills they need to develop some additional knowledge and skills which can create a killer combination for success. These additional knowledge and skills could be in the form of data science and data analytics, coding skills (in the immediate future, Python).

Video by: Dr Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty, Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur

Website: http://www.facweb.iitkgp.ac.in/~jeevanjyoti/ GitHub: https://github.com/jeevanjyoti4 Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeevanjyoti Blog: https://jchakraborty.wordpress.com/

Disclaimer: I am a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur. However, the views expressed in this video are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my Department or my Institute.

#jc #IITprof #HigherEducation ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVxY4b0QOgE