Author – Karabo Sibasa & Jade Pickering // Editor – Karabo Sibasa

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Reading time: 4 minutes

I sat down with Jade Pickering, a University of Manchester alumnus who completed her PhD in psychology in 2020, to talk about her path to her current role. Jade now works as Head of Customer Success at Gorilla Experiment Builder, where she applies the skills she gained during her PhD.

What was your PhD in?

I studied impulsivity and inhibitory control in people with Parkinson’s disease.

What were some of the reasons for pursuing a career outside academia?

I’m far too interested in far too many things! I think if you continue in academic research you need to focus on a narrow research area, but I love everything. In my current role, I interact with people working on anything from cognitive psychology to clinical psychology, which aligns more with my preference; I get to be in contact with many interesting areas of psychology rather than having to choose just one.

Can you tell me about your journey from finishing your PhD to getting your current role?

After my PhD, I did two postdocs (in completely different research areas to my PhD!). One thing I learned from the pandemic was how much I value remote working and flexibility. I wanted to try something different, and the priorities of academia like applying for grants and publishing didn’t really appeal to me. During my second postdoc, I happened to see the job ad on Twitter and just went for it.

What do you do day-to-day?

I work in customer success for a start-up, Gorilla Experiment Builder, that helps psychology researchers build online experiments. One of my focuses at the moment is making our powerful software more usable and accessible. So I’m doing a bit of user experience (UX) research and a bit of data analysis, as well as providing help to researchers via email and our support desk. Because it’s a start-up, and there aren’t a lot of us working here, we get to do a bit of everything and have a lot of input and flexibility.

It sounds like your role involves a bit of tech. Do you have a background in IT or tech?

No, although I did use Python during my PhD and JavaScript during my postdoc which has helped a little with providing support to our users.

Are there any skills you wish you’d had before you got the job?

I think I was quite lucky in that I already had a lot of the skills I needed. Having done a lot of patient-facing work during my PhD, I was used to talking to people, finding out what they need, and putting them at ease. Those skills are really useful now when I need to interview our users.

I do wish I had developed more qualitative research skills. I had a lot of quantitative skills coming out of my PhD and postdocs, but I work with a lot more qualitative data now, like feedback from users.

During your PhD, did you do any internships or part-time non-academic work?

No.

What would you say is your proudest career achievement so far?

When I was doing my PhD, I was part of a team that worked on encouraging a university culture change around Open Science. The University sent me to a United Nations event in New York about how universities can align with the Sustainable Development Goals through Open Science. It was by far the coolest thing I have ever done.

Do you have any tips or advice for people who might be interested in following a similar path, whether in terms of working for a start-up or leaving academia more broadly?

One thing to bear in mind is that the academic path is something that the minority of PhD graduates follow. It’s not the default or the norm.

I think the hardest part is knowing what your opportunities are outside academia. To that, I would say look at the intersection of what you’re really interested in (this could be anything, even completely unrelated to your PhD!) and what your skills are. Don’t restrict yourself to the subject you specialised in, but think about the transferable skills you developed during your PhD.

Lastly, people with PhDs are far more valued than they may realise. When we’re doing a PhD, we are surrounded by people who are also doing a PhD and have similar skills, so we often don’t realise how valuable our skills are outside of the academic bubble.