Welcome back to my channel the best
place for millennial professionals to
bring positive change to their careers
now in this video i'm going to discuss
the question of whether
an oxford phd is worth
having if you want to work in the
corporate world and if this is what
you're interested in
then stick around hi I'm Dr. Jon Tam
i have a phd from oxford in sociology
and i'm passionate about helping people
bring positive change to their careers
so if this is what you're interested in
then remember to click the subscribe
button and hit the notification bell so
that you can receive regular updates for
when my videos come out so without
further ado
let's get to the meat of this video
first of all whether it's
worth it or not it really is essentially
weighing the pros and cons right
so in a previous video i talked about
the pros and cons of getting announced
for phd in the social sciences if you
want to do academic work
now i'm going to talk about the
corporate world in this case
and so essentially the goal is different
but i do want to give a quick disclaimer
that
my conversation here really depends
on the fact that it's coming from the
social sciences so my phd
is in the social sciences i have it in
the sociology
but there's also a lot of different phds
out there right so at oxford we have the
math physical and life sciences we have
the humanities and we also have
the medical sciences and in those cases
like the medical sciences there's
obviously industry options
and the math physical life sciences
there's also different options out there
and i would say that it's quite
different in that case so it visits
specifically for the social sciences and
of course my experience is limited i
only graduated last year and you can
check out my graduation in the video
above but basically my perspective
is from one year of holding an oscar phd
entering the corporate world
what it's like so let's weigh the pros
and cons first off let's weigh the cons
right number one
and i talked about this at length in my
last video i'm just going to skim by
this one here
funding is scarce in oxford right and
especially for the social sciences
funding is super scarce
and so you will lose the opportunity
cost of several years
of not working to get that phd while
funding opportunities
are rare in austria whether it's the
college or the department there are
other people who get full rides so
maybe it's just me and the other thing
which i also mentioned in my other video
is you can actually fail
unlike us phds there's the transfer
status confirmation status
and the va volume and those are
basically the proposal
the midway checkpoint of you know two
chapters and to see whether your phd is
on track and the final defense right
and you can literally fail at each phase
and i failed at each phase
you do get retries but uh essentially i
failed at each phase
and you know you improve as a result of
that but that's another major drawback
right
now there's a third con about moving
into the corporate world with a phd from
oxford is that
it actually invites a lot of bias and as
a career coach right now i help people
with their resumes and
you know how to land a job and one of
the things that comes up
quite constantly is being overqualified
and sure a master's sometimes can be
an over qualified degree for an entry
level position
right especially or it's overqualified
if it's irrelevant
but another major thing is that well if
a master's is overqualified then what do
you think about a phd right
there have been cases where people
literally had to remove their phds in
order to land jobs
right and because phd invites a lot of
bias a lot of people think
phd people are like they're brainiacs
and they're not practical and they're
all about ideas and
you know they're like you know my data
stuff like there's a lot of biases out
there against phds but
as you can see a phd can be like a
totally cool person like
me i'm pretty cool right i'm pretty
chill when you're moving
from a phd to the corporate world it may
invite biases another thing is that
moving from a phd at oxford to
the real corporate world there is a real
you know
shock there's a shock to your system
when that happens and
what happened is that you basically set
yourself up
for the dunning-kruger effect it's
basically you know when you
know a lot you feel that you know a lot
of very little
and when you know very little you feel
like you know a lot right and so
when you are a phd what happens is that
your knowledge
like becomes incredible in a very
specific
realm of body of knowledge in the world
right and what happens is that
well you'll start feeling like everybody
else should know this it's common sense
to you
and therefore you'll start feeling like
an imposter or
when you speak it becomes overly complex
and it becomes kind of like technobabble
when i first
reentered the workforce after finishing
my phd i had people
telling me like yo uh dude you're
speaking technobabble i understand what
you're talking about i'm like really
it's common sense to me though and then
i realized you know after listening to
what i say
in some videos or in some talks it's
like yeah oh it's too much
not everyone needs to know all the nuts
and bolts and details of every
theoretical framework or other
possibilities and whoever said what once
upon a time these are real problems that
you'll need to tackle during that
transition so that's another major con
of you know working in the academic hd
world what happens is you
build all this knowledge and it doesn't
always translate
effectively and smoothly into the
corporate world and so that's something
you definitely need
to be aware of during that transition
because sometimes you expect everyone to
know as much as you and they simply
don't
and that makes it somewhat painful
and makes you miserable and these are
some of the major cons i can think of
if there's any other con that you can't
think of let me know i'll be super
interested
now remember i'm approaching this from a
social science perspective so leave a
comment below and let me know your
thoughts now let's talk about the pros
there's a lot of pros
with getting a phd from oxford and
moving to the corporate world now one of
the things is that
it gives you essentially automatic
legitimacy
in any conversation and it's like you
don't
mean to do this like when i first
graduated in the back of my mind is like
i can't wait to tell everyone i'm a phd
like everyone in the room you need to
know i'm a phd like
you do get that okay i admit i had that
but
after a while you start realizing that
they
care a lot more about the contents of
what you say than
what title or what degree you have and
that generally applies
in you know across the business world
across the corporate world of course
once they know you're a phd you get to
position yourself as an authority and
they'll consider
actually what you're saying rather than
just blowing you off like this
is just some asian kid who who's a
brainiac and all that stuff right i have
a problem with that
especially because i look like i'm 20
something when i go on a basketball
court like i get like
18 year olds walk up to me at yo bros
like i was like
and then and then i'm like yo i could be
your dad like literally i'm i'm in my
i'm almost i'm
like i'm closer to 40 than 30 right
so that's kind of the situation i'm in
but anyways
having that phd in that case will give
me that automatic legitimacy it's like
okay
this guy looks young he definitely has
those young asian jeans working for him
but and i can't grow any facial hair
that's another major problem that i have
so that title definitely helps with that
and people spend a lot more time
considering what you're saying
but at the end of the day it depends on
the value that you bring to a table
they don't care about your title they
care about the value that you bring the
skills that you bring
and the ideas that you bring and
everything and sometimes there's a
problem with being too idealistic
because everything in the phd world a
lot of it's just ideas
but when you actually put it into
practice it actually becomes very
difficult when you start executing those
ideas you realize there's a lot of
technical
problems along the way that you have to
troubleshoot and that's actually
you know something that you have to deal
with i would have to say though coming
out of the academic bubble the phd world
and having your stuff scrutinized to the
degree that i had to fail three times
um yeah pretty much your analysis would
be so
sharp that it's hard to differentiate
for people like
they may not see it but you see it and
it gets painful
but you need to be really good at
explaining these ideas and that's where
all the soft skills and stuff comes in
and so you want to learn more about soft
skills i have like a playlist up here
where i talk about soft skills your
analysis would be
very sharp very insightful but you have
to be able to communicate it effectively
and in a short time because in the
corporate world no one wants to sit down
listen to you ramble about your theories
for a long time
so basically you got to get to the point
last of all one of the major benefits of
getting a phd from oxford is that the
network
is amazing especially because asians
they love their academic titles and all
that stuff and you know ph.d from
australia
and so the network in hong kong is
amazing right i get to meet oxbridge
people and i get to network with
oxbridge people
similarly there's an oxbridge community
in toronto
and there's also an oxbridge community
in pretty much every other city
now they're building an oxbridge alumni
network for entrepreneurs
uh through acai business school and the
network goes pretty much
with you for the rest of your life and
the alumni network is amazing and to be
very honest if i
look at the ivy league network in hong
kong versus the expert network in hong
kong i would say the oxbridge network in
hong kong is much stronger than the ivy
league network so that's one of the
major pros
of getting a phd from oxford in the
corporate world is that when you go to
these events
everyone else in these alumni networks
are either professors or they run their
own hedge fund or they run their own
businesses and they're all very
like i said before excellence is a habit
right and these are all very excellent
individuals who have
created a lot of success in society and
so that's another major benefit
of getting a phd from oxford but at the
end of the day it ultimately depends on
what you want to do and so one of the
things that i do is i help people figure
out the next steps for their careers
especially millennial professionals
and so if you want to learn more on how
to find your ideal career check out the
pdf which i'll put in the links below
i'll also include a personality test
below which is basically a free career
personality test it literally takes like
one to two minutes to do it but it's
super accurate
and it will tell you what are the
things that would appeal to you at work
and what are things that you should
probably avoid
at work based on the big five
personality traits and i talk a lot
about this kind of stuff
in previous videos which i'll link in
the cards above and so i hope you like
this video it's basically a breakdown
of a phd from oxford moving to the
corporate world what are the pros and
cons so make sure to hit the subscribe
button and the notification bell so that
you can receive regular updates
on things that will help you in your
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