00;00;01;07 - 00;00;45;22
Erica Machulak
Welcome to the Hikma Collective podcast. I'm your host, Eric Machulak, writer, medievalist and founder of Hikma. So Hikma means wisdom in Arabic and Bayt-al Hikma means House of Wisdom. And the House of Wisdom is this idea in the cultural imagination that in the Islamic golden age of the Abbasid dynasty, there was this one roof under which all of this creativity and innovation happened, where theology and calligraphy and alchemy and toothbrushes all get invented, and all of these other innovations happen in this hermetically sealed environment.
00;00;46;25 - 00;01;21;01
Erica Machulak
But the reality is that that's not how change happens. Change happens through relationships and communication and understanding how the contributions that you make can respond to needs, challenges and opportunities in the world. Our first season is called The Art of Alternatives because all of the speakers have in some way translated knowledge and values across contexts. And we're interested in understanding how those values and skills have translated from place to place.
00;01;22;01 - 00;01;52;13
Erica Machulak
All of these speakers were guests in our Entrepreneurship for PhDs course, which was a pilot course that we ran in summer of 2021 with humanists who are interested in starting their own businesses, and through that process, thinking about the value that their academic work could bring to all kinds of clients and customers and new environments. Our first episode is an interview with Dr. Stacy Hartman, who is the director of the PublicsLab at City University, New York.
00;01;52;21 - 00;02;16;01
Erica Machulak
Stacy has been a wonderful mentor to me, as well as generations of humanists, and in this episode she talks about mentorship, luck and the importance of relationships in determining who you want to be and what you want to contribute to the world. We hope you enjoy this conversation.
00;02;19;03 - 00;02;40;00
Erica Machulak
Well, hello and welcome to The Hikma Collective podcast. My name is Eric Machulak and the founder of Hikma and I'm very pleased to be here today with Stacy Hartman. Stacy is the director of the Publicslab at the Graduate Center City University of New York. At the Publicslab, she supports doctoral students who are interested in public facing scholarship and a range of career pathways.
00;02;40;13 - 00;02;56;07
Erica Machulak
Prior to coming to the Graduate Center, she was the project manager of Connected Academics, which focused on broadening career horizons for language and literature PhDs at the Modern Language Association. She holds a Ph.D. in German studies from Stanford University. Hi, Stacy. Thank you for joining us.
00;02;57;03 - 00;02;58;24
Stacy Hartman
Oh, thank you so much for having me today.
00;02;59;08 - 00;03;13;07
Erica Machulak
Oh, it's my it's my absolute pleasure. As you know, I've been a fan of your work for a very long time, and it's yeah, it's it's wonderful to have you. So I wonder if we could start with the story of your career. Will you tell us how you got to where you are?
00;03;14;11 - 00;03;44;22
Stacy Hartman
Sure. So I went into my Ph.D. program in 2010, and I was pretty sure at that point I wanted to be a faculty member. And a couple of years in, I started to have these little sort of whispers of doubts that had to do with not wanting to live far away from my family. That had to do with also feeling like some of the research aspects of what I was doing.
00;03;44;22 - 00;04;11;13
Stacy Hartman
Like while I really enjoyed them, they were a little bit too isolated for me and also sort of some doubts about whether this was sort of the most good that I could be doing in the world. So those were sort of the three major sort of like doubts that I started to have as my degree progressed, even though I really enjoyed what I was doing and I felt well-supported in most of the ways that that I needed at Stanford.
00;04;12;00 - 00;04;41;12
Stacy Hartman
And so in my third year, I'm in my third year of the PhD, I started working with the Vice Provost for graduate education's office and with a woman named Chris Golde. And Chris has been studying graduate education for many, many years. She was on the Carnegie Initiative on the doctorate in the nineties, which was a major study that was done of doctoral education across disciplines.
00;04;42;03 - 00;05;08;10
Stacy Hartman
And then she had come back to Stanford, which is where she did her PhD to be associate vice provost for graduate education. And so I got connected with Chris through the chair of my department, which changed my life. And I started working with Chris to do a speaker series of folks at Stanford who had PhDs but were in non-teaching roles.
00;05;08;10 - 00;05;28;28
Stacy Hartman
So they ran research centers or they worked in the development office, or they worked in student advising. And so I put together the Speaker series with the support of VP GE and and that was sort of the first thing that I did in this area. And in doing that, I got paid to do about 35 informational interviews with folks around campus.
00;05;29;22 - 00;05;53;03
Stacy Hartman
And I really can't emphasize enough what, what a boon that was for me to get to talk to people who had all sorts of super interesting jobs and who had had many of the same doubts that I had had. And so that, the end of that experience, I sort of said, okay, I think I'm I think I'm probably not going to be a faculty member.
00;05;53;03 - 00;06;10;14
Stacy Hartman
I think I'm going to do one of these other things. I want to stay at the university. I really believe in the mission of the university. I want to stay, I want to work with students. I don't necessarily need to teach in a classroom every day. I'm sort of iffy on this research thing. And so at least research as it is in a literature department.
00;06;10;26 - 00;06;33;13
Stacy Hartman
And so I sort of made that decision. And then I did something that is a little unusual and was perhaps a little naive, which is that I announced this to any number of people, including my entire committee. And when I had my proposal defense, we ended by talking extensively about what career path I might be interested in, and I was very fortunate.
00;06;33;13 - 00;06;56;20
Stacy Hartman
The chair of my department was pretty supportive. I think my advisor was sad that I wasn't going to be a faculty member, but he was also supportive and I had a number of people, I had a number of people around me who, you know, even if there were occasionally, even if there was occasionally pushback, none of that pushback had actual consequences for me.
00;06;56;20 - 00;07;18;03
Stacy Hartman
No one was going to yank my funding. No one was going to prevent me from doing things that I wanted to do. And so so I felt I felt like I was secure enough to be open about it, which then allowed other people to be open about it. I mean, it was it was 2013, 2014. At this point, the job market in literature had not recovered from the recession.
00;07;18;13 - 00;07;39;11
Stacy Hartman
It was not recovering from the recession. And so, you know, anyone, anyone who really was, I think, looking out for themselves had to be thinking about other other careers. And so, so then because I knew I didn't want to be a professor, I figured there was no point in sitting around and kind of wax on wax off in my dissertation.
00;07;39;11 - 00;07;57;01
Stacy Hartman
So I was like, I want to get out. I want to get done. I'm tired of being a student. You know, it wasn't just it was, I was tired of making a living on a graduate student stipend. That was certainly part of it because I had worked before I'd come back to grad school, but it was also like I was tired of being treated like a student.
00;07;57;28 - 00;08;16;22
Stacy Hartman
And so I was like, All right, I'm in my fifth year of funding. I'm not applying for six year funding. I'm going to get a job and I'm going to get out. And so I finished my dissertation that year. I was very determined. I did not apply for six year funding and I was applying for advising positions and all sorts of things.
00;08;16;22 - 00;08;30;01
Stacy Hartman
But then this, then Connected Academics. The MLA got the Connected Academics grant in 2014 and advertised this position, which was project coordinator at the time.
00;08;30;01 - 00;08;34;26
Erica Machulak
Can you tell us a little bit more about what connected academics was or is?
00;08;34;29 - 00;09;07;28
Stacy Hartman
Oh, sure, sure, sure. So this was a Mellon Foundation funded project. I've been on Mellon Money my entire post PhD career. This was a Mellon Foundation funded project to support expanded career horizons for language and literature PhDs. It was a three year grant. It was about 1.9 million, I want to say. And they hired in the M.A., the Modern Language Association, which is the major scholarly and professional organization for folks in the language and literature field.
00;09;07;28 - 00;09;30;21
Stacy Hartman
Fields was looking for someone to sort of run it. And so I applied for that. It was in New York. I am from California originally. One of my main reasons for not wanting to go on a tenure track job hunt was that I wanted to stay where my where my family was. But I applied for this job anyway, figuring they were going to have hundreds of applications and I was never going to get it.
00;09;31;14 - 00;09;48;19
Stacy Hartman
Spoiler alert they did not actually have hundreds of applications and I did get it. which, and then I promptly had a panic attack because I've been sort of relying on them not choosing me. But but then I was sort of faced with this decision of do I turn down this great job and stay in the Bay Area for something very uncertain?
00;09;49;00 - 00;10;10;03
Stacy Hartman
Or do I go to New York, which had a different type of uncertainty to it? So I decided to take the job and I moved to New York, which was not an easy decision and it was also not an easy transition. I really enjoyed the job, but it was, you know, moving. I say this to people now, like moving is traumatic, right?
00;10;10;06 - 00;10;26;25
Stacy Hartman
Like you give up your whole life somewhere and unless you, you know, as if you liked that life that you're giving up and you end up, you know, in your now you have to build a whole new life somewhere. It's really, really, really hard. And I cried a lot the first three or four months that I was in New York.
00;10;28;04 - 00;10;45;23
Stacy Hartman
And so so this is one of the things like in academia, people are expected to bounce around a lot. And I think it's really, really harmful in a bunch of different ways. I think it's harmful financially, but I also think it's harmful psychologically and emotionally to just being expected to like pull up, pull up roots and like move someplace else.
00;10;45;23 - 00;10;49;19
Stacy Hartman
Like we're not really built to do that on a regular basis.
00;10;49;27 - 00;10;53;21
Erica Machulak
So how long, how long did it take you to feel like New York was home?
00;10;54;04 - 00;11;20;25
Stacy Hartman
It took me nine months to a year. I had to. So I had a really terrible living situation when I first got to New York, that was bad for me and bad for my cats. And I got out of that in about three months, and once I moved to the second apartment, I felt a lot better. It just it was, it was it was a much better situation for me, even though it was a totally illegal basement apartment in Brooklyn.
00;11;22;03 - 00;11;47;24
Stacy Hartman
But it was a much better situation for me and for my cat, which sounds like a small thing, but anyone who has pets will know that that's not a small thing. If you know they're not happy, then like it's really hard for you to be happy too. And so. And then I said so, yes. And then I moved to Jersey City and actually was able to, and I'm in to the apartment that I've been in ever since.
00;11;48;22 - 00;12;09;12
Stacy Hartman
So I was able to sort of like stabilize my life in New York sort of within a year of arriving. And that made a big difference to me. And I had a sense at that point that I was going to stay longer and that I would probably stay beyond the the end of the grant at the MLA. And so I did Connect Academics for three years, which was a great experience.
00;12;10;07 - 00;12;31;05
Stacy Hartman
You know, the MLA really has a national platform and so I really, I had the chance to talk to sort of be become sort of, I don't want to say become an expert, which it sounds like it's tooting my own own horn a little bit, but like to become an expert at the national level on issues of PhD, career preparation.
00;12;31;05 - 00;12;50;19
Stacy Hartman
And I got to travel a lot and I got to talk to lots of different people and I got like this amazing platform and I really enjoyed the people I worked with at the MLA as well. But then, you know, it was great funded, it was a three year grant and it sort of became time to figure out what was going to happen going forward.
00;12;50;19 - 00;13;15;13
Stacy Hartman
It became clear that there probably wasn't going to be another round of funding from Mellon. They were moving in a different direction and focusing on particular campuses rather than the National professional organizations for the next round of funding. And so the MLA was going to have to sort of do this in-house and during the course of sort of trying to work out with them what that was going to look like.
00;13;15;27 - 00;13;34;08
Stacy Hartman
I this job at CUNY came up the director of the Publicslab and somebody I knew at the Graduate Center let me know about it and said, you know, I've been involved in writing this grant. You should apply when the job comes up. And so the job came up at exactly the right moment for me, which is also true of the MLA job.
00;13;34;08 - 00;13;52;05
Stacy Hartman
The MLA job came up at exactly the right moment for me and I do believe there is an element of what I like to think of as serendipity in job hunts. You know, you have to be ready to go at the exact moment that the job is available. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it takes a while for that to happen.
00;13;53;02 - 00;14;07;14
Stacy Hartman
There are ways that you can position yourself. So I feel like luck. Luck is a combination of serendipity and awareness and I'm happy to talk more about that. But yeah, you know, this job at the Graduate Center came up at exactly the right moment.
00;14;08;07 - 00;14;37;26
Erica Machulak
So let's pause heree for a second and ask you a little bit more about that before we go on, because you're hitting on an interesting point that came up at our first take my office hours the other day. We were meeting with the director of UX Research at Verizon, and many of the participants who were there had in mind a very specific role that they were thinking about applying for or maybe not a specific role, but they were wondering, how do I do the things that I'm doing during my Ph.D. now to position myself for this one specific job later?
00;14;37;26 - 00;14;48;08
Erica Machulak
So how do I redesign my course or the program that I'm running to be exactly ready for this this position that I have in mind that I will apply for when I graduate. But I mean, I'll go.
00;14;48;09 - 00;14;53;27
Stacy Hartman
What are we talking about, are we talking about a specific job at a specific organization?
00;14;55;04 - 00;15;21;01
Erica Machulak
I you know, it was a mix of folks. I think some people were thinking of a particular kind of role, like I want to be a UX researcher, or some people were thinking at a particular organization. But I mean, anecdotally, my experience has been that a lot of us end up finding ourselves in jobs that for various reasons call it serendipity or, you know, other trade offs that we make that aren't the jobs that we expected to have.
00;15;21;01 - 00;15;33;09
Erica Machulak
So before we keep talking about your career, like what? What are the things from your Ph.D. that translated? What do you think prepared you to be ready for those opportunities?
00;15;33;09 - 00;15;56;14
Stacy Hartman
That's a really good question. So for where my job at the MLA, it was clearly the work that I had done with the Vice Provost for Graduate Education's office, running a speaker series of folks at Stanford who had PhDs but were not in teaching roles. That, that is probably what got me in the in my got my foot in the door.
00;15;56;29 - 00;16;15;20
Stacy Hartman
If I had not done that work, I'm not sure that they would have really looked at me, although I also had, I had I always had a side gig going right. And so they were like, Oh, this is someone who always has a side gig going. Seems like she has been really interested in different things. This isn't, it...
00;16;16;03 - 00;16;36;03
Stacy Hartman
I think part of it was that my my profile made it clear that I was not applying to this job as a backup. Right. And so that is part of it is, you know, and I think this is a question that hiring managers always have about PhDs. Are you doing this as a backup to the thing that you actually want to be doing?
00;16;36;11 - 00;16;58;26
Stacy Hartman
No one wants to be your plan B. This may be the reality, right? Like it may be the reality that what you really want is a tenure track job, but you are applying to other things. But I would say, you know, whatever you can do, not just in your application but in, in sort of your preparation to make it clear that like it's not a plan B, right?
00;16;58;26 - 00;17;20;24
Stacy Hartman
Is is is good for you. Right. And so I had done a bunch of this stuff at Stanford that was directly applicable to my, to my role at MLA. And then when, you know, and then by the time it's a little bit different, once you it's a little bit different once you get beyond the first job, you know.
00;17;20;24 - 00;17;41;21
Stacy Hartman
So I was I was a good candidate for the job at CUNY because of what I had done at MLA, not because of what I had done for in my Ph.D.. So although I think like research, I mean research skills, teaching skills, you know, I've translated, you know, one thing that you can do is like think about your teaching as facilitation, right?
00;17;41;21 - 00;18;08;16
Stacy Hartman
And I taught language at Stanford and actually language teaching is a great experience for facilitation because the idea behind at least the type of language teaching that we did at Stanford was, you know, you get other people to talk, know, you know, in a 15 minute class. The idea is that the students talk for 40 minutes and you talk for maybe ten at most right over the course of the hour.
00;18;08;29 - 00;18;09;25
Erica Machulak
Totally.
00;18;09;25 - 00;18;44;04
Stacy Hartman
So if you can if you can translate, you know, sorts those sorts of things into like skills that employers are looking for. And if you can get experience that, you know, even if it's sort of not directly in what you're doing, right, even if like these were side gigs that I had. Right. If you being told to get cultivate side gigs that are, that show that you have a genuine interest in the job that you want to do and you're not doing it as a plan B, I think that's really helpful for, helpful when you go to apply for jobs.
00;18;45;02 - 00;19;04;08
Erica Machulak
And when you say, oh, when you talk about that idea of not, no one wants to be the plan B, does that mean that you really need to have a fixed idea of what your Plan A is? Or can you be more exploratory? How do you how do you frame something as a Plan A that is an opportunity that you hadn't thought of before, but that actually sounds pretty cool.
00;19;05;09 - 00;19;32;20
Stacy Hartman
Yeah. I mean, I think I think that's fine. I think I think what what what serves PhDs really, really, really well is curiosity and an openness. And I, and this goes against our training a little bit because I think we're taught to be quite focused, especially once we, once we finish coursework and move on to the dissertation and it's sort of like, oh, you need to focus.
00;19;32;20 - 00;19;52;09
Stacy Hartman
You need to focus. Actually, you know, one of the things that I had going for me was that I've always had a little bit of intellectual A.D.D. and I've always sort of like followed my nose to whatever I found particularly interesting. And I never worried that much about, Oh, does this fit a coherent like, does this make my research look coherent?
00;19;52;09 - 00;20;15;00
Stacy Hartman
It's like, well, I'm interested in I'm interested in, you know, cognitive science and literature or I'm interested in, you know, post, you know, postmodernism as an emotional response to fascism. And then I like found a way to blend the two together in my dissertation, you know. And so I think there were people in my program who are much more focused than I was, right?
00;20;15;01 - 00;20;43;06
Stacy Hartman
They came in with an idea of what they wanted to study. And then that was what they studied. That was what they wrote the dissertation on. And in some ways I'm like, Well, that would be a lot easier if I never changed my mind. And on the other hand, I was like, Well, that also seems really boring. And so I think I think, you know, letting yourself follow your nose to the things that really interest you and not let people tell you, oh, you're you're getting distracted.
00;20;43;06 - 00;21;07;26
Stacy Hartman
Right. Just I, I personally think that distraction is a good thing. Like, if you're like, go look at the shiny object and see what it is, the shiny object might lead you in a direction that you never expected. So I think all of this, like, idea that we have to focus and not get distracted, like I understand that, like people want to, people want people to move through and not, you know, not take ten years to finish.
00;21;07;26 - 00;21;33;08
Stacy Hartman
I also recommend not taking ten years to finish it, but intellectual curiosity, you know, keeping an eye out about what's what's going on in the periphery. You can totally cut this out. But I, there's a great study about luck by this guy named Richard Wiseman. It's from like 2003. I love this study. So Wiseman gave, so he had a whole bunch of tests.
00;21;33;09 - 00;21;59;08
Stacy Hartman
You know, he asked his test subjects to identify as either lucky or unlucky, to self-identify as either lucky or unlucky people. And then he gave them all a newspaper and he said, All right, your task is to find out how many photographs are in this newspaper. And so they all start going through and counting photographs. And what he found was that these self-identified lucky people got to the answer much faster.
00;21;59;17 - 00;22;22;21
Stacy Hartman
And it wasn't because they were counting faster, it was because on the second page, in very, very large type, like like an inch or two inch large type, it said there are 43 photographs in this newspaper. You can stop counting. And the lucky people were scanning the whole time, right? They weren't just counting photographs. They were actually scanning the whole time.
00;22;23;09 - 00;22;46;20
Stacy Hartman
And the self-identified unlucky people got tunnel vision focused on counting the photographs, because that's what they thought the task was. And so I think there is a danger of graduate school giving a tunnel vision and saying, you know, this is the very narrow task that you are here to do. Right. When, in fact, I think the key to, you know, there is serendipity.
00;22;46;20 - 00;23;07;29
Stacy Hartman
The right job at the right time has to be open, you know, but you also have to be aware of what is happening in the periphery. Right. I mean, even if even if it's something like actually reading your email, I had a lot of colleagues who like didn't read their email and were therefore not aware of opportunities that were happening on campus.
00;23;08;13 - 00;23;28;21
Stacy Hartman
And I kept up with my email and I read my email. And so I knew when there were workshops happening that I was interested in, I knew like this job, the job at MLA landed in my email box. I was like, Oh, that's interesting, right? So just being aware of and curious about what is happening around you is a way in which you can actually generate more serendipity for yourself.
00;23;28;21 - 00;23;51;12
Erica Machulak
It's really funny that you say that. I did exactly what you said. I ignored any email that wasn't directly relevant to my dissertation for the last few years in my degree. And then it was only when I got my first office job that I started really paying attention to. You know, they had great professional development programs. We had this quasi union that did workshops on meeting facilitation and data visualization and all this stuff.
00;23;51;12 - 00;24;13;04
Erica Machulak
And once I had that other job, then I started paying attention. But I was working in the admin side in higher ed. If I had paid more attention to what was happening in my university on the admin side while I was there as a student, I would have been able to hit the ground running so much faster. Just understand adding that context and learning how to understand how organizations work too, I think is part of it.
00;24;14;07 - 00;24;32;13
Stacy Hartman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Now the person I'm thinking of who I had this, I actually had like a little mini argue, not a not a serious argument, but I remember telling a friend I was like, you have to read your email. And this other friend goes, No, you don't. She is now a tenured track professor somewhere.
00;24;32;13 - 00;24;41;14
Stacy Hartman
So you know, I think it served her okay that she that that she had but but she also she got lucky in a different way.
00;24;41;14 - 00;24;58;15
Erica Machulak
Yeah. Yeah. So but that tenure track quirkiness. Right is, as we know, has always been a little hard to come by and it's getting harder now. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to have that open conversation with their advisor about their career development?
00;25;00;10 - 00;25;24;28
Stacy Hartman
That's a good question. So part of it is knowing who you're dealing with and I have a rule which I have borrowed from Professor Bianca Williams, who is the faculty lead on my project at the Graduate Center. And this rule is can I swear?
00;25;25;18 - 00;25;25;29
Erica Machulak
Yeah.
00;25;26;14 - 00;26;00;06
Stacy Hartman
This the real is no divas, no assholes. And so and I highly recommend that people follow this rule to the best of their ability when putting their committee together. Now, sometimes you can't do this, but so the adapted rule for committee formation is you get one diva or all the rest have to be nice people. I really I cannot stress this enough, otherwise it becomes like the Westminster Dog Show.
00;26;00;06 - 00;26;22;20
Stacy Hartman
But with cats like it is just this like crazy experience trying to like get your committee, everyone's out of the country. Nobody like, you know, you just you get one superstar who's kind of a jerk and then everyone else on your committee has to be nice people. And so I and I realized this committee, this could be a tough needle to thread depending on your department.
00;26;22;20 - 00;26;52;29
Stacy Hartman
I understand that. But I really do highly recommend this. And I had on my committee, you know, nice people and and so I felt pretty comfortable going to pretty much all of them about what I about my career ambitions. And so, you know, and it might not be if you're if the superstar jerk is your advisor, you might end up going to other people about about career stuff.
00;26;53;28 - 00;27;17;10
Stacy Hartman
Or there might be, you know, or you might cultivate mentorship in other places on campus. So that's another piece of advice is, you know, through other, you know, through the by work in VPGE like Chris Golde became a mentor for me. She's still a mentor for me. Like we still talk regularly. She hooded me at my graduation when my entire committee forgot I was graduating.
00;27;18;09 - 00;27;49;01
Stacy Hartman
And so it was, you know, and so that, that relationship is, is in many ways more important to me now than the relationships with my advisors and my committee. Like, even though I like, I still see them when I go to like the MLA convention and I still email with them on occasion. But, but the, the relationship that is professionally important and personally important as well, but professionally important to me now is the one that I cultivated with somebody who was, you know, an administrator who was not in my department at all.
00;27;49;07 - 00;28;20;29
Stacy Hartman
And you could give me a very different type of mentorship. So that's the other thing I would say is don't don't think of your committee as the be all and end all of mentorship. You know, really cultivate a network of mentors who all bring a little bit of something different to the table and that will serve you a lot better than trying to rely on your committee, but also like try to put together a committee of like nice, decent people that think of you as a person and not just like another degree to confer or, you know, a potential like feather in their cap.
00;28;21;11 - 00;28;21;18
Stacy Hartman
Right?
00;28;23;00 - 00;28;36;24
Erica Machulak
And so how have you. I love I love that thread of mentorship. How have you found mentors outside of the academy since you graduated?
00;28;36;24 - 00;29;07;17
Stacy Hartman
So I had mentors when I was at you know, I had, people I worked with when I was at but at the MLA who definitely served as mentors. So I had a direct supervisor who was in charge of the project and we worked really well together and he was, you know, and he was a friend and he was a mentor, but he had been at the MLA for 30 years and he couldn't tell me how to manage a career where I was probably not going to be at the MLA for 30 years.
00;29;08;21 - 00;29;36;18
Stacy Hartman
And so I made connections in the graduate career world which is full of extremely nice people, like people who do career development are just very, they're just like nice people. They tend to be very outgoing and positive and they are just like they're just they're really supportive, nice people who obviously also tend to have an expertize in how to develop your career.
00;29;37;05 - 00;30;05;25
Stacy Hartman
So I got some great mentorship through them and I also, you know, continued to cultivate mentorship with, you know, the relationship that I had with Chris Golde. I will also say at a certain point, I think it becomes less about cultivating relationships with people who are senior to you and more about cultivating relationships to the with the folks that are sort of at your level.
00;30;05;25 - 00;30;06;07
Stacy Hartman
And I was.
00;30;06;07 - 00;30;07;09
Erica Machulak
I wass hoping you'd say that.
00;30;07;17 - 00;30;29;17
Stacy Hartman
Yeah. You know, and somebody said on Twitter recently and I thought this was so, so, so. Right. And I can't remember who said it, but I could go I could go look that up after after this. But somebody said networking is not about connecting with people senior to you. It's about connecting with people. It's about connecting with your peers and then helping each other rise.
00;30;30;06 - 00;30;59;15
Stacy Hartman
And that I think is just is critical. And I have through Connect Academics which had a pro seminar and which was, you know, folks in the New York City area who were either in PhD programs or complete or had recently completed Ph.D. programs who were interested in careers outside the academy. I made great friends with the folks in the pro seminar and I was just out of my Ph.D. I didn't have any actual seniority to those folks like I was.
00;30;59;15 - 00;31;25;07
Stacy Hartman
It was it was a totally random chance that I happened to be in charge of that person in some ways. And so now many of them are in great positions doing all kinds of things. And so that has become a network of peer mentors. And, you know, and when I you know, what I'm interested in, in thinking about something new, I often reach out to folks in that network and say, Hey, will you sit down with me?
00;31;26;01 - 00;31;51;01
Stacy Hartman
And we're very generous with each other in that network. And it's a little bit different with my with the fellows that I work with at CUNY, we have a fellowship program as well. It's different because I'm in a different type of role with them, and I'm further from my Ph.D. than I was. You know, it's I'm not like friends with my fellows in the same way that I was friends with the folks in the seminar.
00;31;51;14 - 00;32;26;17
Stacy Hartman
But, you know, in 10 or 15 years when those folks have moved on to, I'm sure, incredible careers, like like those sorts of relationships change over time, right? Like even like my relationship with mentors that I had when I was at Stanford have now changed a lot. And sometimes it runs in the other direction. Right. Those those relationships, once, those relationships can become very bi directional, even if it starts out as, you know, somebody senior to you mentoring you in ten years, those relationship, that mentorship can run in both directions.
00;32;27;11 - 00;32;56;08
Stacy Hartman
And that's one thing that I tell folks who are often very concerned about infringing on people's time or or being a burden is, you know, those relationships change over time. You might feel like you don't have anything to offer that person right now, but you don't know what's going to happen in 10 or 15 years. And so, you know, in some ways, like, if you you know, because people feel like, oh, well, I can't give back to them right in this moment, like, yeah, but you don't know where you're going to be in 10 or 15 years and that's okay.
00;32;56;16 - 00;33;15;27
Stacy Hartman
You know, the relationship, the a good mentorship relationship is sort of longitudinal. And so even if you might not be in a position to do anything for that person right now, I bet you will be someday. You know, and even if it doesn't like, there's no expectation of that in a mentorship relationship.
00;33;16;29 - 00;33;23;23
Erica Machulak
Yeah, I agree with you. I would say the caveat there is still make sure that you're expressing your gratitude.
00;33;24;07 - 00;33;32;17
Stacy Hartman
Yes. Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Gratitude, enthusiasm and curiosity are the three tools that people really need in their tool belt.
00;33;33;13 - 00;33;55;10
Erica Machulak
Yeah, I love that. I, I want to pivot for we sort of reconnected this year at a conference at CUNY virtually a couple of months ago. And we were in this breakout room where a bunch of us had gotten sort of our careers, just catalyze by interactions with you. And someone made a joke in that room that it was six degrees of Stacy Hartman.
00;33;55;10 - 00;34;21;13
Erica Machulak
Because you've been so you've been so active in this space that you've just paved so much of a foundation for many of us. And for me, it was the first time we met. I was in a giant crowd. And I don't think you probably would remember, but I've shared this with you before that it was Philly MLA, the Modern Language Association Conference in 2017 in Philadelphia, and you gave a LinkedIn workshop through Connected Academics.
00;34;21;20 - 00;34;45;04
Erica Machulak
That was awesome. And it was awesome not just because it had never occurred to me that I probably needed a LinkedIn profile and that indeed the mechanism that led me to a lot of the jobs that I applied for and got either got offered or got for in the process, but also because of the way that you framed skilled translation, it wasn't just about this social media tool and how to use it.
00;34;45;04 - 00;35;06;15
Erica Machula
It was about thinking through how to position your skills for other audiences. I had never put that rhetorical lens on it until that moment, and this was me few months before graduation, and it was just a total game changer that made me able to have informational interviews and think about how I was presenting my work. So I wonder if you could tell us.
00;35;07;12 - 00;35;22;13
Erica Machulak
I know that you've continued to help people figure out how to navigate, how they present themselves, and particularly on social media. What advice do you typically give to graduate students who are trying to break break outside the academy?
00;35;22;13 - 00;35;42;06
Stacy Hartman
Let's see here. And by the way, I just want to say that it means a lot for you to say that like that workshop, you know, really helped you because it is sort of when you do those sorts of workshops, it's sort of unusual to get anything back in terms of feedback or anything. And sometimes you think, Oh, did that help anyone?
00;35;42;06 - 00;36;13;10
Stacy Hartman
So I'm really grateful to you for saying that. So I often said one of the things that I often tell people who are current PhD students is to sort of focus on the very top of the LinkedIn profile. And the top of the LinkedIn profile tends to be headshot headline and then the summary.And people make a couple of different mistakes.
00;36;13;10 - 00;36;32;14
Stacy Hartman
So headshots, I generally say like you want people to be able to see your eyes, right? You want so you don't want to have sunglasses, you want to be. I think it's helpful to be smiling. Either a nice headshot where you can see your eyes and you're smiling or a shot of you in action doing something, right.
00;36;32;14 - 00;36;47;28
Stacy Hartman
So I know folks who have great photos on LinkedIn of like them, like giving a lecture or facilitating or whatever, and those are good too. So either an action shot or a nice headshot. I think a selfie is fine, but you kind of don't want to be able to see that it's a selfie.
00;36;49;05 - 00;36;50;21
Erica Machulak
Yeah, like get a selfie stick. Come on.
00;36;51;03 - 00;37;11;27
Stacy Hartman
Yeah. Or just, I mean, I'm pretty good with my arm out, right? But you don't want to be like see the arm but anyway, so. And then the headline tends to be people often. I often see PhD students who have the word, have the words the word "student" in their headline. And I would say definitely like get rid of the word student altogether.
00;37;11;27 - 00;37;39;16
Stacy Hartman
It makes you sound less experienced and a lot younger than you probably are. And so, you know, I think Ph.D. candidate is fine, doctoral researcher is also fine. But what I actually would recommend doing with the doing with your headline is playing around with some combination of labels for yourself, right? Like, are you a teacher? Are you a facilitator?
00;37;39;16 - 00;38;04;27
Stacy Hartman
Are you a researcher? Are you a writer? Are you whatever you might be, right. And what you know and use that combination of use it maybe three of those sorts of labels to to put yourself out there in the way that you want to be perceived, right. Doctoral researcher is fine. It doesn't actually tell people outside of academia that much about what you do.
00;38;05;07 - 00;38;30;06
Stacy Hartman
So if you say instead that you're a writer, a researcher and a facilitator, right. That gives a much better idea of of it gets much concrete idea of what you do and who you are then doctoral researcher, even though those things might be contained by that label. So that's one thing. That's the thing I would say about the headline and then,
00;38;30;06 - 00;38;34;12
Erica Machulak
Before you go on, let me ask you, do you have three words, Stacy? Do you know what they are?
00;38;34;25 - 00;38;45;06
Stacy Hartman
Oh, God. I have to go to my leading profile now. What is my current LinkedIn? What is my current LinkedIn? Mine is project manager, facilitator and strategic thinker.
00;38;45;17 - 00;38;46;12
Erica Machulak
Yeah, I like that.
00;38;47;23 - 00;39;17;01
Stacy Hartman
It's what it currently is. So there's lots of ways to, to, to tweak that, you know, and you can play around with different iterations of it. So then the summary, I think this is the most underutilized part of the LinkedIn profile and people will sometimes just use it like it's a summary of their resume.
00;39;17;03 - 00;39;41;14
Stacy Hartman
Right. And I think this is a real, I think that's a missed opportunity. I think the best way to use the summary is to say this is a chance for me to narrativise my experience and who I am,and use it to talk about how I use it to connect in particular, what you do as a PhD with what you want to be doing afterwards and use it as a way of making sense of that for it.
00;39;41;15 - 00;40;07;01
Stacy Hartman
For people who might be visiting your profile, but also for yourself like this is a great way to sort of agree, a great place to kind of practice your self narrative. Who are you? What do you want to be doing? How do you connect that to the work that you have been doing? And I think that that exercise, that the writing exercise of the LinkedIn summary, which is pretty short, I can't remember what their current character limit is, but it's a pretty short character limit.
00;40;07;01 - 00;40;29;11
Stacy Hartman
But using it as a place to talk about what I think of as superpowers, right? Talk about talk about your superpowers and connect them to what you are doing and what you want to be doing. I think those are I think that's, the LinkedIn somewhere is a great place to start doing that. And LinkedIn profiles are works in progress you're going to tweak them going forward.
00;40;29;11 - 00;40;59;22
Stacy Hartman
It's it's not really done but I think it's a really useful tool for getting yourself out there and making yourself visible to people who might want to hire you, even in a passive kind of way, like just by being visible and having their little open to work label on your on your profile, but then also starting to do, you know, doing the work for yourself of, making sense of who you are and what you've been doing and who you want to be and what you want to do.
00;41;00;16 - 00;41;02;23
Stacy Hartman
I think LinkedIn profiles are useful for that.
00;41;04;02 - 00;41;26;08
Erica Machulak
So one question I've received from a number of postdocs and other recent graduates is whether or not to mention their PhD. You often see PhDs who put their name, comma, Ph.D. in their LinkedIn profile. What do you have advice for folks on when you're moving beyond academia and how much to emphasize your degree?
00;41;26;08 - 00;41;55;01
Stacy Hartman
I don't I personally do not recommend to people that they hide their PhD. There are people who give that advice. I do not. I understand why people give that advice, but I just I don't think that it is super, I don't think it's helpful in many ways because that it's like, well, what did you do for those seven years?
00;41;56;06 - 00;42;24;14
Stacy Hartman
Yeah, you know, and it's like it. I mean, I, you know, it's like, well, I was I was a teacher in a researcher. Okay. But what you actually were was doing your Ph.D. And so I don't recommend that people hide the Ph.D.. I have my Ph.D. on my LinkedIn profile. If I started applying to jobs in like, well, yeah, even if I started applying to jobs in tech companies, I think it is likely that I would apply to jobs where my Ph.D. was going to be useful, right?
00;42;24;14 - 00;42;51;15
Stacy Hartman
Like I might apply for like learning and development roles, or I might apply for like University liaison roles. And in those situations, my Ph.D. is going to be really helpful. And so I don't, I would encourage people not to assume that the Ph.D. is a problem, because I don't it is in many situations. I don't think it is.
00;42;51;15 - 00;43;10;01
Stacy Hartman
The exception might be in situations where they're using an algorithm for deciding who moves forward and PhDs, especially in the humanities, are getting weeded out. And so that can be a little bit difficult, but I'm not sure that it would be helped by taking the PhD off.
00;43;11;09 - 00;43;29;22
Erica Machulak
Yeah and I think some of the piece there. Right. It's, it's not so much about hiding your degree is about translating your skills and your experiences so that they are intelligible to whoever the employer is. So those algorithms often focus on word association and are you able to use the language in the job description to describe what you've done?
00;43;30;04 - 00;43;54;18
Erucan Machulak
You know, like government jobs do this to where they're looking for. I don't I don't know whether they're always using computers or just 1 to 1 matching, but you have to be so careful about the process that you're looking for exact alignment. And if you're a Ph.D. in English, you can decode a job description and determine which of those points on the job description can be sort of reverse engineered and explained through the skills that you've had.
00;43;54;23 - 00;43;56;18
Erica Machulak
Yeah, it's interesting.
00;43;56;24 - 00;44;09;03
Stacy Hartman
Yeah, that's a really good point. The other thing I would say is you can't outside the academy, you can't lean on your Ph.D. You have to like you're going to need to bring other things to the table, but you also are going to have to do I think this is sort of what you were talking about.
00;44;09;03 - 00;44;40;03
Stacy Hartman
You have to do interpretive work, right? So I remember the first time that the MLA ran a job fair at its annual convention and one of the some of the feedback that we got from employers afterwards was people kept coming up and saying to me, "Where would a PhD fit in at your organization?" And this is not a great question to ask an employer because first of all it makes them do all of that interpretive work, right?
00;44;40;08 - 00;45;05;12
Stacy Hartman
They have to all of the interpretive work of figuring out where you might fit in their organization, when actually that work should be on that. A lot of that work needs to be on the job applicant and also like what is contained in the phrase "a PhD"? What does that mean? It varies quite a bit from person to person, and there's no way for the hiring manager or whoever you're talking to to know what you mean by that.
00;45;05;21 - 00;45;32;29
Stacy Hartman
Right? And some PhDs, PhDs are not a monolith. Some people love research, some people love teaching. Some people really like committee work, you know, some you know, it really depends. And so you need to do some of that interpretive work of what is what is the PhD, but also who are you as a Ph.D.? And so that interpretive work is really, really, really important.
00;45;32;29 - 00;45;46;22
Stacy Hartman
And you can't lean on the PhD the way that you would in an academic context to do that work for you and to convey all that we, we understand is conveyed by a Ph.D.
00;45;47;18 - 00;46;04;21
Erica Machulak
Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny because once you've done that work and you're sort of hired on the merits of the way that you're able to make the case that you are the right person for that job, no one then says, "Oh, but you have a Ph.D" or maybe not No. One, but probably jobs that you actually want and are not going to say.
00;46;05;00 - 00;46;22;03
Erica Machulak
Oh, but because you also have a Ph.D., you know, we don't actually want you if you demonstrated that you built those skills through your degree. Well, fantastic. And you have a Ph.D., too? Cool. As long as you're not a jerk on the job and you don't do all of the things that we think of as stereotypes of Ph.D. behavior.
00;46;22;21 - 00;46;51;17
Erica Machulak
It's not going to get in your way. I'm a medievalist and I haven't worked actively in anything remotely related to, you know, the Middle Ages since I graduated. But it's funny, I really credit the things that I learned during my Ph.D., especially the facilitation piece that you're talking about, but also just the interdisciplinarity and then the need to find patterns and different ways of thinking and kind of mesh them all into one one context like that.
00;46;51;17 - 00;47;12;12
Erica Machulak
That ability to navigate contexts is something that I definitely learned during my degree and just having to figure out how people think and how translation works and how ideas travel. But when I, when I talk to people who I'm working with who are way outside my discipline and it comes up that I'm a medievalist, they're always it's it's like I'm some, you know, shiny unicorn.
00;47;12;12 - 00;47;15;00
Erica Machulak
They're like, oh, really? And they, they assume it has nothing to do....
00;47;15;00 - 00;47;16;06
Stacy Hartman
I have never met one of those.
00;47;17;10 - 00;47;37;05
Eric Machulak
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, you meet these people who are working in computer science or nuclear physics or whatever, and you say, Oh, and I'm a medievalist. And at this point in my career, it typically comes out three quarters of the way through the conversation, if it comes up at all. And it's but it's not that. It's not the fact that I studied Chaucer, that is my selling point.
00;47;37;05 - 00;47;55;19
Ericsa Machulak
It's fact that I learned all of these skills and can do all of these things. And then since then have developed a track record of applying those skills in other ways. And, the medievalist thing is just like, Oh, really cool. And I just become this, you know, you know, interesting creature in addition to the professional that they know.
00;47;55;19 - 00;48;06;28
Erica Machulak
So I think it comes in handy later as something that other people may think of as a curiosity that you yourself know is integral to your work as a professional.
00;48;06;28 - 00;48;32;27
Stacy Hartman
Right. And the fact that other people don't get it, that's okay. Like it doesn't matter that other people don't fully understand what your degree, like meant for what you're doing now. It's okay. I mean, because you're going to make all sorts of connections that they that other people aren't going to make. You know, I know lots of other medievalist doing all sorts of different things and they can absolutely tell you what their degree meant, has meant for them and what it has helped them do.
00;48;33;21 - 00;48;37;05
Stacy Hartman
But those things are definitely not obvious to other people and that's okay.
00;48;37;14 - 00;48;58;05
Erica Machulak
Yeah, exactly. So I wonder if I could ask you, as we close a few more questions about social media, not so much from the perspective of presenting yourself, but of how you engage with communities online. So what advice do you give to job seekers who are engaging with others on the Internet?
00;48;59;29 - 00;49;29;16
Stacy Hartman
Oh, that's a good question. So I treat Twitter. So my Twitter is currently locked down, actually, and it's not for it's not for any particular. This is it's mostly for me because I have a hard time not arguing with people on the Internet. And so I have removed my ability to argue with people on the Internet both for the sake of my time and my sanity.
00;49;30;10 - 00;49;54;08
Stacy Hartman
And I would say, you know, this is something to think about. If you are someone like me who enjoys arguing with someone who is wrong on the Internet because people are wrong on the Internet every day, just all over the place, just so deeply wrong every day. You know, you might think about if you're having a job search, you might want to think about whether there are ways that you want to temper some of that.
00;49;55;03 - 00;50;25;14
Stacy Hartman
If you are someone who is very been very critical of your university on social media, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I would think how is how is potential employer going to perceive that criticism? Right. If they look at my Twitter and I have been very critical of my university and universities deserve this. Right. Like even the best universities who treat their people as well as we can possibly expect under our current system like they deserve serious criticism.
00;50;25;14 - 00;50;59;15
Stacy Hartman
You know, they are universities have they are, you know, their institutions with all of the accompanying, you know, white supremacist, patriarchal capitalist problems that accompany any institutions in our current environment. So nothing wrong with criticizing your university. But if I am an employer and I'm looking at you as a potential employee and I look at your Twitter and I see a lot of criticism, I might wonder, are you also going to talk about our organization that way?
00;51;00;11 - 00;51;30;20
Stacy Hartman
And I will say that most organizations are less tolerant of that from their employees than universities tend to be, especially from faculty and students. So that is something I would think about is, you know, treat Twitter, I treat Twitter, especially now, as like, assuming that my colleagues can over can, quote, overhear anything that I'm saying on Twitter because they can.
00;51;31;17 - 00;52;06;25
Stacy Hartman
And so, you know, that would be one thing I would say is I don't think you can never I don't think you can you know, like I wouldn't say like never argue with somebody on the Internet or and I would I wouldn't say like never criticize your university. Like, definitely not. But but if you are in the middle of an active job hunt, sometimes locking down your Twitter is a good idea or just going through and doing a little bit of clean up just so that if somebody glances at your Twitter that they, you know, they see what they see, looks of what they see as like fairly innocuous is what I would say, you know,
00;52;06;25 - 00;52;35;21
Stacy Hartman
But I think there's a lot of latitude within that, right? Like I think there's a lot of latitude. I mean, certainly I think, you know, most organizations would be totally fine with like social justice work. Right. And, you know, and, you know, I mean, organizations vary depending on their own missions. But I think, you know, most of them are most of them would be fine with like some, you know, some political stuff on on a Twitter, like most of them would be depending on.
00;52;36;14 - 00;52;48;16
Stacy Hartman
I mean, there is a little bit from organization to organization. I just, you know, conflict and criticism are the two things that I would sort of be careful of if you are doing, if you're actively job searching.
00;52;49;28 - 00;53;03;09
Erica Machulak
And being mindful of how things can be taken out of context. If you're writing one tweet in an 18 tweet thread and it gets retweeted on its own, make sure you know how it's going to look on its own, or how any one of those 18 would look by itself.
00;53;03;09 - 00;53;04;21
Stacy Hartman
Exactly. Yeah, that's very true too.
00;53;04;28 - 00;53;14;23
Erica Machulak
Yeah. What about things that work well for people on social media? Have you seen any jobseekers or recent graduates who really knocked it out of the park with the way that they engage?
00;53;16;19 - 00;53;46;04
Stacy Hartman
Yeah, so I think so. I mean, a lot of people post jobs to Twitter now, so it's actually a great place to find out, to follow organizations that you're interested in and keep an eye out for jobs and opportunities that they might be posting. This is one thing that I would say and then also, you know, connect with people who are it's a really easy way to connect with people who are doing really interesting work that you want to know more about that might be similar to work that you want to do.
00;53;47;01 - 00;54;16;17
Stacy Hartman
And and certainly there are lots of people who have, had who have gotten informational interviews through through Twitter and who have even gotten jobs through Twitter. It's a fairly low threshold, low barrier to entry way to start listening in on other types of conversations. And that's what I think Twitter is really good for, is like you can listen in on almost anything on Twitter and get an idea of what they're going on, and what's going on there.
00;54;16;17 - 00;54;33;25
Stacy Hartman
And you can start to get an idea of how they talk, how like folks in you talk about UX, right, and start to adapt some of that language to how you, you know, to your cover letter and to your resume and and all of that in addition to making connections with those folks.
00;54;34;21 - 00;54;54;03
Erica Machulak
Yeah, I think that's a great point. You really learn how to translate the context and also the kinds of people that you would want to engage with. And and often people are tweeting resources that become really useful as well. Hmm. Thanks, Stacy. All right. Any any last advice for with listeners, parting words, things you wish I'd asked you?
00;54;54;11 - 00;55;25;05
Stacy Hartman
Hmm. I would say, so when I have asked people in the past, what do you wish you had known when you were job hunting or when you finished your Ph.D and sort of started out? And the answer that sticks out to me is, I wish I'd known it was going to be okay. And so what I want to convey to listeners is that the odds are very good that it's going to be okay.
00;55;26;20 - 00;55;51;24
Stacy Hartman
I won't say that it's good that it works out perfectly for everyone. And I won't say that it's going to work out exactly the way that you think that it will. But your odds are very good, especially since you have you have already made the really tough decision, which is to take seriously jobs beyond the academy. And so your odds, the odds are really good that it's going to be okay for you.
00;55;51;29 - 00;55;52;24
Erica Machulak
Mm hmm.
00;55;54;03 - 00;56;07;09
Erica Machulak
Thank you. I love that. And while it's been wonderful to have you, I'm really grateful for your time. And, yeah, just as always, really great, inspiring, energizing conversation. So thanks so much, Stacy.
00;56;08;00 - 00;56;12;17
Stacy Hartman
Well, thank you so much. This was great. I really enjoyed it.
00;56;12;17 - 00;56;39;06
Erica Machulak
We hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Hikma Collective podcast. I'm your host, Eric Machulak, writer, medievalist and founder of Hikma. The production of this episode was led by our fearless creative director, Sophia van Hees in collaboration with Nicole Markland, Dasharah Green, Eufemia Baldassarre and Matthew Tomkinson. Matthew composed the original music you hear now in his capacity as the 2022 Hikma Artist in Residence.
00;56;40;06 - 00;57;04;04
Erica Machulak
This podcast has been made possible with generous support from Innovate B.C., Tech Nation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. You can find show notes, links and transcripts at www.hikma.studio/podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the ən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.
00;57;05;04 - 00;57;17;06
Erica Machulak
We are grateful to be here and to share this space with you. Our speakers, team members and listeners are based all over the world and wherever you're listening, we encourage you to learn more about whose lands you're on.
