When I was younger, becoming a professor of anthropology excited me. As I progressed through a tour in the United States Marine Corps years ago, visions of a future lecturing students captivated me. Why did I want to be a professor? In retrospect, the goals I held were one, to find something useful and good for the world; two, to stimulate my interest; and three, to generate income.
I left active duty and pursued graduate school to become an applied anthropologist and professor. Completion of a master’s degree and a PhD in the field notwithstanding, I received no job offers, batting zero through my LinkedIn profile.
My road to post-academic career fulfillment has had twists and turns, and I am still walking down that road. I have experienced many trials and lessons as I moved from a biocultural trajectory focused on livelihoods and food security to user experience research (UXR) on products that help people work more effectively.
The first lesson I learned was humility; realizing that the world did not owe me what I wanted because I had done “all the right things.” My first year and a half post-graduation disabused me of feeling important based the three initials I tacked on at the end of my name. I spent about two years unemployed or underemployed, including a year working frontline jobs at a Home Depot. I valued my learning at Home Depot, but I was happy to enter a job as a research project manager at the Tampa Veterans’ Affairs (VA) Medical Center at the end of 2014.
The next lesson I learned was adaptability. My brother, an experienced businessman, coached me in career management. He taught me that I had to highlight what I could do for an employer, versus what irrelevant information I included, and he stressed the importance of building a professional network with intention. The combination of reorienting application materials towards skills and value, combined with proactive networking, lead to the VA job offer.
While I was at the VA, I broadened my health research knowledge from the perspective of other disciplines and learned to conduct applied research as part of a team. The project manager job gave me time and space to absorb information from several mentors at once. Teamwork and mentorship honed my abilities to adapt and be humble.
The VA research center was in many ways a miniature academic institution, however, including its focus on peer reviewed scholarly publications and its dependence on grant funding. When my fellowship ended, I had some publications under my belt, but not enough to justify extending my fellowship a third year. My grant application was rejected and I found no place as a co-investigator on another team. The time I spent at the VA also enforced the previous lessons of humility and adaptability. Sometimes a pivot is necessary.
After leaving the VA, I came upon UXR and business consulting, almost by accident. I widely searched and networked. After several years, I attended the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings, focusing on workshops around UXR, design thinking, and their tie-ins to anthropology. For the first time my need to take a risk and chart a new course trumped my perennial worries about being too short of money to pay for workshops. My trip to the AAAs in 2018 turned out to be a transformative experience. I found a line of work outside academia that I wanted to pursue.
The path into UXR was not straight for me. I had to learn a new lexicon, and ways of adapting and thinking through an anthropological lens to understand what a product’s end user needs and the relationship to the end user’s business goals. This work required the adaptability to learn rapidly and the humility to realize that my past academic attainments entitled me to no deference in a new endeavor. I have faced increasingly common setbacks and uncertainty in the tech job market in recent years, but have also found meaning knowing that most of my efforts have been to discover and meet people’s needs.
After a UXR career that has included consulting in startup world and employment at agencies on projects in telecom, education, and big tech, I’m now working on an enterprise software team at Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer. I landed that job via an employee referral, diligent interview prep, and the dumb luck of having more enterprise software experience than most UXRs.
In the end, the key takeaway I find from my professional journey since graduate school is to be flexible and humble, and to maintain a learning and growth mindset. Keeping your network strong, connected, and intentional about the value you add to an endeavor are crucial to leveraging an anthropological mindset while building a career “out in the wild.” Talking about your goals and setbacks with others can reinforce your determination and shore up support. Therefore, please reach out through LinkedIn if you care to engage in a further discussion with me.
The post How was I able to change my career track as an applied anthropologist? appeared first on The Anthropology Career Readiness Network.