About

About

2 min read · By Marc Sleiman

I am Marc Sleiman. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics, with research in aviation economics and econometrics, and an M.S. in Mathematics, and I teach economics at Georgia State University. I built this site because the gap between what PhD programs teach and what employers outside academia look for is large, fixable and rarely discussed.

Why I wrote this

At Georgia State I work with students from introductory courses through the PhD program, including courses in mathematical economics and a senior capstone. Working on research with real-world applications, and talking with students about where they want to go, I kept seeing the same pattern.

Talented PhD students would do excellent research and then struggle outside academia. Not because they lacked ability, but because nobody had told them how the game works there: that people decide in ten seconds whether to keep listening, that a resume is not a CV, that most jobs come through people rather than applications, that the decision-maker reads only the first paragraph, and that interviewing is a skill you practice like any other.

This site is everything I tell students in my office, written down so that any economics PhD can use it, at any school, in any year of the program.

What I believe about this

Preparation beats talent that has not been prepared. The students who do well outside academia are rarely the ones with the most impressive papers. They are the ones who started building proof, relationships and communication skills early, long before they needed a job.

I also believe in keeping options open. I am not trying to push anyone out of academia. I want every student who might want an industry career to arrive at Year 5 with a real choice.

Get in touch

If you are a student, start with the timeline and the pitch. If you have questions or feedback on the guides, or you run a graduate program and would like to talk about bringing this material to your students, get in touch.