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- Getting out ready: start here
- Is industry right for you?
- Roles and who hires economists
- The five-year timeline
Build your proof
Be memorable
Communicate like industry
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During the PhD · Be memorable
Your pitch
You get about ten seconds before someone decides whether to keep listening. Most PhDs spend those ten seconds on their methodology.
A story from my office hours
A PhD student was heading to a non-academic economics conference and asked me how she should approach people there. I said, “Let’s see what you’ve got first. Pretend I just walked up to you.”
She started: “During my PhD, my research focuses on…”
I stopped her right there. There are thousands of people at a conference like that. Everyone is exchanging business cards, and so many of them that by the time people get back to their hotel and sit down to write notes, they have forgotten half of the people they met. If you open with “During my PhD, my research focuses on,” you will be forgotten within two hours. You need an elevator pitch.
Her opening is the one almost every PhD student uses, and it fails for a simple reason. It starts with you and your method, which is exactly what the other person cares about least. Academic training teaches you to build up to the result: background, literature, data, method, and only then the finding. A paper or a seminar gives you an hour to get there. A conversation at a conference gives you about ten seconds.
Hook, impact, depth
A good pitch reverses the academic order. You lead with the most interesting thing, say why it matters, and hold the technical detail back until someone asks for it.
One surprising thing you found or can do, in words a smart person outside economics understands immediately.
Why it matters, to whom, and how much. Dollars, percent, people affected, decisions it changes.
Data, method, identification and robustness. Only when the person leans in and asks “how did you know that?”
The hook earns you the next thirty seconds. The impact earns you a real conversation. The depth is for the technical person who wants it, and you will know who that is because they will ask. Everything else you want to say can wait for that person, or for a follow-up call.
Before and after
Here is the opening most students use, rewritten. The research is the same; only the order and the words changed.
“During my PhD, my research focuses on the effects of minimum wage policy on labor market outcomes using a difference-in-differences design with county-level data.”
“I study what happens to restaurants when the minimum wage goes up. It turns out most of them don’t cut jobs. They cut hours and raise menu prices by a few cents, and customers barely notice.”
“My job-market paper estimates a discrete-choice model of grocery demand with brand substitution and heterogeneous price sensitivity.”
“I study what shoppers do when grocery prices go up. Most don’t buy less; they switch to the store brand. Stores that understand this can raise some prices without losing customers.”
Notice what changed. The “after” versions start with a subject anyone can picture, contain one surprising claim, and end with who could use it. They do not mention the method at all. If the listener is an econometrician, they will ask about the method, and then you get to talk about it with someone who cares.
Build yours in four steps
1. Find your one surprising thing
Look at your research and your applied work and ask: what would make a smart friend outside economics say “really?” It might be a finding, a number, or something you can do that most people cannot. If nothing in your work is surprising, look harder at the results, not the method. There is almost always a finding that runs against what people assume.
2. Translate it out of economics
Remove every term of art. No “elasticity,” no “identification,” no “heterogeneous effects,” no “equilibrium.” Replace them with people, money and decisions. If you would not say the sentence to a relative at dinner, rewrite it.
3. Name who cares
Finish with who could use what you found: a retailer, a bank, a city government, a hospital system, an investor. This is where you connect your research to the person in front of you. At an industry event, adjust this last sentence to the person’s company.
4. Say it out loud, then cut it
Write it down, say it out loud and record yourself on your phone. Time it. If the hook takes longer than ten seconds, it is too long. Cut it by a third, then say it again. Then try it on three people outside your field and watch their faces. When they ask a follow-up question, it is working. When they nod politely and change the subject, rewrite it.
The versions you need
You will use the same idea at different lengths. Prepare each one and practice them until they sound natural rather than memorized.
The ten-second introduction
Your name and your hook. Used when someone says “so what do you do?” at a reception, or when a session chair asks people to introduce themselves.
The thirty-second pitch
Hook plus impact, ending with an opening for the other person: “What kind of problems is your team working on?” This is your default at conferences and on calls.
The two-minute version
Hook, impact, and a plain-language sketch of how you know it, in two or three sentences. Used in interviews when someone says “tell me about your research,” and in informational calls.
“Why industry?”
Every interviewer will ask why you are leaving academia, or why you want to work outside it. Prepare an answer that is about what you are moving toward, not what you are running from. “I want my work to change decisions quickly, and I enjoy explaining results to people who will act on them” is a strong answer. “The academic market is terrible” is not, even if it is true.
What makes a pitch fail
The most common failure is starting with the method. The second is using jargon to sound credible; to an outsider it sounds like hiding. The third is pitching the same way to everyone. A pitch to a hiring manager at a bank and a pitch to a professor should share the hook and change the impact. The fourth is never practicing it out loud. A pitch that reads well on paper often sounds stiff when spoken, and you only find out by saying it.
Your pitch also shapes everything else on this site. Your brochure is the pitch on paper. Your LinkedIn headline is the pitch in one line. The first line of your resume and your opening answer in a behavioral interview come from the same place. Get this right first, and the rest gets easier.