When Sara saw a LinkedIn ad earlier this year for a company promising to help science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) Ph.D.s transition into lucrative industry careers, she thought she had nothing to lose by finding out more. With her postdoc coming to an end and her efforts to find a job and secure financial stability falling short, she was feeling desperate, she says. So she agreed to an introductory video call with a “transition specialist” at Cheeky Scientist, which bills itself on its website as the “world’s premier career training platform for PhDs” and claims to have helped “thousands of PhDs” move from academia to industry.Sara describes what transpired as an aggressive sales pitch that played heavily on her anxiety about unemployment. The representative made her an offer: Cheeky Scientist’s Diamond Program, an online mentoring package, for a little over half what he said was the standard retail price of $9998—provided she sign up immediately. He had a solution for financing, too: a high-interest loan he could help her apply for through another company, there and then. Under pressure, Sara says, she signed up, but regretted it as soon as she was off the call. She contacted Cheeky Scientist within hours to request a cancellation. Now, she’s saddled with thousands of dollars of debt and is no closer to reclaiming her money—despite not using the company’s services.
I've long been skeptical of Cheeky Scientist's practices, and this seals it for me. Their practices are untrustworthy, and this organization should be stopped wherever possible.
If you are a professor who reads this blog, I respectfully ask that you speak with your career services people to ask that your institution not work with Cheeky Scientist. There are plenty of free career resources for early-career researchers in science, and if you cannot find ones that you like, I will help you try to find them. Let's help make the science community a better place, and drive predators like Cheeky Scientist away.
I recently saw a paid promotion from C.S. that claimed employers were sharing candidate evaluations in something akin to a credit score. That seemed fishy, but I checked with a recruiter I know: Complete and utter bullshit.
ReplyDeleteI'm more surprised that this very classic type of scam worked on people who are supposedly very smart. The whole "YOU MUST BUY NOW, THIS IS AN EXPIRING DEAL" is a tactic that was used on housewives in the 50s, I thought we had grown past that.
ReplyDeleteThe irony I see here is that there is a general sentiment if you browse forums or Reddit that using a recruiter is a total sham because they get money just for getting you a job and you should avoid them because of that. But they don't get paid until AFTER they've found you a position, so they're incentivized to do so. Cheeky Scientist takes your money up front, what makes you think they care if you find a job or not? They have your money and you agreed to give it.
In general, all of these societies with lofty promises are full of shit. Be very wary of all of them, ESPECIALLY the ones that require a fee for membership.
People are people. Being highly trained in a very narrow area of expertise does not mean you have any kind of common sense. I’ve known plenty of “empty headed” PhD’s.
DeleteFear is the problem; fear can make anyone do irrational things. And it sounds like CS's marketing is designed to provoke fear (e.g see comment above regarding employers sharing candidate scores).
DeleteI agree with the others saying that we basically have a systemic failure (in many, but not all cases) to arm grad students and post docs with enough skills to navigate the job market. Not only enough skills, but the right choices to improve these skills. Some may benefit simply from being made aware of the problems, whereas others may need more coaching or mentoring.
I always advise students/postdocs to join a professional society if their institutional career resources aren't cutting it. A discounted student ACS membership is way cheaper than CS, and the society provides at least the same level of career support and networking.
ReplyDeleteCheeky Scientist recently had an info session at my university and plastered the place with flyers advertising it. I just about died when I saw a note stuck to a flyer saying that my institution's career office considers C.S. to be predatory and discouraged students to attend.
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DeleteI'd love to hear more about that if you're willing to share any more details. You can reach me at coffordwrites [at] gmail [dot] com - thanks.
DeleteIf the majority of Ph.D./postdoc advisors weren't absolute garbage for their trainees-there wouldn't be a void to allow for the rise of Cheeky Scientist to begin with-CS is a symptom of the disease of a highly corrupted and utterly dysfunctional academic system.
ReplyDeleteProfessor here - some of the most successful and supported graduate students/postdocs in our department and others I've worked in are still stressed and anxious about getting a job. It's hard to convince them that they're competitive until they apply and interview for positions. There are far more bad stories than good ones out there, probably because we're in an inherently competitive line of work - both academia and industry. It's largely a meritocracy, and unfortunately not everyone rises to the top no matter how much support they receive. More resources to support careers in science is a good thing, so what Cheeky Scientist is doing isn't fundamentally bad. It's the marketing strategy and cost that is worrisome to me. I'm always happy to buy my trainees memberships to professional societies but won't pay for Cheeky Scientist mainly due to it's exorbitant cost and mixed reviews (to put it kindly).
DeleteA large part of job stress comes from these horror stories of people applying for dozens of positions and not getting any of them. We tell younger scientists to go big or go home and to shoot for the stars but that often leads to disappointment. I think most people apply for positions they aren’t competitive for either out of desperation or unknowingly. As professionals and mentors, we need to be better about tempering expectations. I’m not saying go crush dreams, but people have a ceiling based on their resume and we need to be better about making them aware of it.
ReplyDeleteGood points. Building on what you say, a PhD degree is supposed to prepare one for independent research. There are many facets to this, and some people have a better balance of strengths and weaknesses to this end.
DeleteTherefore, mentoring should help assess what positions, even non hardcore, independent research-centric types, that would be a good fit for mentees.
To suggest that academia is a meritocracy is irresponsibly ignorant- we are in an era today where even 1st year graduate students are open to many kinds of jobs out there for PhDs-except academia. Because even the fresh trainees know today that there is too much systemic bias at play…who you work for-and how good their connections are-will always trump papers/acumen, there are far too many examples to cite to disagree with this.
ReplyDeleteI did a postdoc at Harvard and saw how much name matters. Even though it probably helped me get a faculty job, I don't like it. It's not at all fair. I think meritocracy comes into play more later on, though, when you need grants. Prestige and academic family tree matter less at that point than preliminary data and publications. But, students see this from the very start. They're told that if they're not super productive they can't go into academia and that some have an advantage just by being at one university vs another. That's how it was presented to me from day 1 - that in academia you either sink or swim and it's mostly up to you, even if it's not actually all up to you.
DeleteThe Better Business Bureau's complaint page on these guys makes for some interesting reading.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbb.org/us/fl/panama-city-beach/profile/recruitment-services/cheeky-scientist-llc-0683-90083356/complaints
Old-timers may remember the old TV show "Green Acres". Reading the multiple complaints and company responses reminded me of the back-and-forth between Oliver Douglas and Mr. Haney.
Who is behind CS?
ReplyDeleteIt's mentioned a little bit in the linked article at the top. Created by a single person. My impression is that it was a respectable program at the start and has evolved into something that is obviously debatable nowadays.
DeleteThere are too many PhD-granting institutions that have been producing too many PhDs. C.S. is a secondary problem to something much bigger, but focusing on a villain is much easier than confronting large, systematic failures.
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