Future Professional Career

Introduction

There are plenty of jobs for the well prepared Human Factors (HF) Master's or Ph.D. graduate in industry. These jobs provide interesting work and good salary and benefits; however these positions are not a good match for the interests and skills of every human factors graduate. While at one time the saying “if I can't get a job in academics I can always succeed with a good job in industry” may have been true, it is not true today(Law, 85).

The reason for this is that there are several fundamental differences between continuing in academics and moving to industry. The biggest of these differences is in job focus: Academics are focused on creating and sharing new knowledge with the world via publications, presentations and teaching, which involves explaining past knowledge. Industry is focused on using knowledge and experience to design, develop, and evaluate products which will be profitable in the marketplace.

This difference in primary focus results in a variety of other differences in the way work is done in academics vs. industry.

Communications: In academics one communicates primarily with other specialists in the same area of expertise, whereas in industry one communicates primarily with people in vastly different areas of expertise, such as programmers, developers, marketing, sales, and service people(Marris, 75-125). It is important to educate industry colleagues about the role of HF in product development and to learn about other professions. If HF is to make a meaningful contribution it is necessary to have the support of other team members.

End product: In academics the end products are easy to identify-- publication in a prestigious journal, obtaining funding, establishing a reputation, and earning tenure. Oftentimes these are “individual activities,” whereas in industry one is “working through others.” The measure of success is not whether or not a report is completed or how good the report is(Irving, 45-95).

It is the product quality, market place success, and one's contribution to the end product as measured by the amount of influence one had over product designers and developers to get them to improve the product.

Satisfaction: In academics there is satisfaction in being able to pursue intellectually stimulating ideas and teach good students. In industry satisfaction comes about from influencing a project, turning ideas into products, and seeing them in the market.

Working in teams: In academics working alone or being the senior author on an article is the desired goal, whereas in industry it is fairly unusual for a human factors person to work successfully as an island, and it is also fairly unusual for the human factors person to be the head of the product team(Fielding, 25-56). In some industrial assignments, one is more likely to be assigned projects and teams, whereas in academics one is more likely to be able to select their area of specialization and who they want to work with.

Deadlines: In academics deadlines are often not enforced. Extensions are often given for better quality, whereas in industry missing a deadline for a ...