In Jane Goodall's landmark study of chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, she observed one young male who devised an unusual means of raising his status. Dubbed Mike by Goodall's researchers, the youngster had been bullied by higher-status males, rarely received portions of food from others and was locked out of any potential for procreation (H. Kummer and J. Goodall Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 308, 203–214; 1985).

But one day Mike discovered that when he accidentally knocked against the large metal kerosene cans lying around Goodall's camp, the racket startled the other members of the chimpanzee group. One afternoon, Mike ran into the centre of the group, batting and banging on one of the cans and scattering all the chimpanzees. Then he sat quietly in the centre of the clearing until the other chimpanzees slowly returned to gather around him. The females began grooming him, and the other males, even the largest alphas, gave him a wide berth.

Credit: Claire Welsh/Nature

In one afternoon, Mike went from one of the lowest-status members of the group to one of the highest. He had adopted a strategy known in job-seeking circles as the bold move.

A bold move is a calculated strategy to draw attention to yourself through a dramatic and unusual act. It signals to a potential employer that you have creativity, drive and the willingness to take risks to achieve something important. When executed convincingly and with sincerity, the bold move can completely reset an employer's perceptions of your abilities and potential, because in the world outside academia, the bold move can get you ahead.

Tick tock

In a talk last year to PhD students at the University of California, Berkeley, author and lecturer Kristina Susac told of a bold-move strategy she had successfully used in a former sales post to nab a face-to-face sales meeting with an evasive prospect, the chief information officer of a large company. After many failed attempts to reach the executive through phone calls and e-mails, Susac realized that these methods were not going to produce a meeting.

So she sent the executive a box by courier. Inside the box was a large alarm clock with a tag that read, “Isn't it time that we met?” Susac's phone rang the next morning: it was the executive. “OK, I give in — that was one of the most unusual and creative stunts that I have seen from any salesperson,” the officer told her. “Why don't you come in next week and we can discuss what you have to offer.”

I told this story to a graduate student who was keenly interested in getting an internship as a copywriter in an advertising firm. Although he was an excellent and creative writer and editor, he lacked the copywriting experience that was listed as a non-negotiable requirement in all the job advertisements that he had seen. So after a brief informational interview with a member of the firm, he designed a 'campaign' T-shirt that bore an image of his face in profile, his name and the words “Running for Intern, 2014”. He sent the T-shirts to the firm's vice-president and head of creative products, and persuaded several other employees whom he had met during his interview to wear the T-shirts. He got the post.

Early-career scientists often cringe when they first hear about the bold-move strategy. After spending years at the bottom of the academic hierarchy, many young researchers believe that their careers will progress only if they patiently work their way up the ladder, with advancement coming as the 'silverbacks' — people reaching retirement age — retreat. Sudden elevations in status are virtually unheard of in the slow-moving, heavily circumscribed academic universe, even after publication of a world-class discovery.

Primatologist Jane Goodall observed a young chimpanzee making a bold move to earn social status. Credit: Kennan Ward/Corbis

In the academic culture, graduate students learn that to qualify for positions in their disciplines, they must be widely recognized experts, and that the only positions that they should consider are those closely aligned with their areas of research. The academic establishment views self-promotion with deep suspicion: the work should speak for itself. If graduate students try to draw attention to themselves or their work, some faculty members and department heads might see those efforts as a signal that the work is sub-par.

As an employee, adaptability and willingness to learn are more important to career success than is technical expertise.

Although these cultural norms may be de rigueur in academia, they leave early-career researchers maladapted to the job market outside it. Expertise is the foremost qualification for a job inside academia, but in the outside world, attitude is at least as important to potential employers. In academia, a researcher can spend years focusing on a single problem or technical area. But in other, profit-driven sectors, employers know that priorities, opportunities and technologies change quickly. As an employee, adaptability and willingness to learn are more important to career success than is technical expertise.

If a young PhD-holder is modest about his or her talents when applying for non-academic jobs, it can reinforce the perception among potential employers that he or she is uncertain, hesitant about taking the initiative and poorly suited to any job other than academic research — for which, of course, few open positions exist.

A bold move is, of course, inherently risky: a potential employer may view your attempt to set yourself apart as inappropriate. There is no way to know for certain whether your bold move is on target, but discussing it with a few friends or a mentor may help you to craft a gesture that is distinctive without being bizarre. As a science-trained PhD-holder, if you seek employment outside academia — and greater economic reward for your years of investment in graduate school — you need to be able to retain the qualities of honesty and intellectual integrity while adapting to the cultural norms of the non-academic working world. Understand that your graduate-school experience has given you a broad set of transferable skills that, when combined with your intelligence and resourcefulness, will enable you to succeed in a wide range of jobs and roles.

Some amount of self-advocacy is essential. If you do not assert what you believe you are capable of doing — and project a positive, confident attitude — employers will not take the risk of overlooking your lack of experience. Sometimes it is important to make that bold move and to take what might feel like a risky step. Young PhD researchers tend to be risk-averse, but what may seem like a risky move to them is probably not that risky at all. The occasional bold move sends the signal to potential employers that you are more than just your PhD — and that you are ready to move up and beyond the rest of the pack.