As a staff scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific in San Diego, California, Shikha Mishra investigates how to deliver DNA and other materials into cells and organisms. She explains how and why she left academia for a job in industrial research.

Describe your workday yesterday.

I had run an experiment the night before and had a bunch of data. I analysed them for about an hour and talked with my manager about what I'd seen and tried. Then we formulated a plan and I went back into the lab and set up another experiment. That was pretty standard — very similar to what goes on in academia.

How did you learn about jobs outside academia?

My father was an industrial physicist, and I knew that he was happy. But my biggest difficulty was that my friends and I didn't understand where we could fit within the biotech industry. I didn't know the different sectors: manufacturing and quality control, marketing, product management and development. The way I learned was buying many, many cups of coffee for working people who agreed to meet with me. I'd ask: “What do you do? How did you find this opportunity?”

When did you decide on industry?

Four years into my postdoc at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, I was happy and my projects were going well — but the commitment time-wise was extraordinary. It was 7 days a week, and there were times when it was 14 or 16 hours of work a day. I was coming to a transition because I was about to get married. I thought: “Life has got to fit into my career plans.”

What do you wish you had done differently in your job search?

I wasn't thinking past the grant deadline or the next publication. I should have had a LinkedIn profile before starting my job search, because I had to track down old friends — contacts whom I may not talk to every day, but who'd be happy to help me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For more, see go.nature.com/2fwrzyg