PhD Discussion Forum

I did a humanities/social sciences PhD. I decided not to apply for post-docs etc because my heart was not in academia, I really couldn't compete, also thought jumping ship now (28) rather than after several postdocs would be better. I 'found' market research and got interviews at Research Assistant/ Graduate Exec/ or (full) Executive levels but did not get anywhere, quite poor performance in interviews, though more particularly because i couldn't convince them I could work to tight deadlines (3 month projects rather than 3-4 years). So, I have been volunteering 1 day a week with the Citizens Advice Bureau as a Research and Campaigns Coordinator for my local office. More recently I have considered school teaching. I did alot of teaching at Uni (very different of course!). I have been applying to junior support positions with the idea of gaining experience to consider whether it is a viable path (and if it is, experience for PGCE), recently had one interview for a 'Graduate Learning Mentor' (abysmal pay, c12-13k). Currently have a placement in a primary school, looking to get one at Secondary as well. I have started Private Tuturing, agencies love PhDs
I have heard other people say they get turned down from non-academic jobs because they are 'overqualified'. I have found this not to be the case with me. I have had quite a number of interviews with the Civil Service's telephony team (call centre), and an interview for a job I did back during A levels.
Although i said at the beginning I was not looking at staying in academia, i did have a flutter on 2 or 3 positions, chosen because of their applied nature and thus could help me move away from academia. One was at Cambridge Uni, got an interview, but I could not comprehend an important question, could't understand it and did not give a confident answer. So that went up in smoke although a tale to tell in the future

Ended up applying, interviewing and getting the job, negotiated four days a week so I could continue working at my teaching and research role one day a week to see out my teaching obligations, as this role would start in the middle of the semester. So now I’ve been at my research centre for over a year now, and even though I’m actually getting less money than I did at my old University, I’m getting a heap of experience I wasn’t getting, in particular getting publications etc out.

You might be wondering, what on earth did the applied social research project have to do with anything? Well, because the project was dealing with a particular topic that this major ARC project is dealing with, that gave me some extra experience they were looking for, and because this particular research centre does a mixture of theoretical, cultural, quant/qual and applied research, I had a strong background in those areas. That little project that I did just to get some extra experience, I was able to publish in a good high impact journal with my mentor as well.

For me, I’m still not 100% sold on Academia but I’m giving it a go. I’ve been really lucky in that I had a heap of teaching experience (tutoring, lecturing, unit development/coordination, chief examination) and really needed to get my research experience up. But I might not stay, and have back-ups in place that including teaching, project management, community development and applied social research.

My advice here is that do volunteer work and take on pro-bono work once in a while when you can, as that might lead to other things. And depending on your PhD, think about what other areas you can explore if Academia is just not where you want to be, project management is a great one, technical writing, if you did community stuff then community development, applied social research, etc.