Taking Control of Your PhD: Career Planning

Career planning may not be high up your agenda if you're just starting your PhD, but there's a surprising amount you can do during a doctorate to make the process easier. Dr Ania Gruszczynska explains how in her latest post on Taking Control of a PhD.

In this post I’m going to tackle career planning for PhD students. This doesn’t need to be left until you’ve finished your PhD, or are near the end. In fact, there’s lots of practical action you can take in your first year or even before you the PhD begins.

When I ask new PhD students about their career plans, their responses usually follow a couple of predictable paths.

Many regard three years as a long time and assume that the first year of their PhD is way too early to even start thinking about what they’ll do afterwards. They plan to get round to it at some point, when their dissertation is ready and their funding runs out (if they are the lucky ones with the funding).

Then at the other end of the spectrum, there are students who are trying to come up with a precise plan from day one. They target a dream job (usually a lectureship) at the end of their PhD and are carefully mapping the path towards it.

And, somewhere in the middle, there are those students who are vaguely aware of a need to address career-related issues but are feeling quite overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

Regardless of which camp you belong to, hopefully this post will help clear any confusion you may be experiencing and give you some ideas for practical action you can take today – whatever stage of your PhD you’re at.

To start with, a dose of realism. Precise numbers vary depending on the discipline, but statistics show that overall, a relatively small percentage of PhD graduates will have a long-term career in academic research.

This isn’t intended to scare you, discourage you from following your dreams or persuade you not to embark on a PhD. It does mean, however, that even if you have an unwavering commitment to an academic career and plan to do whatever you can to win that future lectureship or research post, you need a plan B (and perhaps even a plan C).

After all, knowledge is power and that applies to career planning as much as it does to your PhD project!

And, though the academic job market is competitive, it isn’t all doom and gloom either. There are a lot of things you can do to prepare yourself right now, even if it’s years before you start sending out your first job applications.

There’s another way of thinking about the point I made above. Taking control of your career planning paradoxically involves accepting that (unlike your PhD, perhaps) this process isn't a precise science. There are only so many things you can control and you will need to embrace uncertainty.

You do need a plan but you also need to be prepared to deviate from it and take the road less travelled. I’m speaking here very much from personal experience. When I started my PhD I imagined I would progress in a nice linear fashion from a completed PhD into a lectureship and things would just fall into place.

I didn’t plan for discovering that the job market for sociologists was highly competitive or that there were certain aspects of academic jobs I just didn’t enjoy. I probably would have gotten less of a shock if I’d allowed for the possibility of changing my mind and adjusting my plans.

As I said before, when it comes to career planning, there will be a number of things that are out of your control. So it makes sense to focus on the ones you can control.

I would encourage you to use your time at the start of the PhD to explore the vast variety of careers that are out there and do so with an open mind. You’re an expert researcher after all, so make some use of those research skills!

This may involve reading researcher career stories and talking to fellow PhD students and graduates. There are plenty of places you can do this, including this blog and online communities like the postgraduate forum. You may be really surprised by what you find.

At this stage, you can approach the task as a kind of exploratory research process – a bit like undertaking a literature review as part of putting together a firmer research proposal for your studies.

That broad exposure to different options may come in handy later on when you will be making practical decisions and deciding which way to go. Some initial research will also help you get a better idea of what certain jobs and choices involve.

Enjoy the opportunity to be flexible and curious about what other career options may be out there for you. You’ll find that a creative, more relaxed approach can help make career planning less stressful.

If I had to name one skill that will hugely boost your career planning efforts, I would definitely encourage you to focus on networking. Having a well-developed network of contacts will be incredibly valuable when you do hit the job market and, given that the process of building takes a lot of time and nurturing, it’s never too early to start.

The mention of ‘networking’ may send a shiver down some people’s spines, but the process isn’t about being ‘salesy’ or begging people to give you a job. Think of it more as surrounding yourself with interesting and inspiring people.

You can and should start small, perhaps by connecting with your fellow PhD students or getting involved in your university’s research groups or postgraduate organisations. It’s then possible to build upon those relationships and start reaching out beyond your institution and your immediate circle. These contacts may become your future academic collaborators, or people who will be the first to let you know that a research fellowship is up for grabs.

Networking can also be an opportunity to learn about other people’s career paths. This will broaden your own horizons and may provide an additional source of inspiration for the future.

You’ll always benefit from exposing yourself to a variety of opinions and stories. This will help you expand your ideas about what it is possible to do with your PhD.

If you feel unsure where to start with career planning, the best place to start is obvious: your university career service.

Yes, you may feel that you are literally years away from needing specific practical help such as fine-tuning your CV and application materials. But careers advisors will also be more than happy to offer a listening ear and help provide answers to the questions you may have at this early stage.

In addition, your careers services (or research office) may offer specific career development workshops and I would strongly encourage you to make these a priority in your first couple of months. The worst that can happen is that you potentially sit through a couple of hours of training that isn’t that relevant to you. If so, you’ll still have had opportunities for networking and the workshops may help spark useful ideas for the future.

Coaching and mentoring are another potential source of support as you start out on your doctoral journey. A mentor can help you see a bigger picture beyond the immediate, day-to-day challenges of your PhD. Think of them as somebody a few steps ahead of you, already in a job or industry that you might aspire to.

They’ll provide you with a safe space to talk about your career plans, nudge you into taking on some challenges that could pay off in the future and help you broaden your network. Obviously, your supervisor can provide some of this support, but it can be harder to talk about some broader issues, particularly if you aren’t planning on following an academic career.

There may be a mentoring programme in place at your institution, or you may be able to access one through a professional association. Your institution may even have specific coaching support in place, focussing on specific skills and career development tasks. It takes a village (metaphorically speaking) to complete a PhD thesis so the more support you can get, the better!

Last but not least, an essential career planning skill is the ability to self-reflect and stay true to your personal values.

Yes, there may be career assessments that indicate you should have been an accountant when what you really want is to be an arts lecturer. But that doesn’t mean an accountant is all you can (or should) aim to be. Knowing the truth about your own goals and aspirations will help you through difficult patches - and there will most likely be quite a lot of them on the PhD and career-planning journey.

Regardless of which path you choose, there will be ups and downs and some periods of instability. Reflecting on your personal values and building up personal resilience will be really helpful in the long run. After all, career planning, by definition, is a long-term process.