Reddit reviews So What Are You Going to Do With That?: A Guide for M.A.'s and Ph.D's Seeking Careers Outside the Academy

This is not accurate. No degree in itself prepares you for a profession.

> What they tell us time and again: Their doctorate — while a valuable education that most don’t regret — has little or no connection to their current work and profession.

This does not support the title:

>your doctorate will not prepare you for a profession outside academe

In general, every job seeker with a PhD needs to read good professionalization advice, like:

So, what are you going to do with that?

Navigating the Path to Industry: A Hiring Manager's Advice for Academics Looking for a Job in Industry

but also, reliable up to date information about job prospects, all indicators to which says PhDs are in growing demand in multiple industries:

3 Myths About a Job in Industry After a PhD … Debunked

In a first, U.S. private sector employs nearly as many Ph.D.s as schools do


Cheeky Scientist


>Please don’t send me an email or a Tweet telling me I’m wrong about that. I’m not

She sounds pleasant.

Sure. I left three years into my Ph.D. program, between my second qualifying paper and quals proper, circa 2012. (I reenrolled for a hot second in 2013 to brush off my QP, turn it into a masters' thesis, and defend.)

I had some research-related disagreements with my advisor which were the actual flashpoint, but it was really more a matter of weighing my options: looking at just what I would have to do, and what I might be missing out on, over the next 3-5 years just to have that X% chance at a tenure-track job. I'm also really big on work-life balance, and though academia has been making some improvements there very recently, in most areas it's still got a long way to go.

On the whole, it worked out pretty well: I went into science communication, took a few different jobs, and now I'm working for one of the leaders in the field. I'd definitely set the groundwork for a non-academic career, though, long before I actually left -- volunteering for non-profits, keeping in touch with industry connections, etc -- and I was also fairly successful at turning my academic background into an advantage rather than an irrelevancy: highlighting the interplay between linguistics and communications, bringing quantitative analysis to a field that doesn't always know what to do with metrics, working for organizations which handle scientific research and academic affairs, etc.

So I'd definitely recommend anyone considering a non-academic career (which, frankly, based on the numbers, should be most of us) think about those same things; when I was first starting off, I found Versatile Ph.D and So What Are You Going To Do With That? to be the most useful, but there could be other resources that have popped up since then. No matter which path you take, though, best wishes making it happen!

Entry level "PhD-level jobs" outside of academia are few and far between in Neuroscience, but consistency and planning will land you something eventually:

Start here: [Versatile PhD] (http://versatilephd.com/), [SfN Neurojobs] (http://neurojobs.sfn.org/jobs), ["So what are you gonna do with that?" Book] (http://www.amazon.com/What-Are-Going-With-That/dp/0374526214), [A PhD is not enough! Book] (http://www.amazon.com/PhD-Is-Not-Enough-Survival/dp/0465022227).

Also [www.indeed.com] is probably the best job hunting site I have found out there.

My first piece of advice:
Start job hunting and making connections now. "PhD-level jobs" are hard to find and you will have to lower your expectations a bit, especially on your first job. While long term, the degree can be a huge advantage, that is not the case immediately after grad school and you will need to be flexible.

As you explore, you will see some immediate career options are:

Adjuncting with the hope to land a faculty position at a Community College, academic scientist, medical scientist (at a hospital lab), medical devices, teaching high-school, government (NIH, NIMH etc.), science writing (grants, journals, editing etc.), learning code/stat programs (R, Python, SAS, SQL, MATLAB etc.) and taking those quant skills into 'big data', or going the more typical pharma industry route.
Consulting is another popular option, but they typically like people with some industry experience (I've seen on average 10-15 years).

The pay varies wildly on all of these, but if you are looking for the biggest bang for your buck that lines up with your (hopefully still present) passion for Neuroscience...

The pharmaceutical industry would be a great place where a Neuro PhD could thrive. From my colleagues in Neuroscience who eventually got some type of industry job, two truths rang through before they made the transition:

1. Either they had their foot in something before/during gradschool which is why they were getting a PhD in the first place (the minority).
   
2. Post-doc and then industry (the majority).
   
   Unfortunately, a post-doc is almost unavoidable based on today's job market. I've seen people taking industry post-docs, which are competitive, but lead to the nice jobs and salaries you believe your degree entitles you to.
   However, there are several who took academic post-docs and bought themselves time, experience, and a bloodlust for a good job, which eventually landed them something that was 70k+ in industry and they can work up from there.
   
   Point is, there are options out there. The key is persistence, research, flexibility, and of course: networking.
   
   

I read a book a long time ago about this topic. I’m not 100% sure but I think this was the book:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Are-You-Going-That/dp/0374526214/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536648062&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=a+guide+for+ma+and+phd+seeking+career&dpPl=1&dpID=41BYA1B5RSL&ref=plSrch

The gist is that if you want to get any kind of job and not just lab-related jobs, it’s all about marketing yourself. You can tell employers about all the “hard lab skills” you have on your CV and they couldn’t care less. Or you can find out what qualities the employers are looking for and connect these qualities with the “soft skills” you cultivated under pressure during PhD/research training. The book can give you many ideas of how to do that.

Occasionally employers (usually of small businesses) are willing to give you a junior position without the technical qualification after a vetting period if you demonstrate that you can learn really fast, you get along with them, and you are motivated to learn the skills. Hackernoon has some stories like this.

> To me, that is only delaying the inevitable, which is reducing the admission of candidates to Ph.D. programs.

That would be a positive development, wouldn't it? I think universities should stop accepting so many graduate students, who provide cheap labor for their advisors. If jobs aren't available, universities should stop overproducing them just because it is cheap and convenient for them, without taking into account that these students will be underemployed after they graduate, not to mention that they would have spent a large part of their youth poor and stressed out. Instead of hiring cheap graduate student labor for doing research, they should hire people in more permanent positions like tenure-track faculty, lecturers, research scientists, etc.

So What Are You Going to Do With That? is a good book about seeking alternative careers. It is written by two humanities PhDs, but the general principles are applicable to everyone. It is one of the recommended books suggested during career exploration/development workshops conducted by the graduate school career center.