In Their Own Words: Empowering PhD Graduates with Essential Career Skills

In 2021, just over half of research doctorate recipients in the U.S. opted out of tenured faculty jobs for careers in industry, business, government, and non-profit organizations (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2022). To contextualize our quantitative work on PhD Career Pathways, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) conducted interviews to collect student narratives about their transitions from graduate school to postdoctoral study to their chosen careers. Results indicate that over the course of their graduate study, PhD graduates had a genuine interest in diverse career pathways but experienced barriers to exploring diverse career options, including lack of faculty support or mentors with connection to industry for non-academic jobs.

Key Takeaways

• PhD students highly value and require career transparency about career options in different workforce sectors—both in and beyond the academy.
• Doctoral alums participating in this study indicate that they have expanded their graduate experiences and job prospects beyond academia. However, some participants perceived little support for non-academic career choices from faculty who, themselves, often lacked industry connections or knowledge. While these alumni did find rewarding career pathways, they largely did so despite a lack of mentoring and professional development.
• Lack of information about real-world work and applied skills outside academia is another challenge for graduate students pursuing non-academic careers. For example, translating PhD skills into a resume for non-academic jobs is one of the skills that participants wished they had had.
• Across various disciplines and employment sectors, PhD graduates identified similar job skills that are essential for a successful career within and outside academia (Okahana et al., 2019), such as non-academic writing, project management, and additional research methods. Participants suggested the need for a trainee-centered perspective in PhD training (Bixenmann et al., 2020) and more robust collaboration with industry, non-profits, and government.