New Career Pathways Brief

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

Enyu Zhou, Senior Research Analyst, and Marlena Wolfgramm, former CGS postdoctoral researcher, have a new brief out contextualizing CGS’s quantitative work on PhD Career Pathways research. Zhou and Wolfgramm 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 felt 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.

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.

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.