While the previous post bemoans the lack of simple world-changing ways to make the career path for aspiring academics more pleasant (other than bushels of money falling from the sky, of which I would approve), there is one feasible thing that everyone agrees would be good: better career counseling for Ph.D. students, both on the realistic prospects for advancement within academia, and concerning opportunities outside.
I always try to be honest with my own students about the prospects for ultimately landing a faculty job. But like most faculty members, I’m not that much help when it comes to outside opportunities, having spent practically all my life within academia. I’m happy to give advice, but you’d be crazy to take it, since I have no idea what I am talking about.
But that’s a correctable state of affairs. So: I’m hereby soliciting good, specific career advice and/or resources for students who are on the track to get a Ph.D. (or already have one) and are interested in pursuing non-academic jobs. This might be particular jobs that are Ph.D.-friendly, or websites with good information, or relevant fellowships or employment agencies, or just pointers to other resources. (For example: do you know the difference between a CV and a resume?) The more specific the better, and including useful links is best of all. General griping and expressions of bitterness should be kept in the previous thread; let’s try to be productive. And there’s no reason to limit it to physics, all fields are welcome. Advice that is useful for only a tiny number of people, but extremely useful for them, is certainly sought. We’re looking for things that have a nontrivial chance of actually helping some specific person at a future date.
Most of all it would be great to have input from people who actually got a Ph.D. and then went on to do something else. But it’s the internet, everyone can chime in.
I will take what look like the most helpful suggestions and collate them into a separate post. Spread the word, let’s get as much input from different sectors as we can.
I have a PhD in Microbiology. Didn’t want an academic position where I’d write grants all the time, and didn’t want to work 14 hour days in industry. I found a Federal job. I do basic research for the Agricultural Research Service, the research arm of the USDA.
It’s in between academia and industry. I run my own research program within the mission of the Research Unit. I publish, I’m pretty autonomous in my research projects.
I have job security, access to top equipment and technology, and an able to satisfy my scientific curiosity and have a life
I could certainly make more money in industry, but I have control of my projects and I work a normal work day
All Fed jobs are listed at http://www.usajobs.gov
With all due respect, I suggest taking TedL’s advice at #10 (become a patent attorney) with a grain of salt. Law school is an expensive* three-year commitment, and for most new PhDs, it’s not a good first resort. It’s a good option to consider, but there are easier, faster, and cheaper ways to escape the lab (like policy fellowships). Further, your PhD will be of limited advantage to you in the legal sector. While scientists will likely be relatively underrepresented in law for the foreseeable future, a science PhD is only directly advantageous if you intend to enter a very specific legal subfield, mainly patent law (and who knows, you may change your mind when you start reading the caselaw – patent law is kind of insane). Even in patent law, as TedL notes, you don’t need the PhD. And your PhD will rarely earn you higher salary or seniority when you graduate, because most law jobs are lockstep – everyone enters at the same rung. Unless you genuinely had independent interests in law, politics, policy and writing, and have considered a legal career path very carefully, it’s a far safer decision to try a patent *agent* position first (which requires an undergrad technical degree but, unlike a patent attorney career, no law degree).
*some law schools will give you a lot of financial aid, but they are not always the best schools to attend, particularly in this job market. Say what you will about grad school, but at least in the sciences you rarely finish in debt to the tune of $100K. . . !
PS. Thanks for doing this – and thanks for the link, too. 😉
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Two friends started a website where physicists who left academia can report their experiences. Check it out: http://www.beyond-physics.org/ or on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/beyondphysics
Another gushing thanks for a timely post. I’ve been working in a lab as a government contractor for five years post- Ph.D., but am not getting renewed next year. I want to work in the field of science communication and will check out these links.
I did a PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago (I audited Sean’s cosmology classes while there) and joined a quant desk at Morgan Stanley.
If working in an investment bank doesn’t disgust you, you can find a lot of resources including sample interview questions at http://www.wilmott.com
One tip – Good programming skills in C++ are a big bonus.
Couples have special challenges figuring out how to pursue two careers and start a family. My wife and I decided to start our family while we were in graduate school. After completing my Ph.D., I was at-home-dad for several years, then went into teaching, and am finally getting back into research now that my son is in his teens and more independent. Meanwhile my wife was able to focus on her career as a primary care doctor and is doing quite well. If having kids is a high priority, consider it.
Advantages: Having and raising kids earlier is physically easier. You can still “do it all,” just not all at once. I have been really involved with my son’s life. (I taught his math class in 3rd grade, and will probably have him again in calculus based physics in high school.) I met a wonderful variety of other parents. When our son leaves for college we will be in our early forties, young enough to enjoy a few decades of kid free time together.
Challenges: Intellectually isolating, but the internet helps. (I taught an on-line string theory course.) Sometimes I feel like I’m not really contributing because I don’t bring in much income, but my wife strongly protests this view, since I has made her life so much easier. It is hard to get back up to speed after a decade out of research.
Economics: Saved a ton of money on child care. Earned some money tutoring and teaching. Wife’s career progressed more quickly. Since we’ve been living on one income for a decade, there isn’t any panic for me to start pulling in a full income as I get back in. I can try different things and have been part-time on a couple of research grants.
Many couples put off having kids for the right time only to find that it isn’t ever the right time to have your career totally disrupted.
Special note to men: This advice is for you, not for you to give to your wife / fiancé / girl friend. Do you think she hasn’t though of this? Really, don’t be stupid. If she does stay home know that when it isn’t working for her anymore, you need to support her reentry to work, even if it means a big disruption to your career.
Special note to women: Maybe you should suggest this to your man. More men should be at-home-dads, and many never even think of it. Mention mountain biking.
If you are thinking about this, feel free to contact me. I have a unique name, so The Google should lead you to me pretty quickly.
Good Luck!
Computer vision/image processing in industry! There are enough CV researchers in academy, but woeful shortage of engineers with strong math background in industry. BTW that’s create huge gap between academic proof of concepts and industrial implementations. Math background should be really strong – statistics, functional analysis, numerical methods (esp convex/nonlinear minimization) elements(actually big chunks)of algebr. topology and differential geometry, differential equations and method borrowed from physics directly- physics Ph.D toolset seems fit perfectly. The only problem could be recruiters may not recognize relevant experience
I actually landed and took one of those academic tenure-track jobs (in physics), and eventually left for industry. So I’ve seen both sides, and now occasionally hire. A few pieces of advice:
1. From an industrial hiring perspective, the easiest time to switch out of an academic track is generally right after your PhD, i.e. without taking a postdoc. At that time, (a) you can still be hired cheaply enough that it’s OK to bet on just the potential of your intelligence and math skills and spend a little on training you (b) you are young enough that you’re seen as still having most of your most productive technical years unused and (c) there’s less worry that you’ve become “too academic” and impractical for industry work. Note that, relative to grad student scales, “hired cheaply” is still a hugantic step up.
1.5 For your own sanity, the best time to switch is probably also right after the PhD. To my mind, spending five years in a PhD program doing interesting work is unquestionably a net positive thing to do in life; any years spent in a postdoc are much trickier to evaluate the net positivity of.
2. Keep your resume for industry-type jobs to a page. I’m going to assume you have references available upon request, so you can buy yourself a line or two by not putting that on there. And the age-old advice is true, that what you really want is to find a way to bypass HR and get your resume onto someone’s desk who will actually read it. For a newly-minted PhD this may be difficult, and you may find yourself just having to trust to the tender mercies of HR.
3. Use your university’s career office. I got several very interesting offers through mine; so it can really work.
4. Re: patent law: I can attest that 10 years ago, if you were going this route, you would become a patent agent immediately, and the law firm would pay for your (night) law school to become a patent attorney. Perhaps it’s changed now in the offers, I don’t know. Kind of brutal work schedule for the first few years, but certainly a lucrative way to go.
5. National labs have many pure-research positions (even the weapons labs) and pay scales are indeed generally higher than academia. So certainly they are worth looking into. In physics, MIT Lincoln Lab is an interesting place that functions in some ways like a national lab and hires many physics PhD’s.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask your professors who they recall has gone on to do other things, and then to simply call those people up. I’d certainly take your call if you’d gotten my name this way. (Calling works better than emailing. Email is too easy to postpone responding to.) If the professors only remember where they work, but don’t have a phone number, find that place and call the front desk!
7. Remember the world is full of interesting problems, not all of which get addressed in academic settings. Of the group of physics grad students I knew well, ten years later those who have left academia work in cell phone technology, medical physics, telescope design, airport security, business analytics, and finance; others I knew less well have gone into science journalism, bioinformatics, and environmental consulting. I’d guess that roughly half are making use of some of their real physics knowledge (though generally not the most detailed knowledge of their thesis), and that roughly half make very little use directly of physics. So don’t over-constrain yourself when thinking about what to do next.
(Added after seeing Cosmonut who commented while I was writing)
8. Seconding Cosmonut that for any technical job, you really want to be able to show you can code in C++ (including a possible quiz on it.)
Taxi driver. Janitor. Telemarketer…
Do what you love — life is too short and precious not to. Use your brain and education to make money when you need it, but try not to need it much. Make friends instead, they last longer. Be bold, and creative. After many years, if you’ve succeeded in your true work, it will pay off in more than just money.
After graduating at the University in Bucharest, I had to take a job. Being math teacher did not pay my (modest) bills, so I became computer programmer. After gaining some experience as employee, I tried freelancing, in the idea that I can work a few days weekly and continue with my passion: mathematical physics. From my experience, freelancing means that you have for each job another boss, to which you have to be available all the time. So, unless your passion is to work 24/7, I’d suggest something with less responsibilities.
I was lucky to find a nice and (relatively) well-paid job to make geometry algorithms in C++ for a company which creates cad/cam software. They allowed me to work 3 days/week (and, of course, being paid at 60%), to take my masters degree, and to do my PhD studies. So it seems that you can have both.
Actually, I don’t really think so. Both career and research advance slower when you compromise. I agree with Garrett that you should avoid such compromises, if you can. I can’t, because I have debts. Now I ended that job after >7 years, and I can focus on my PhD thesis, but I will have to find soon another (non-academic) job. And this thought reduces drastically my focus 🙂
Since people are saying specific things about particular fields they’ve moved into, I suppose I should mention energy as a good option for physical sciences PhDs. A number of national labs (like Berkeley and Oak Ridge) do work in energy production, delivery, efficiency and the like, with some applied research and some technical analysis to support policy. This is where I’m headed for the time being. Many of these jobs require an engineering, chemistry, or materials science degree, but others just want an advanced degree (often a PhD) in the physical sciences.
This is obviously a much bigger area than just the national labs, though. In the private sector, energy is very much a growing and evolving sector at the moment, with the need to develop new storage and delivery systems for alternative energy and the development of the smart grid. In the public sector, municipalities are increasingly working to move toward alternative energy, reduce their overall energy use, and make better use of the smart grid, with the attendant need for people to help run those programs. Again, many of these jobs require a specific technical background, but not all of them.
A lot of software companies, from one or two-person shops to large enterprise code factories, exist to sell software to other companies and businesses. The types of software and software services sold differs greatly from products aimed at consumers. They are generally much more complex with many different options and configurations available to fit the customer’s particular deployment needs. Many of these companies selling complex software and services solutions employ solution architects. The solution architect works closely with customers to understand needs, use cases, and requirements and then architect a solution that often leverages a number of software tools and services that might be sold by multiple different companies. The need to carefully upgrade or replace existing deployments without significant downtime often requires complex and clever solutions to thorny problems. Ph.D. scientists with strong software experience can find the role of solution architect challenging and rewarding. Often the solution architect is teamed up with a sales person and does not have to do sales directly.
re: #34, Andrew’s point 7 is excellent. For my part, I did the standard PhD in biological physics, then post-doc, and then….10 years in pharmaceutical research doing structural biology. Contrary to advice given to me by my profs, I was convinced that industry was the way to go. Anyhow, the academic funding statistics back then were not good.
After those 10 industry years, I went back to Academia (tenure track stuff), primarily b/c of my research interests. And, sadly, funding stats are even worse. But I feel that I’m able to pursue problems closer to my convictions.
Nevertheless, in those 10 industry years, it was very educational to see the broader range of options (such as those listed by Andrew) for PhDs. Had I stayed in industry, it is quite likely I would have gone into something else other than structural biology, and with great enthusiasm. The world is indeed broader than grad student –> postdoc –> prof.
I did physics ph.d -> postdoc -> finance
Whatever career path you choose make sure you choose it because you really want to do it, and not because of some external pressures (and definitely not because that’s the most profitable option – I have a couple of friends who went into finance because of the money and they hate their lives).
Both during and after choosing which option you want to pursue, you need to read a lot, study a lot, ask any friends who chose a similar path about it, etc. When you start going to interviews one the very first things people would want to see from you is commitment to your new path, and while your ph.d is a valuable asset it’s worth nothing if you don’t demonstrate such commitment (via reading relevant papers, books, or doing whatever is relevant for that career – you want to be a programmer, participate in some open source projects, you want to be a journalist – write some articles for your local/uni newspaper, etc).
Finally, some people commit the sunk cost fallacy and continue sinking more of their lives and resources into their (initial) academic route even when it’s abundantly clear that they neither want that option nor are they particularly successful at it. If you ever find yourself saying – “… but I spent so much time and energy doing a ph.d in …” – you’re likely committing said fallacy – so realize that you are, and don’t do that 🙂
A couple of years ago, I did a blog series profiling people with science degrees and non-academic jobs, and I’ll start it up again. If you have an interesting job that requires a science background, and would like to share it with blog readers, send me an email, and I’ll send you a few short questions, then post the answers on the blog. Details at the link.
I was a graduate student in physics that one day found himself in law school in order to secure employment. Interesting that I still spend much of my free time thinking about science. I’m probably more useful as an attorney, and because my intersts were theoretical I wonder how many
opportunites I’ve truly missed. Nothing limits your ability to simply think accept your own priorities.
I know Gauss and Einstein gave simillar advice. My guess is they knew far better than me that scientific creativity cannot be truly repressed.
Depending on your specialization, and if you don’t have too many skeletons in the cupboard or anarchist leanings or suchlike, perhaps applying to work at the NSA or NRO would be worth considering.
(Substitute suitable acronyms depending on your nationality.)
My father and uncle both had PhDs in Physics and spent their entire careers working at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque.
A friend, Phil Bredesen, received an undergraduate degree in Physics from Harvard, then founded HealthAmerica Corp. before becoming mayor of Nashville, and then Governor of Tennessee.
Due to family reasons, I stopped short of completing my PhD., but now have a job in the physics dept. at a major research university and am often asked by many postdocs and grad students how I got my job (answer: starting at the bottom and working very hard).
A lecturer with a Ph.D. who has taught courses for the physics dept. where I work is headed to medical school in the fall.
I chose a career path outside of academia immediately following my Physics PhD. Lots of good advice above. Here’s some more specific advice, resources, and wish-I-had-that
1) Identify your transferable skills. If you’re still a student with a bit of time to go, you may identify a gap that you can remedy while still finishing your research work
2) Give some serious thought to what you really want to do
– What Color is My Parachute is one good place to start
– Figure out not only what field you want to work in, but if you want to work for a large or small company, what is important to you in a company culture, etc. How to find this out? see the next step.
3) Network! I saw this mentioned above. Specific networking tips
– Join LinkedIn. Connect with people you knew from college, people you know now, find out where they are
– Find local user/interest groups in your community and attend their events.
– Conduct informational interviews to research what types of non-academic jobs you might like. Lots of references, but here’s one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_interview
4) Find job search resources and training
– Fermilab offered a resume-writing and career advice class to grad students when I was there. The class was taught by an outside consultant. Search for these resources in your grad school or research lab environment
– Read “Ask the Headhunter” http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/ – a really horrible looking web site, but valuable information
– Highly consider Dale Carnegie training. I took the Leadership Training for Managers when I first became a manager. The basic Dale Carnegie course teaches interaction skills – don’t get those in grad school either.
5) Go to your local Toastmasters chapter for a stint. Not kidding here – seriously, when have you worked on how you present yourself in grad school – not at all? It’s a skill that everyone needs. Being able to master the Toastmaster skills of Listen, Think, Speak are invaluable to a career anywhere.
6) Get your department to start an alumni networking group. If no-one in the department wants to start this, start it yourself – good resume material, right there. I wish my university had done this or I had known I needed it. There’s plenty of people who left your university’s department for non-academic jobs. Find them and network with them.
There must be several books on this; for example the following looks useful:
“Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower”; Cynthia Robbins-Roth ed); Academic Press; 2nd ed, 2005
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alternative-Careers-Science-Scientific-Survival/dp/0125893760
From personal experience I can recommend publishing (in the physical sciences). That includes books and/or journals, and commercial publishers as well as societies and other not-for-profits. The job keeps you in touch with the field, you continually interact with the best brains in the sciences, and your fellow-workers (most of them with little scientific training and who are scared of talking with important professor-types) think you are marvellous.
I got my PhD in experimental particle physics in 2007 and since then have worked in two non-academic fields.
First I worked for an oil services company working on nuclear well logging tools. Companies in that field have small research departments in a variety of different fields for sensor technology including nuclear physics, nuclear magnetic resonance, electromagnetism, accoustics, fluid dynamics, chemistry and even gravity measurements. However, in any given field there aren’t many working on it. There are two major companies everyone’s favority bad guy Halliburton and the much lower profile Schlumberger. There are several other competitors, but they are smaller in size and do much less R&D.
From my experience with that, my advice for a PhD student is that breadth within your field is a real asset. In industry they aren’t enough researchers on a project or in an area for there to be much specialization. Learn all the basic detector apparatus or measurement apparatus in your field well (even if it seems hopelessly primitive compared to what your cutting edge experiment is using). Know how to do an experiment on your own. Know how to do modelling and data analysis on your own. The scale of experimentation in the oil services industry was much closer to grad student labs rather than dissertation project. One issue I encountered was that most of the people working in the field had decades more experience than me since hiring could have decade long dry spells.
In the downturn I was laid off from that job due to my part of my project was moved from my location. I then got a job in a very different field, operations research. I work on inventory theory for a government consulting firm primarily contracted to do Defense Department work. The more traditional path for this kind of work are programs focused on this including operations research and systems engineering or applied math programs. The work is more interesting than it might sound. Basically we’re building models of the demand process and then try to build policies that we can optimize to determine when our clients should buy more material.
Here the important skills in my background are computer programming, monte carlo modelling, statistics and math skills. Since so much of the work in this field is driven by the Defense Department the ability to get a security clearance is a big plus.
One thing I’d like to know is how much the age matters. I considered leaving academia right out of PhD and did some industry job search but decided to do postdocs when I mistakenly thought I was going to waste my education unless I stay in academia. From that job hunting experience I know demands in knowledge industry are there for PhDs fresh out of grad programs, but I’m not so sure any more what my prospect is now that I’m litterally rotting away and just getting old, possibly becoming the unemployable academic type. Has anyone actually been successful making transition to industry after they reach 40, for example? I heard from a friend who made that transition younger, and he said some companies do have unwritten cut off for age when they consider resumes from candidates in academia.