Episode 25: Here's where jobs for grad students and PhDs actually are.

10/06/21 • 18 min

A lot of "alt ac" jobs that are promoted by academic departments to their students are unicorn jobs - they are rumored to exist in nature, but are rare and difficult to find. That's because so many of the jobs PhDs were landing in the 1980s and 1990s aren't growing fields anymore. They've become saturated with PhDs, just like the academic job market.
For PhDs who are moving out of academia, you want to move into careers where there are numerous opportunities to be paid well and make a difference. Here are the growing career sectors you should look into if you're serious about career security.

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Episode 24: 5 ways faculty can be better mentors

Many faculty are worried about the career prospects of their doctoral students and postdocs, but are often unsure of how they can help students transition into meaningful nonacademic careers. In this episode, Maren suggests ways faculty can become more familiar with the professional job market, and the challenges their students face when they begin a career transition.

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Episode 26: Impostor syndrome is real, and common. Here's what you can do about it.

Academia is populated with over-achievers competing for scarce resources and reviewing and critiquing each other. It's a recipe for toxic culture.
It also means that too many PhDs feel like they're not good enough, that they lack worth and value. We're also hesitant to ask for help or admit we don't know, because not knowing is an invitation for another academic to be cruel or unkind.
But we have to overcome our sense of impostor syndrome in order to be successful in landing a nonacademic job. We have to admit we need help, and that we don't know what we don't know. We also have to trust that people will help us.
In this episode, Maren talks about ways you can overcome impostor syndrome and approach your job search with curiosity and openness.