CAREER INTERVIEWS
Help PhD Students
Build Meaningful Careers
We are looking for PhD holders to interview about their careers outside of academia. The purpose of these interviews is to help PhD students learn about career options, successful job search strategies, and how to build a successful career in the professional workforce.
These will be short video interviews (approx. 15 min) conducted by a member of the Beyond the Professoriate team. Your video will be added to a video career library available to doctoral students and postdocs at universities who subscribe to our e-learning platform.
PhDs feel unprepared to build careers outside of academia. Many are hesitant about leaving higher education and worry that nonacademic jobs will be less rewarding.
Based on our research and national studies of graduate student career outcomes:
- 53% of PhDs worry that work and life will have less meaning outside of academia
- 56% believe they will not be intellectually engaged in a nonacademic job.
- 81% cannot identify their value to employers.
- and 40% experience anxiety and depression, 6 times the rate of the general population.
Sharing your career story and advice for current PhD students can help change this. Here’s an example of a career interview with Ann Durbin who earned her PhD in Virology from Harvard University.
We are primarily looking for professionals who earned their PhD in Canada or the United States and who do not work in academia.
We are looking to interview people from all disciplines and backgrounds (Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Health Care, Legal Studies, Public Policy, Social Sciences, STEM, etc) who work in a full-time capacity in any industry or sector.
Perhaps you earned your PhD 35 years ago or 3 years ago – we want to interview you!
Schedule an interview with our team below to share your advice and experience.
FAQ about the Career Interviews at Beyond the Professoriate
Your video will be added to a video career library available to graduate students, postdocs and trainees at universities who subscribe to our e-learning platform.
We’d do the interview over Zoom and record it for later use in a video resource library. The purpose of the video resource library is to give graduate students and PhDs the opportunity to watch interviews to learn about career pathways for PhDs from those who have this experience.
Access to platforms and the video library is limited to subscribers, but please do reach out if you’d like to view your video or learn more about the project.