Preparing for an Alternative Career Path

Alternative Career Path - Researching Possibilities

Another stumbling block facing graduate students in transition, is a fundamental lack of knowledge about the world of work. Typically, neither they, nor their supervisors, have much first-hand experience finding anything more than casual employment outside the university. Fortunately, graduate students are experts in the very skills necessary to overcome this obstacle - research!

Once they begin to get a sense of the skills they would like to use, their lifestyle priorities and how they will measure success, graduate students are ready to begin the process of identifying potential work environments. By beginning with their best educational guesses and soliciting input from colleagues, faculty and family, graduate students can begin to uncover networks of people and organizations or companies involved in relevant activities or "Fields of Fascination" as they have been dubbed by Richard Bolles, author of the best selling job search guide What Color is Your Parachute?.

Web Resources

Next Wave: the career development resource for scientists
nextwave.sciencemag.org

Non-academic Careers for Scientific Psychologists
http://www.apa.org/science/nonacad-skills.html

Career Alternatives for Art Historians
www.nd.edu:80/~crosenbe/jobs.html

Linguistic Enterprises: A Job-Search Site for Linguists Seeking Employment in the Private Sector
http://www.lsadc.org/info/lingent/index.htm

Ph.D.s Org: Science, Math, and Engineering Career Resources
www.phds.org

Sellout: A resource for PhDs considering careers beyond the university
www.ironstring.com/sellout

Biotechnology Human Resource Council: Growing Canada's Biotechnology Talent
www.bhrc.ca

The American Chemistry Society's Online Career Centre
http://portal.acs.org/portal/PublicWebSite/careers/index.htm

Mathematical Science career Information – project for non-academic employment
Have you ever wondered what a mathematician working in industry or the government does all day? You can look in the Archives at an alphabetical listing of over 90 career profiles of mathematicians working in nonacademic positions.
http://www.ams.org/careers/

Moving to a Nonacademic Career
Browse through the archive of articles from the chronicle of Higher Education on nonacademic careers.
http://chronicle.com/jobs/topical/non_academic.htm

Networking of the Network
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/network.html

Non-Academic Careers in Physical Anthropology
This online brochure focuses on non-academic careers in applied anthropometry (public and private sectors), epidemiology, museums, zoological gardens, and forensic anthropology.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jmoore/bioanthro/brochure2.html

Non-Academic Options for Philosophers
This site focuses on the broad rang of career options enjoyed by graduates of philosophy.
http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/publications/texts/nonaintro.html#INtro

Beyond Academe
The site’s authors are two Ph.D.s is History who write, “In creating this website, we have tried to give very specific advice-tailored for historians of all types. We think this site can be used by PhDs in other fields but you will find that much of the information we provide is intended directly for historians.”
http://www.beyondacademe.com/

Promising Job Markets for PhDs in the Humanities
A broad range of careers that may appeal to graduates from a variety of fields – good for brainstorming.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/7167/careers.html