After a PhD what next? | 6 popular options

hello my beautiful youtube friends so you've just finished your PhD or maybe you're thinking about doing a PhD but you don't know what comes after it so what comes after a PhD if you're new to this channel please remember to subscribe and hit the bell notification if that's what you do because I'm going to be talking about my PhD career advice from the stuff that I've learned as well as startups because I'm a start-up founder and then also content marketing because that's something I love doing and creating videos and all that sort of stuff and I'd love for you to consume all of that delicious content so please remember to subscribe ok so the way that I see this is that after a PhD you really have two broad options let's talk about the most obvious option right now the most obvious option is to do a postdoc so that's a post PhD shortened to post doctorate shortened to postdoc anyway so postdocs are what you can do after a PhD and it's when you start to sort of look through your own funding you start to kind of enter the academic funnel a little bit more so you'll normally end up working under a person who's got some money to do some research they'll advertise for a postdoc position and that means you will be responsible for collecting all of the data and doing all of the research or beyond the team that's going to collect the data for that particular project so you're still not necessarily doing your own research but you are still sort of doing what you've done in your PhD you're just doing it even deeper even more and probably more responsible for the administration that outcomes the key performance indicators and making sure the project moves along in terms of doing the things that need to be done so a postdoc really is the path of least resistance and by that I mean obviously when you're doing a PhD your supervisors may say to you hey let's do more of this I've got some money let's do some more or I'll apply for some money and because you're already in the academic bubble it can really seem like the best option when really you've not explored anything else outside of what you're currently doing and you kind of convinced yourself yes this is right for me so I would say at the end of your PhD the path of least resistance really is a postdoc but is it right for you that is something you really need to take seriously and consider based on what you like to do where you want to go in life and the sort of lifestyle that you're willing to commit to because academia can be really tough so a postdoc can go from anywhere between like six months to three years to five years so it really is starting to get on that academic treadmill and there's even something called the postdoc treadmill and a number of my friends have been on this and the longest postdoc treadmill I think I've seen is like 11 or 12 years where they just do one postdoc after another after another after another and it can just go on and on and on and on and that's kind of the worrying thing about doing a postdoc is if you have no plan to apply for grants your own money then really you can be sort of locked into this lifestyle where your job is dependent on someone else getting money to employ you and I don't know about you but I would feel a little bit uneasy about doing that for too long a postdoc is great for gathering extra skills applying for grants giving you a little bit of breathing room maybe do some teaching as well to build up your academic career but ultimately it is something you need to leave at some point and that leaving is really really tough a few of my friends I've done two post ninety-three postdocs and that took me through about seven years I ended up getting my own money doing some my own experiments getting awards and grants and sort of slowly like I wasn't a great academic but I was good enough to kind of like pedal and Tran tread water for a long time but really after that amount of time I really started to fall out of love with a cadine realizing that this would be my reality for a long period of time if I didn't apply for my own funding get my own grants and ultimately that was the reason I left academia is because I was like I don't want this current life for very much longer and if you get your own grown money then you're just extending the postdoc for a little bit more anyway so look I don't mean to be down on it because I think a lot of people it can be a really important step to getting the academic career but for a lot of people I think the path of least resistance thing Lots them in to doing a post often really there's plenty of other options that may actually suit them way better than anything to do with academia no the second broad category is obviously outside of academia outside of the academic system and outside of the ivory towers I think this is completely underplayed as you're going through a PhD because ultimately the system hasn't changed for a long period of time a PhD in the past was to train you up to become an academic and the systems in that process haven't changed even though there's nothing that you can do at the end there's no academic jobs for you so now I think there's you know it's changing there's a lot of Industry focus PhDs with Kerr we're building up networks in industry as part of your PhD but things are slowly changing but arguably not changing fast enough during PhD you should really start thinking about those next steps and I think you've got to be absolutely honest with yourself and be like is this something I really want to do is it something I'm willing to sacrifice time money a bit of mental health for because if it is great and good for you but it may not be arguably like I said it's not for everyone and so I've done a video before about PhD career changes so I'll go put the link wherever that and maybe up here I think so look go and check out that one because it shows you the the road map that I think you need to sort of lay down and follow if you want to leave an academic career and change outside of what your PhD is trained you for so there's a load of paths that you can take ultimately when you decide hey I'm gonna leave academia you can do a whole range of things you can do so many things and really it's about you deciding what fits best for your personality what you enjoy doing because you have to enjoy the process of whatever job or career or thing you end up doing because you'll be doing it for a very long time so broadly I think industry is a good spot so you can actually find industry jobs where you use the same sort of research skills that you've built up during your PhD and you in you use them in a like private industry setting so when I left my PhD I went straight into Dino Noble which is an explosives company it was interesting I went from solar cells to explosives so hippy to blowing up the earth but I really enjoyed that job I learned a lot from it and ultimately it wasn't the right fit for me so I'd I ended up going back to academia after that job for a little bit I said a little bit it's like seven years but there's one option is looking for R&D positions or research & development positions in an industry and obviously my experience is all around the stem field so I know for humanities and languages and medical PhDs it could be a little bit different the second place that I've seen a lot of success is people leaving their PhD and going into government positions so that's policymaking that's transitional translational sort of job where you look at helping researchers or you look at using the outcomes of research to inform policy and I know a lot of friends who have gone into that and they've really enjoyed the process and look if that is the right fit for you I've not got a lot of experience with government stuff but a lot of people like the security of a government job and because of that I think it's very popular with PhDs so this one is pretty interesting to me because it's where a lot of stem professionals end up and that is intellectual property and intellectual property law so when I was finishing up my last postdoc I was actually considering I was like hmm I wonder if I could do intellectual property you know becoming an IP was a patent attorney and it does involve another three years at a university learning doing exams and oh god after so many years in a university getting up to a PhD I really didn't want to do any more exams I was done so I did actually explore that for a little bit but I know a number of people in Australia that have finished their PhD and every year the intellectual property office in Canberra they accept applications from PhDs and it's one of the rare careers where you do actually need a PhD to understand what's going on so it is a great option if you like writing if you like checking things if you're into kind of the details of your PhD work then it can be a really rewarding career and like I said I even started to explore it for myself but ultimately decided that the introverted nature of it wasn't quite right for me okay another option that I've seen outside of academia is teaching that's either teaching as a teaching focused academic at a university or retraining to teach high schools in Australia you need a two years master's I think so it is about going back and Retraining going back to uni again but it can be an incredibly rewarding career my partner's a teacher she absolutely loves it and I would be lying if I said that I didn't even I didn't consider it at some point ultimately it wasn't the right fit for me at the time so I never kind of pursued but I did look at going back to uni to get a teaching qualification and it's where a lot of people enjoy the communication aspect you know teaching is such a rewarding career and I've seen lots of people transition because they enjoy the tutoring the training the sharing their passion you know it really puts you back in touch with why you started doing a science degree in the first place and it just really kind of yeah it can be really really rewarding to help the next generation of scientists so yeah consider teaching if that is something you like and the last thing I want to talk about an option that I've seen quite a lot of success in is PhDs helping out universities with stuff like grant writing so a lot of PhDs end up going into the research office and the reason for that I think is because during your PhD you learn about all the ins and outs of how to get grants how to apply for grants you know about what makes a grant successful you understand the science behind it and all of that comes together in a nice valuable package for universities to employ PhDs as grant writers or working in the research office to support researchers and so they're more likely to get grants funding and publications even so look those those skills that you learn in your PhD are directly applicable to other sciences clearly and so yeah that's one one place where I've seen a number of PhD graduates go and been incredibly happy with that one person in particular I know ended up going to stand with Stanford University to work in their Grant's office and of course she was incredibly motivated incredibly clever and now is able to essentially say I've worked at Stanford helping people get grants and she can go anywhere so it really yeah it can be really rewarding and even though grant writing is the thing I like the lease about academia if it's your bag then that's perfect it can be a really rewarding career so the one thing I will say about everything that I've just taught about these are the things you need to do to actually move past your PhD and go on to that next thing the first thing is network no networking as a scientist can seem really lame you go to conferences you speak to people you know you pretend that you're interested in what they have to say but outside of academia or at least that was my experience I hate that side of academia networking is so incredibly important networking even online LinkedIn is an incredible place to connect with other professionals in an industry that you feel like you want to go into and networking really is the door that you need to open so personally I've found a lot of success with being introduced to people through common connections through a network so I say hey I'd love to connect with this person I go through their LinkedIn I look to see you we've got in common if I'm particularly close to that person I can say hey can I have a warm introduction please all of that is really important and it's something that you can actually start building from the moment you start your PhD if you know you where you want to end up it's it is so overlooked and I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but networking isn't about like sucking up and being weird it's about genuinely kind of connecting and just touching and just growing a network if I kind of consider it like a little mesh the more people in your mesh your network if you if you fall there's more people to collect you and help you and it really is it like you're kind of safety mechanism okay another great thing that I think you should consider doing is outside of academia the world is a strange place and you may not be super familiar with it so I really would advise you using your expert analytical skills that you've built throughout your PhD and you put that towards learning about the field you want to go into look for keywords get onto google get onto LinkedIn and just start looking the keywords that people are using in the career that you feel like you want to go towards that's so important because you are going to be entering a different world and so really you've got to kind of stalk that world a little bit to work out what works what doesn't who's in that who are the big players who are the smaller players who's up and coming all of that will really help you when you come to speak to your network because you'll seem informed you'll look knowledgeable and importantly you'll look enthusiastic about the field that you're going into one of the biggest things that I think you should consider when leaving a PhD program is do you want to do more study it can seem insane that people would want to do more studying after a PhD but I know people who have found incredibly rewarding careers by retraining or building up skills in a different area and it wasn't something I really wanted to do I couldn't imagine going from being a lecturer to let to being lectured I don't know if that's an ego thing or what but I really did not like the idea of sitting in lectures or learning again having to do assignments I'm I was done but for a lot of people particularly early PhD graduates so people that are very young retraining for three more years or a couple of years or doing a masters or diploma and whatever you kind of attracted to then that can be really good way of just slingshotting you into a new career so yeah that's something you really need to consider is are you willing to do more study and if you are what extent are you gonna do you know if you go back to medicine it can be another five six seven years and at the end of a PhD a journey that may just be too much for you so even a diploma I actually did a number of small things even outside of university I did a radio announcing course I did a videography course I did a lot of online learning I learned to code I did some marketing stuff so I really just was like you know what I have no idea what I want to do I'm going to go research and build up skills in all these different areas and I'm going to find out what actually appeals to me and that's where I ended up with this with videography with verbalized science all of that kind of has been packaged up and it was because I took a while to explore the options and and I was very privileged to have that time but now I'm slowly finding out what I do like and don't like outside of academia and the last thing I would say is once you've identified what you really do and don't like and where you kind of want to take your career outside of a PhD if it's postdoc that's great continue keep doing work hard but outside of academia you will almost certainly have a gap in your skills so what you need to do is work out where those gaps are and either build up experience to fill those gaps or do further study like I said before so work out where the friction points are for someone who would hire you in the position that you want get a friend to look over it and say you know what for a position that you want you're really missing out on the managerial skills or you're really lacking any evidence about videography or content creation or whatever it is you just need to find out even approach someone in your network in that field and say hey this is my CV why where am I missing skills or where's the gaps or why wouldn't someone want to hire me in a position based on my skills because that's that's ultimately what you need to do you need to fill those gaps to make sure you are the prime candidate and when you're coming off the back of a PhD it can be really tough to find the motivation to relearn some things but you are an awesome learner because you've got this far so please continue and make sure you're working towards a goal that you know that you want and a career that you're going to find fulfilling that's the most important thing out of all of this do not listen to supervisors do not listen to career academics do not listen to anyone inside academia if you want to leave academia because you need to speak to people with the experience the people that have made the leap into other things and yeah that's that's the biggest thing is don't take the path of least resistance look at look somewhere else go spread those wings be free my beautiful PhD students so let me know in the comments what you would add to that list how would you leave a PhD what's next after a PhD what other choices are there what have you done that you really like and you would recommend to other people that would be really helpful to everyone else that sees this video so if you haven't already please remember to subscribe to this channel I do PhD start at content marketing videography stuff logging maybe who knows but I'd love for you to get all of the stuff that I produce straight into your feed so please remember to hit that notification bell as well if that's still a thing I have no idea I'm not really up to date little stuff but I shall see you in the next video get in my beard [Music]

Channel: Andy Stapleton

Views: 45,716

Rating: 4.9464068 out of 5

Keywords: After a PhD what next, after phd in chemistry, after phd in physics, what to do after a phd, grad school, after a PhD what is next?

Id: AhUCVYqXWoE

Length: 21min 11sec (1271 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020