Some of you may have come across this already but there is a handy little e-book on the jobs.ac.uk website called ‘10 career paths for PhDs‘. For those of you who want to explore some options away from an academic career it’s a good starting point. Career paths include areas such as consultancy, pharmaceuticals, government, finance, working with the research councils and more.
It also gives you some handy activities to work through to help clarify what is important to you in a career / job such as organisational culture, skills you would be using, and opportunity for progression.
You can download the book here.
We cover some of the same areas in the ‘What are your options?’ section of our website and there are also some prompts to stimulate your thinking in ‘Making Career Decisions‘
The key is to be inquisitive about what other people do, ask questions, expand your network (what does your flatmate’s aunts brother do? Or more likely what did previous PhD students in your research group go on to do?). And if you want some more ideas come in to talk it over with a careers adviser.
Research student careers blog 