Getting a Job unrelated to your Ph.D.

[mathtoscicomp]

Hi. I'm currently a Ph.D. student studying computational science (not computer science) at a large research university in an urban area of the midwestern United States. I'm currently all but dissertation, and hopefully just a little over a year from finishing. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no desire to continue my current line of research.

I applied to my current university (which will remain nameless) hoping to work in computational fluid dynamics or some area of computational geology such as groundwater flow. Sadly, I wasn't offered any funding to work in those fields, but I was offered funding to work in biophysical modeling, and so I decided to take the biophysical modeling funding and work on a project in that area because I had no other options.

So here is what I'd like to know. I'd like to know whether anyone here has been in the same situation and has found a satisfying job unrelated to their Ph.D. research quickly after graduation. Additionally, I'm interested in some of your advice. However, before you hastily give advice, please consider that I'm married and unwilling to relocate for the next five years or so, and that I'm unwilling to do a postdoc. Also, it may be helpful to know that I have master's degree in mathematics (my area of emphasis was numerical analysis) and have been programming in C++ for over 10 years. Thanks.

[ImNoAngel]

When I did my Degree in Business Studies, I envisaged a career in the media. However I soon fell into the trap of believing what was being said by the media that jobs for graduates were few and far between. I'm not sure whether I was just being unlucky or using the bad publicity as an excuse for my failure to find the 'ideal' job, but I eventually got a role within a graduate recruitment website called search4graduates. I'm not being naive and of course the world isn't waiting with its arms open for every graduate who leaves uni, but there really are numerous opportunities for those wishing to explore different avenues. Within the first two days of the company going live it received over 50 vacancies - worldwide, some boring and others, well lets say out of the ordinary. so my advice would be to not listen to the doom and gloom merchants and get out there, you may be surprised at what you'll find.

[zep]

bump

[oldfogey]

Read Versatile PhD

http://versatilephd.com/

[zep]

Read Versatile PhD

http://versatilephd.com/

From Versatile PhD: "The Versatile PhD mission is to help humanities and social science PhDs and graduate students identify and prepare for possible non-academic careers."

IMHO, if your goals are to get a PhD and to be versatile, then do a science/engineering PhD.

[juilletmercredi]

Versatile PhD also has very valuable advice on STEM fields and has an entire STEM forum, if one deigns to actually enter the site and read it thoroughly. They just recently had a very interesting panel discussion on STEM PhD holders getting jobs in consulting.

[snes]

From Versatile PhD: "The Versatile PhD mission is to help humanities and social science PhDs and graduate students identify and prepare for possible non-academic careers."

IMHO, if your goals are to get a PhD and to be versatile, then do a science/engineering PhD.

aaaaaaah I couldn't help myself!

Musicology?? I SHALL BE THE MOST VERSATILE OF ALL! Just ya'll wait! I mean, of course I'm getting a tenure-track job!

[Joshua07]

Be thankful for you have a job. In other countries, graduated nurses are now I.T. Specialist because they don't have any other options but to accept that kind of a job even if it is out of their bound. Being jobless is frustrating.