Sociology Jobs Outside Academia?

[timhorton]

Ok so I just graduated from my undergrad and I'm thinking of what grad programs to apply to for sociology. Reading the posts on here terrifies me about tenure track job openings in sociology. As such I'm thinking about getting a PhD and going for a job outside of academia. I've heard people say that Penn State and Ohio State have good sociology/demography programs with skills easily translatable outside of academia. Does anyone have advice on what programs I should look at if I want I work at a think-tank, business, or government organization as a sociologist? Do I need a PhD to do evaluation or research at a place like the CDC or a company like Facebook? Should I be looking at different degree programs for those things? 

[farflung]

Hi! I'm in anthropology, so speaking from my experience in a neighboring (though much more qualitative) social science. If you're interested in pursuing a non-academic career -- or at least leaving that door open -- you can get adequate preparation at nearly any school. It matters less which individual program you attend, and more what you do with your time once you are there. Because your focus will not necessarily be on racking up a zillion grants and publications, perhaps you want a PhD program that has a short time-to-degree. Are there PhD programs in Soc that can get you in and out in 3-5 years? If so, go for those. Quantitative skills are highly desirable outside the academy, so wherever you attend, stay on top of those quant skills. During your time pursuing the PhD, while your classmates work on producing the best dissertation EVER (which is not needed for an industry position), you will need to be getting diverse work and management experience -- perhaps summer internships, part-time research assistantships that are strategic to your career goals, etc. You can get this kind of work experience from most programs, as I said, unless your advisor is very hostile toward non-academic paths (in which case find a new advisor). 

In terms of whether or not to get the PhD if you want a non-academic career, it is highly individual. My impression (and what I've heard from mentors outside the academy) is that to work at a top non-academic research position in the social sciences (eg eval & research at the CDC, as you mentioned), you probably need a PhD OR quite a lot of years of similar job experience. The PhD can help you bypass some of the "years of experience" requirements in some industry positions when you come in. 

In my view, it is best to keep quiet about not wanting an academic job during the application process -- I wouldn't declare this outright to faculty until a program has accepted you. The best PhD programs in the social sciences still (somewhat delusionally) believe that they are training the best & the brightest academics, and that people who want to work in industry don't deserve fully-funded spots at top research universities. What you could do is e-mail grad students and programs you're interested in. Ask them if their classmates have gone into industry. Ask them how the faculty they work with mentor grads who want a non-academic career. This will give you a preliminary sense of whether the program would be a good fit for someone who wants to go into industry, without "outing" yourself prematurely to faculty. 

[timhorton]

Thank you for the response! That all seems like very good advice, I was wondering if I should keep it hush that I may not want an academic job, my undergraduate professors seemed to be split on mentioning non-academic possibilities to students. I do know just from browsing around, Ohio State explicitly states on their website that many of their alumni have gotten jobs in think-tanks, and the CDC. Not sure about the time to degree, but I'll definitely follow your advice and email some people to ask around. 

[pingaling]

Ohio State is largely known for qualitative work (do they have a pop studies center?). I'm currently in a Sociology PhD program and am transferring into a dual Sociology/Demography program with the goal of working outside of academia. If I were you, I'd take one of 2 approaches---

1. Get into the highest ranked (rankings matter even if you don't want academia) sociology program and use the prestige/networks to get you where you want to go

OR

2. Get into a sociology program with a pop center (such as Minnesota, Michigan, UNC, UPenn, etc).

 

[juilletmercredi]

To the question of whether you need a PhD - it depends on what kind of research you want to do. Do you want to lead the research or are you content with carrying out research-related tasks? For example, think tanks and government agencies like the CDC hire master's level research associates to assist in research. Especially with experience, these research associates may end up doing some pretty heavy tasks - contributing to papers and memos and briefs, helping with the planning of research studies, grant-writing, etc. You can go pretty deep down the rabbit hole with the MA, but some companies may limit your career ladder positions due to lack of PhD. In other places, it may limit your salary, and in most places it'll limit your autonomy (you'll rarely pick the projects you work on independently, although you may have your choice of projects amongst ones already underway).

In technology, I will say that most business researchers are hired in at the master's level. I actually work in social science research at a large tech company. Although almost everyone on my team has a PhD, most of the other business research teams at my company are staffed mainly by master's degree holders. However, I am seeing a small, slow shift in the industry. When I was looking at job ads, I saw more and more ads that were preferring PhDs or explicitly looking for them. A lot of technology companies are hiring social scientists to do several things: UX research (using social science principles, mainly psychology, to make products easily usable by consumers); field/consumer/purchasing research, which they often call "business anthropology" (sending people out into people's homes or naturalistic living spaces to observe how they use products and services and glean information about how to improve them or sell other products and services); process research (almost like operations research, but using social science research principles to improve working processes and procedures) and personnel/HR research (using social scientists to improve the hiring process, the creation of teams, and the way that people work together at the company). I do the first one and I love my job. But I saw all of these types of jobs when I was looking for places to take my PhD in psychology outside of academia, and most of the positions sounded pretty interesting!

No, you don't need a PhD. But it helps, especially if you want to go to a big company like Facebook. That said, if you were 100% sure that you didn't want an academic job, and were really interested in exploring industry jobs that are research-related but not about heading up research projects in the sense that a true sociologist does at a university or think tank, I would really seriously explore the possibility of getting a master's instead. Although I couldn't have my exact job had I gotten an MS in human-computer interaction, for example, I could have had several jobs LIKE my job, and I may have eventually worked my way up to it. Meanwhile that's 4 extra years of salary, retirement savings, and living like a normal person!

[Sigaba]

On 5/3/2016 at 6:16 PM, timhorton said:

 I was wondering if I should keep it hush that I may not want an academic job, my undergraduate professors seemed to be split on mentioning non-academic possibilities to students. 

The short answer is yes. Don't lie or mislead, but hold your cards close to your vest. Also, understand that if you take a professor into your confidence and she's okay with you working in the private sector, it doesn't automatically follow that her colleagues will agree.

If you're set on working in the public sector, start  looking at job listings now. You want to identify the types of skills employers are looking for that are unrelated to sociology examples include project management, customer service, technical writing,  and certain software platforms. If you want to do think tank work, you may want to make sure your personal affairs in order so that you can pass various types of background checks up to and including checks for security clearances.

[timhorton]

On 5/5/2016 at 5:04 PM, pingaling said:

Ohio State is largely known for qualitative work (do they have a pop studies center?). I'm currently in a Sociology PhD program and am transferring into a dual Sociology/Demography program with the goal of working outside of academia. If I were you, I'd take one of 2 approaches---

1. Get into the highest ranked (rankings matter even if you don't want academia) sociology program and use the prestige/networks to get you where you want to go

OR

2. Get into a sociology program with a pop center (such as Minnesota, Michigan, UNC, UPenn, etc).

 

I was told Ohio State has a growing population studies concentration, but that was just word of mouth so I could be mistaken. Do you mind if I ask what Sociology/Demography program you're going into?