By Jennifer Polk - From PhD to Life. At last night’s Versatile PhD meetup in Toronto, a fellow PhD told me about her experiences talking to professors about her current (non-academic) work. In some cases, they were positive, encouraging, and interested; in others, they were confused and dismissive. More...

By Jennifer Polk - From PhD to Life. Maureen McCarthy earned her PhD in English in 2013 from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. She is now the assistant director of advancement and best practices at the Council of Graduate Schools. Find her on Twitter @maureentmcc.
What did you hope for in terms of employment as you completed your PhD?
I was looking for a position in Washington, D.C. for personal reasons. One of the main reasons I ultimately decided not to pursue the tenure track was because of a desire to be free to choose my geographic location. Specifically, I chose to live close(r) to the people I most love, most of whom are concentrated on the East Coast of the U.S. More...

By Mel Rohse and Dean D'Souza. From setting up job alerts and meeting with academics to tutoring schoolchildren, Mel and Dean say it's not for lack of trying that they haven't secured an academic job. Securing employment is becoming increasingly difficult. But there are at least two routes to a postdoctoral research career. The first is to develop a research proposal and then seek funding for it. The advantage of this option is that you can seek answers to questions that you thought about during your PhD training but never had the time to pursue. More...