Career Preparation
The final stage of career preparation comes after you have a sense of your pathway, and are close to finishing your degree.
This is the time to prepare documents for your job search and to identify specific opportunities of interest.
The Level 2 Career Development Pathway in PhD Progression has step-by-step guides and resources on the topics listed below. Learn more about PhD Progression and register to earn badges in Level 2 here. Badges available in Level 2 Career Development:
- Informational Interviews
- Job Simulations
- Deconstructing a Job Description
- Identifying and Articulating Transferable Skills
- Writing a CV
- Writing a Resume
- Writing a Cover Letter
- Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement
- Writing a Research Statement
- Writing a Diversity Statement
PDPA also offers a variety of workshops and resources for developing application materials, preparing for interviews, and negotiating job offers. Individual departments and programs frequently have resources for the academic job search specific to your discipline. We recommend that you reach out to your mentors and later-stage doctoral students for additional resources for your discipline. Find additional academic career preparation resources below.
Academic Career Searches
Higher Education Recruitment Consortium Webinars
The Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC) offers a variety of webinar on topics ranging from beginning the job search to negotiating a pay raise.
HigherEd360.com
HigherEd360 (formerly Academics360.com) job listings include a broad range of student advising and academic administration jobs, as well as, faculty positions.
The Professor is In
The Professor is IN provides guidance for all things PhD, including graduate school, job market and careers.
University of Chicago GRAD: Guide to Academic Careers
This UChicago GRAD guide gives a helpful overview of academic careers including job search timelines, and tips for the application process.
Academic Career Readiness Assessment
The Academic Career Readiness Assessment (ACRA) rubric is a tool developed by the Office of Career and Professional Development (OCPD) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with a grant from Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The goal of this tool is to provide graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with the information they need to explore, plan for and apply to faculty positions at different types of institutions, regardless of their understanding of the intricacies of the U.S. education system and independently of the mentoring they receive. The rubric can also be used to inform faculty hiring practices and provide transparency in the faculty hiring process.
NIH Office of Intramural Training & Education – Career Symposium
The Annual NIH Career Symposium aims to highlight the diversity of career choices available to your generation of biomedical researchers. Whether you are a new graduate student, postdoc, or clinical fellow just beginning to consider career options or a senior student/fellow ready to look for a job, the NIH Career Symposium is for you.
Academic Jobs Wiki (Social Sciences & Humanities)
As the “wiki” moniker implies, this site hosts a series of links to crowd-sourced web pages about the posted job ads in dozens of different fields. What is different about the wiki, is that as the application/review cycle progresses, individuals will post updates on the status of the search. For example, an applicant will edit the entry for a given position by noting that on Nov 27th, requests were received for “additional materials” by candidates still in the running or on Dec 5th the committee began to contact candidates for phone screens. If you scroll down a few screens, you will see a series of links to pages that list openings by field for a few dozen disciplines. Some are very broad (e.g., English Literature, History) and some are very specific (Piano and Theology). If you scroll further you will see the link to last year’s listing for the field. There is a separate wiki for Postdocs in the Humanities & Social Sciences.