PhD Career Interviews
Help PhDs learn about career options and how to successfully build a nonacademic career.
We are looking for PhD holders to interview about their careers outside of academia. The purpose of these interviews is to help PhD students learn about career options, successful job search strategies, and how to build a successful career in the professional workforce.
These will be short video interviews (approx. 15 min) conducted by a member of the Beyond the Professoriate team. Your video will be added to a video career library available to doctoral students and postdocs at universities who subscribe to our e-learning platform.
PhDs feel unprepared to build careers outside of academia. Many are hesitant about leaving higher education and worry that nonacademic jobs will be less rewarding.
Based on our research and national studies of graduate student career outcomes:
- 53% of PhDs worry that work and life will have less meaning outside of academia
- 56% believe they will not be intellectually engaged in a nonacademic job.
- 81% cannot identify their value to employers.
- and 40% experience anxiety and depression, 6 times the rate of the general population.
Sharing your career story and advice for current PhD students can help change this. Here’s an example of a career interview with Ann Durbin who earned her PhD in Virology from Harvard University.
We are primarily looking for professionals who earned their PhD in Canada or the United States and who do not work in academia.
We are looking to interview people from all disciplines and backgrounds (Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Health Care, Legal Studies, Public Policy, Social Sciences, STEM, etc) who work in a full-time capacity in any industry or sector.
Perhaps you earned your PhD 35 years ago or 3 years ago – we want to interview you!
Schedule an interview with our team to share your advice and experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is my interview being used for?
Our PhD Career Training Platform helps doctoral students learn about career options, make informed career decisions, and learn proven job search strategies.
Learners access on-demand video lessons, workbooks and worksheets, designed by our team.
They also access a career video library featuring interviews with 200 PhDs working in nonacademic careers. The video library helps PhDs learn about nonacademic careers and the range of opportunities available in today’s creative economy. Your interview will become part of the video library.
- Can you tell me more about the interview process?
We conduct the interview over Zoom. A team member will ask you around 10 questions, which will be shared with you prior to your interview. The purpose of the video is to give graduate students and PhDs the opportunity to learn about career pathways from PhDs and to hear how to successfully build a nonacademic career.
- Can I access the video library?
Access to the platform and video library is limited to subscribers, but pleas reach out if you’d like to view your video or learn more about the project: interviews@gradcareersuccess.com
- Do you offer payment or compensation?
We’ll send you a $20 gift card from Amazon as our way of saying thank you!
- Does Beyond the Professoriate charge individuals?
We believe that universities, and not individual students, should pay for professional development. We sell annual subscriptions to universities so that their graduate students and postdocs can access our services. Individuals who do not have access can purchase an individual membership, but 99% of our revenue comes from institutional subscriptions.