Your go-to career resource stash (Tseen Khoo)

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What are you doing with your life?

When you start thinking seriously about your career and where you’re at, it often happens when the workshops that might’ve been helpful have already run, the people you want to talk to are away at a conference, and appointments with career advisors can’t happen for a month.

It’s also often in the middle of the night, you’ve had too much coffee, and you want direction and answers right now!

Well, this is what this resource stash is about.

Bookmark it.

When you realise you want to know all the things about careers – how working it out happens for others and how you might work your own out – come back here and browse the wisdom and strategies.

The listing below is roughly divided into three sections:

• Career pathways – what are research degrees good for?
• How to land that job – the practical side of job-hunting 
• Post-PhD experiences – work and career path narratives from researchers across a range of disciplines 

Career pathways

• Why PhDs are more valuable than other job candidates (Catherine Sorbara)
• Jobs on Toast (Chris Humphrey) – an excellent site for resources and guidance about looking for jobs outside academia and how to market yourself to non-academic sectors
• American Historical Association jobs and professional development site – good for many areas in the humanities when thinking of potential directions.  
• From PhD to Life (Jennifer Polk) – Jen is a career and life coach and provides a wonderful listing of resources for post-PhD career thinking.
• Things I wish someone had told me during my PhD (Hook and Eye) – great, clear advice on what you can do to position yourself well for afterwards while still doing your degree. 
• Career planning guide for postgraduates and contract researchers (PDF; University of Kent) – institution- and UK-centric, of course, and has some great tips and job-seeking information.

How to land that job

• Guide on addressing Selection Criteria for applicants (good, clear tips from the Bureau of Meteorology)
• Use your research career as a launch pad (Julie Wheway)
• Alt-ac 101: Identifying and describing transferable skills (Hook and Eye) – the whole set of posts under the ‘careers’ tag at this blog is worth reading. Lots of good advice and honesty. 
• How to shine in an academic interview (Guardian)
• Creating effective CVs as a researcher (Vitae)
• 10 top tips for becoming an independent researcher (Helen Kara)

Post-PhD experiences

• Interviews with scientists about their career paths, mentors, life decisions (Australian Academy of Science)  
• Franklin Women blog – career stories of women researchers in the health and medical research fields. 
• Australian Historical Association ECR website has a great interview series with researchers talking about their working lives and career choices. 
• There are many post-PhD and career stories at The Research Whisperer, particularly relevant to this post: 
• Boost your postdoc chances (Kerstin Fritsches)
• Developing my portfolio career (Ian Street)
• Choosing academia (Corrie Williams)

And, of course, don’t forget the great posts that have featured on the RED Alert already during this focused Careers Month:

1. Top 4 pieces of career advice (Sam Manna)
2. Your PhD – lasers and pocket-knives (Geoffrey Guilfoyle)
3. Growing into a career (Alex Lugg)
4. What does industry want? (Interview with Greg Sheehan)