With universities across the country slashing budgets and implementing hiring freezes, the job market for many PhDs seems to be, as the Chronicle of Higher Education recently put it, cloudy.
But our career guides can serve as sturdy life rafts in this storm of bad news. Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius’s “So What Are You Going to Do with That?”, for example, covers topics ranging from career counseling to interview etiquette to translating skills learned in the academy into terms an employer can understand and appreciate. A witty, accessible guide full of concrete advice for anyone contemplating the jump from scholarship to the outside world, “So What Are You Going to Do with That?” is packed with examples and stories from real people who have successfully made this daunting—but potentially rewarding—transition.
Taking a more specific approach, The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is designed to help students and post-docs navigate the tricky terrain of an academic job search—from the first year of a graduate program to the final negotiations of a job offer. In the process, it covers everything from how to pack an overnight bag without wrinkling a suit to selecting the right job to apply for in the first place.
And when you do land that job? The world of scientific research is, of course, a competitive one, with grants and good jobs increasingly hard to find, but The Chicago Guide to Your Career in Science is intended to help scientists not just cope but excel at the critical early phases of their careers.
Finally, no matter which discipline you’re in, The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career offers frank answers to the profession’s most enduring questions. Its three distinguished authors—with more than 75 years of combined experience—talk openly about what’s good and what’s not so good about academia, as a place to work and a way of life. Written as an informal conversation among colleagues, the book is packed with inside information—about finding a mentor, avoiding pitfalls when writing a dissertation, negotiating the job listings, and much more.