As a long-time observer of hiring trends, I’m increasingly concerned about the career prospects of graduate students and postdocs in the next few years. This will very likely be the worst job market in a generation, and many of them lack strategies and support to manage the tumult.
I work with nearly 80 universities as director and chief executive of the Center for Graduate Career Success, and I can tell you, the hiring outlook has rarely looked this grim:
- Faculty hiring will almost certainly be at a near standstill in the next academic year. Universities were already facing an enrollment cliff driven by the decline in the number of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States, and the fact that fewer high-school graduates are planning on attending college. Fewer students mean fewer faculty members. Now that outlook is being exacerbated by political factors. The hostility toward immigrants and international students may deter many from studying in the United States. Federal funding cuts have already led to hiring freezes at many institutions.
- In other economic downturns — such as the Great Recession of 2008 or the Covid pandemic — graduate students could extend time in their programs or move into postdoc positions. But this time, federal cuts have eliminated many postdoc positions and constricted funding for existing grad students.
- A shrinking federal work force means fewer job opportunities in that sector for Ph.D.s. The highly skilled federal workers being laid off have years of experience and are now moving into state and local governments, further diminishing opportunities for new graduates.
- Meanwhile, hiring in the private sector has slowed to rates not seen since 2009. When people expect a recession, they act accordingly. Uncertainty caused by tariffs and the trade war threatens to slow hiring further.
So this time is different. In 2008, President Barack Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress quickly passed a stimulus bill to revive the economy. During Covid, the federal government passed stimulus bills to mitigate the worst economic effects of the pandemic. But today’s looming economic downturn is a direct result of federal government policies: The Trump administration’s attack on higher education is intentional. Deterring international students is the plan. Tariffs and cuts in the federal work force are the fulfillment of campaign promises.
What can job candidates do? And how can graduate programs help prepare their graduates for job searching in a frozen job market? Let me share the advice we’re giving to graduate students and postdocs at our partner institutions, and the advice I’ve been sharing with deans.
Don’t wait for the academic job market to improve. I graduated with my Ph.D. in history during the Great Recession, and everyone said “don’t give up” on the faculty market and predicted that tenure-track jobs “would return.” While well-meaning, it wasn’t great advice. Once academic hiring resumed, I was among the glut of graduate students, postdocs, adjuncts, and early-career faculty members vying for a very limited number of full-time, tenure-track openings.
Clearly the academic job market has been competitive for decades, with many more Ph.D.s than there are full-time openings. In most disciplines, only between 10 and 20 percent of Ph.D.s secure a tenure-track job, and in STEM fields, the possibility of a tenure-track job only comes after years of postdoc positions.
Choosing to stick it out on the academic market comes with steep financial and personal costs, and no guarantee of securing employment. Plus, you’re making less money than if you’d gone directly into industry. On average, an American postdoc is paid about $60,000, similar to the typical starting salary of a B.A. graduate in STEM.
It’s vital in this economy to take other career paths as seriously as the academic option. The choice you make doesn’t have to be waiting around for years for an elusive tenure-track offer.
Adjunct faculty members, on average, are paid about $3,700 a course, which means you’d have to teach 10 courses just to make $37,000, before taxes and without benefits. By comparison, the starting salary for someone with a bachelor’s degree in the humanities is about $50,000.
Every year you stay in an adjunct or postdoc position is another year you’re losing money. You’re also further behind your peers who graduated and moved directly into industry. They’re learning valuable skills and gaining experience in a nonacademic career, which allows them to advance, take on more responsibility, and earn more money.
Through research conducted by my team and I, we’ve found that doctoral students and postdocs remain in academe because they have biases about the nature of industry (broadly defined) work. Most Ph.D.s have limited work experience outside of higher education, and worry that work and life will have less meaning and that they won’t be intellectually engaged. Other doctoral students are stuck: They don’t know how to begin an industry job search and fear they lack the right skills and experience to be successful.
I have spent more than a decade interviewing Ph.D.s who work outside of academe. Many are happy, engaged in their work, and feel rewarded and respected by their employers. They enjoy work-life balance, and more control over their futures and finances.
It’s vital in this economy to take other career paths as seriously as the academic option. The choice you make doesn’t have to be waiting around for years for an elusive tenure-track offer.
If, despite the odds, you decide to pursue a faculty job, have a clear plan: How many years will you stay on the academic market? Are you adding prestige to your CV (publications, grants, and awards) in the interim, because that’s what hiring committees will look for. Find opportunities to build skills that will set you up for success when/if you have to pivot to another labor sector — such as experience managing projects, budgets, people, and teams. Remember: Most Ph.D.s do not land tenure-track jobs, so, odds are, you will ultimately need to build a nonacademic career.
Employers will value your skills more than your degree. In a 2022 study, 81 percent of employers surveyed said that skills should matter more than degrees in the hiring process. Why? Because hiring based on skills is a better predictor of on-the-job success than hiring based on credentials. Companies that adopt a skills-based approach to organizational development (including hiring and promotion) are better places to work, with higher employee satisfaction, less turnover, and more innovation.
This is good news for Ph.D.s. But it requires you to “rebrand.” You have to start seeing yourself, not as a subject-matter expert, but rather, as a professional with a wide range of skills. Ask yourself: Which skills did I apply to become an expert in my field? The expertise is much less important (and maybe irrelevant) to a nonacademic employer than your successful development and application of skills.
And not just technical skills. Interpersonal skills and qualities — communication, collaboration, teamwork, initiative, innovation, creative thinking, and problem solving — are highly in demand. You’ve been honing those skills during your graduate education and training.
As you begin to consider nonacademic career paths, read job advertisements. Often you’ll find that work style and interpersonal skills are as important as technical skills (sometimes more so). Focusing on your skills, values, and interests — rather than your credentials and subject expertise — will help you identify career pathways that can offer you a similar degree of job satisfaction as academic life.
I was trained as a historian, and spent a lot of time happily reading dead people’s diaries. But I’d be unemployable if I thought that was all I could do. Many aspects of academic life that I most enjoyed are things I now do daily in a nonfaculty career: I still love thinking about how people craft stories and what motivates them to take action or behave in certain ways. I enjoy using data to tell stories. I love speaking and presenting findings in ways that audiences find compelling. I enjoy mentoring and advising. As a history grad student, I didn’t know I could feel the same satisfaction from marketing, sales, product development, and teamwork. All I knew was academe.
The point is: You may well find that your values align with a wide range of careers, not just a faculty path. Talk with Ph.D.s in your discipline who are applying their skills outside of academe. Find out what they find rewarding and interesting about their work (and what they don’t). That will help you understand how well-suited you are for careers other than the faculty track.
A successful job search is a focused job search. Often, Ph.D.s start an industry job search by trying to convert their CV into a résumé, and then applying for anything that looks vaguely interesting. That is a terrible strategy and bound to fail for two main reasons:
- First of all, a résumé is not a self-reflective document — it’s a persuasive one intended to convince a hiring manager to interview you. You cannot write for an audience you do not know or understand. To write a compelling résumé, you need to first do some research on companies, positions, and roles.
- Second, professional careers are highly specialized, with their own theories, discourses, and practices. Your transferable skills will not be enough to land you an industry job. You will need to spend time learning the foundational knowledge of this new career field.
Such research takes time, and doing it well for multiple career fields is impossible. Do you want to pursue a career in project management? Instructional design? Data science? Technical writing? Or grant writing? Pick one. You’ll have better results if you focus your efforts.
A couple of years ago, I asked my LinkedIn network of Ph.D.s to tell me how long it took them to gain a working knowledge of their new career field. Most people said three months. They listened to podcasts, took online courses (free or low-cost), and did a lot of networking. Only rarely did someone earn a certificate in that area.
Remember: You don’t have to know everything about your prospective new career field — a new employer will expect some learning curve. You just need to know enough to draft a relevant résumé, succeed in a job interview, and hit the ground running once hired.
At the end of the day, people hire people — not credentials on a piece of paper.
You’ll need a network. It’s vital to have people you can rely on to guide you through every step of career exploration and job searching, not to mention connect you to openings. A lot of Ph.D.s think of networking as transactional, and avoid it. Others spend time pinging recruiters and hiring managers on LinkedIn, hoping to gain an edge in the application process — but that isn’t networking.
Networking is building a circle of professionals who work in a similar career field and can advise you about what it’s like. They can answer your questions about the day-to-day tasks, the necessary skills, and the work/life balance. They are in the best position to give you tips on the hiring process, offer feedback on your résumé, share salary info, and guide you in negotiating an offer. (Of course if you’re wondering what it’s like to work at a specific company, ask people who work there.)
Successful networking often leads to people recommending you for positions, connecting you with recruiters, or introducing you to hiring managers or senior leadership. But job referrals are a byproduct of successful networking, not the only goal.
At the end of the day, people hire people — not credentials on a piece of paper. They hire a team member and a colleague, someone who will align with the mission and values of the organization. Through networking, you’ll be able to showcase your interpersonal skills and allow people to get to know you. That’s how you’ll stand out in this job market.
Universities need to provide comprehensive career resources tailored to graduate students. Graduate schools aren’t spending nearly enough time and money on career education for recipients of master’s and doctoral degrees. Job searching is not intuitive, and students need help exploring career options, connecting with employers, and articulating the added value of their degree.
In our work with universities, we often see graduate students and postdocs who simply don’t know how to run a coherent job search. They submit hundreds of résumés. They don’t do any networking, and many don’t even know that they should. They hope that by listing advanced degrees on their résumés, employers will be impressed and give them a job. They anticipate that the job search will be based on merit, when in reality, it’s based on relationships.
Doctoral and master’s students have unique professional-development challenges and need tailored career support. Yet most campus career centers focus on undergraduates and don’t have the resources or expertise to support graduate students. Some provide individual consulting, run workshops, and sponsor career fairs, but graduate students — especially Ph.D.s — need a more structured approach.
These students are spending a small fortune on their training and many aren’t happy with the return on their investment. Universities need to find the money to start providing graduate students with:
- A comprehensive curriculum that breaks down the job-search process, step-by-step, whether someone is seeking a faculty position or a nonacademic career.
- Resources that allow students to access support when they need it. A postdoc who needs help writing a résumé shouldn’t have to wait indefinitely until the next workshop is offered on the campus. Students also value the opportunity to rewatch video content on job searching.
- On-demand help for all of those times when career services and other campus offices are not open. Ph.D.s are in the lab conducting research, teaching classes, or doing field work. Master’s students are juggling jobs, family, and coursework. The job search is often something they do in the evenings and on weekends.
I recognize that providing this kind of support can be costly. Most of the campus offices we work with have one or two staff members for thousands of graduate students. But the time when universities could leave master’s recipients and Ph.D.s to fend for themselves on the job market is over. Ensuring that your alumni leave their programs knowing how to build careers — commensurate with their advanced degrees — will be critical to the future of graduate education at your institution.
