Welcome to the Careers Beyond Academia LibGuide!
This guide will help you navigate the best research sources and strategies for exploration and success in your future career. We help PhDs and postdocs make informed choices about their careers and develop their skills through hands-on training. Tell us about your needs via this intake survey. Attend an information session to learn how to make the most of our services. Sign up for our weekly email list serve and monthly newsletter by sending an email to gradcareers@cornell.edu. Please visit our website at gradcareers.cornell.edu to learn more and see our events calendar.
Getting Started
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Step 1: Begin by exploring career options with the help of Careers Beyond Academia. Step 2: Target your search by creating lists of companies in specific regions or industries. Create a list of potential contacts at each organization. Step 3: Research the companies/organizations and do some informational interviewing to learn about their industries. Step 4: Talk to Careers Beyond Academia staff, career advisors, colleagues, mentors, and alumni about companies, jobs and experiences that will set you apart from other applicants. |
Your enrollment at Cornell gives you access to a wide array of career planning resources. Explore Management Library's tools, workshops and consultations with a member of a reference team for specific research questions. If you have questions about your research process or this guide, reach out to the Management Library!
This guide is brought to you by Careers Beyond Academia and the Management Library. Click through the tabs above for specific suggestions on how to land your perfect job. Good luck!
Cornell Career Services (CCS)
As a PhD student, you may schedule an appointment with a graduate career advisor at Cornell Career Services.(CCS) They will help you assess your strengths, define your career goals, and learn how your personality informs your career match. Follow their step-by-step guide.
- Consult the extensive Media library of presentations on all sorts of topics from job searches, interviewing, or basic networking skills.
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Subscribe to the CCS monthly e-newsletter CU Graduate Career News for career information and job opportunities for graduate students pursuing careers beyond academia. This newsletter is co-sponsored by the Graduate School.
- Check the CCS Events Calendar for recurring seminars and workshops that fit with your schedule.
- Read suggested career books and outline your approach.
- Additional links to career services resources
Mentors
It is wise to make use of mentors to help guide you throughout your career. Mentoring is when a professional in academia or in another industry gives time, attention, insight, and advice to foster you in your career. Mentors help you develop social capital within an environment where you can then acquire the resources and support to develop technical and intellectual capital. It is not just about providing office space, but introducing you to the inner workings of an organization, providing advice on how to handle various situations, and teaching interpersonal skills. Mentoring involves two-way communication that can benefit both parties. Mentoring relationships can be from afar or in person, can entail regular meetings or even no meetings.
Be inclusive to get varied perspectives. Mentors can be inside or outside your field of study, be more or less experienced than you, and can include:
- Peers
- Your advisor(s)
- Professionals within the organization
- Professionals outside the organization
- Family and friends, colleagues at your hobbies
- Maybe even celebrities or famous scholars you have never met
Please contact Careers Beyond Academia staff to discuss how to connect with mentors, and reach out to the mentors who are listed in this LibGuide on the tabs for particular career paths: they are eager to talk with you. Do not ask them for a job; rather, ask them for advice and to tell you about their career and organizations they have worked for.
Mentoring Resources
The National Research Mentoring Network has loads of tools to connect with and become a mentor, explore how to enhance your mentoring skills, and to maximize your potential. Their many Career Development Webinars and videos in conjunction with iBiology provide tips.
Organizing Your Search
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The 2-Hour Job Search by Call Number: Management Library Reserve HF5382.7 .D35 2012ISBN: 1607741709Publication Date: 2012-03-06A job-search manual that gives career seekers a systematic, tech-savvy formula to efficiently and effectively target potential employers and secure the essential first interview. The 2-Hour Job Search shows job-seekers how to work smarter (and faster) to secure first interviews. Through a prescriptive approach, Dalton explains how to wade through the Internet's sea of information and create a job-search system that relies on mainstream technology such as Excel, Google, LinkedIn, and alumni databases to create a list of target employers, contact them, and then secure an interview--with only two hours of effort. Avoiding vague tips like "leverage your contacts," Dalton tells job-hunters exactly what to do and how to do it. This empowering book focuses on the critical middle phase of the job search and helps readers bring organization to what is all too often an ineffectual and frustrating process. -
Designing Your Life by Call Number: Management Library Reserve HF5381 .B7785 2016ISBN: 1101875321Publication Date: 2016-09-20 -
Get a Life, Not a Job by Call Number: ILR Library (Ives Hall) HF5381 .C25316 2010ISBN: 9780137058495Publication Date: 2010-03-05 -
So What Are You Going to Do with That? by ISBN: 9780226200408Publication Date: 2014-12-26Graduate schools churn out tens of thousands of PhDs and MAs every year. Yet more than half of all college courses are taught by adjunct faculty, which means that the chances of an academic landing a tenure-track job seem only to shrink as student loan and credit card debts grow. What's a frustrated would-be scholar to do? Can she really leave academia? Can a job outside the academy really be rewarding? And could anyone want to hire a grad-school refugee? -
Succeeding Outside the Academy by ISBN: 9780700626885Publication Date: 2018-10-17Not every PhD becomes a professor. Some never want to, but others discover--too late and ill-prepared to look elsewhere--that there's precious little room in today's ivory tower, and what's there might not be a good fit. For those leaving academia, or wanting out, or finding themselves adrift, this book offers hope, advice, and a bracing look at how others facing the same quandary have made careers outside of the academy work. All of the authors in this volume, as well as the editors, have built successful careers beyond the groves of academia--as freelance editors and writers, consultants and lecturers, librarians, realtors, and entrepreneurs--and each has a compelling story to tell. Their accounts afford readers a firsthand view of what it takes to transition from professor to professional. They also give plenty of practical advice, along with hard-won insights into what making a move beyond the academy might entail--emotionally, intellectually, and, not least, financially. Imparting what they wish they'd known during their PhDs, these writers aim to spare those who follow in their uncertain footsteps. Together their essays point the way out of the "tenure track or bust" mindset and toward a world of different but no less rewarding possibilities. -
What Color Is Your Parachute? 2018 by Call Number: Management Library Reserve HF5382.7 .B65 2018ISBN: 0399579648Publication Date: 2017-08-15In today's challenging job-market, the time-tested advice of What Color Is Your Parachute? is needed more than ever. Recent grads facing a tough economic landscape, workers laid off mid-career, and people searching for an inspiring work-life change all look to career guru Richard N. Bolles for support, encouragement, and advice on which job-hunt strategies work--and which don't. This revised edition combines classic elements like the famed Flower Exercise with updated tips on social media and search tactics. Bolles demystifies the entire job-search process, from writing resumes to interviewing to networking, expertly guiding job-hunters toward their dream job. -
Get That Job! by Call Number: Veterinary Library (Schurman Hall) HF5382.7 .K455 2017ISBN: 0998380822Publication Date: 2017-01-01 -
