If you’re looking to begin a job search outside of academia or thinking about your career options with a PhD in the humanities or social sciences, check out our recorded presentations from the 2021 Job Search Prep Camp for PhDs to prepare yourself for applying to jobs beyond academia. We provide an overview of exploring career options for humanities and social science PhDs and share specific advice for each step of the job search process. You’ll come away with strategies and tips to help you position yourself for your post-PhD job.
Exploring Careers for PhDs
This workshop will cover the four steps of career exploration for PhDs: reflecting and exploring options; networking and gathering information; professionalizing and gaining experience; and taking action and making decisions. We’ll also walk you through some of our most popular online resources from Career Services and beyond to help you navigate this process, including ImaginePhD, VersatilePhD, and the newest addition to Career Services’ digital resources, Aurora.
Demystifying Job Ads and Researching Employers
This interactive workshop will provide you with strategies to decode job advertisements in a range of career fields and research employers in ways that could help you prepare your applications and interviews. After our presentation, you’ll work together with other PhDs in breakout rooms to decipher job descriptions together and research sample employers. Participants will come away with strategies for reading job descriptions and identifying commonly sought skills.
Converting Your CV to a Resume
What’s the difference between a CV and a resume? How you do convert your CV into a resume? This workshop will walk you through the process of understanding the role of resumes in a job search and how you can tailor your document for a specific job and organization. In addition to best practices in content and formatting, we’ll also discuss how to optimize your resume for applicant tracking systems.
Telling Your Story in Cover Letters
This workshop will cover the basics of writing a strong cover letter, from how to structure your letter to what kind of examples to provide to tell your story. We’ll provide some examples of cover letter paragraphs for you to review and discuss in breakout rooms and talk through do’s and don’ts of good cover letter writing.
Acing Your Interviews
Making a good impression during interviews is crucial to ultimately landing a job offer. We’ll discuss what to expect for a behavioral interview, how to prepare answers for standard interview questions, and what kind of questions you can your potential employer. We will also have you practice answering one of the most common interview questions: Tell me about yourself!
Negotiating Your Job Offers
Should you negotiate a job offer? When do you negotiate a job offer? What can I negotiate? What if I don’t have another job offer to leverage? This workshop will cover all of these questions and many more to give you the tools and confidence to negotiate. We’ll also identify some action steps to take before an interview to help with negotiations, discuss what to do after negotiations are complete, and give everyone an opportunity to practice saying out loud something they would like to request in a job offer!
Announcing the Launch of Aurora at Penn
Join L. Maren Wood, PhD, Founder and CEO of Beyond the Professoriate, for a webinar on how to take advantage of Penn’s newest digital resource — Aurora, an eLearning Platform with on-demand, self-paced learning modules that allow PhDs and Postdocs to discover career options and methods to apply the skills acquired through their education. Penn students and alumni now have unlimited access to Aurora by selecting the University of Pennsylvania from the dropdown menu. Join us for the official launch of this brand new resource to help Penn PhDs explore and plan for their future careers.
