Ask a Career Consultant
Hi there! Every week, the Career Development Team for Researchers at the Office of Career and Professional Development answers an anonymized career development question from the UCSF community. You can also visit the archive of all of our past columns. To submit your own question, email it to [email protected] with the subject line 'ASKOCPD.'
A PhD student asks—
I'm getting stuck looking at different career options. I did your MIND program last year and decided I’m not going to pursue a faculty position, but I’m having a much harder time deciding what I am going to do. Nothing I look into feels completely right, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t had a chance to really try it out? Half the time, as I learn about a job, it just makes a different job I didn’t know as much about sound relatively more appealing. I only have a little over a year left in my PhD, so I’m feeling a lot of pressure to figure it out.
Allow me to take that pressure off of you—you will never be completely done with career exploration! So you certainly don’t have to worry about finishing in less than a year ;) There is a somewhat mythical expectation that you should choose a career and then do that career for the rest of your working life, and that the time to make that choice is now, at “the end of your training”. This may have been true at some point in history but isn’t how most career paths work now. Most people now have multiple careers during their working life, so what you choose to do next does not need to be a forever choice. Plus, in most professional contexts it is extremely common for people to change jobs every few years, even if you are staying in the same general job area, so you don’t need to land the perfect job straight out of your PhD. Also, your training isn’t over! Even if you know where you want to end up, it’s rare for that to be something you can do straight out of your scientific training. Each successive job experience you have will prepare you for (and help you continue to explore) what you want to do next.
So instead of finding the perfect job, what you need to figure out is what roles would be a good fit for you right now. In your next role you will learn many things you do not know now, plus you will continue to evolve as a person, and from there your career exploration will continue so you can keep moving in a direction that’s right for you.
-Ray Care, Program Director, Career Development Team for Researchers