Didactic

Over 50% of research degree graduates exit academia on completion of their degree. The majority of the
graduates who stay face a future of insecure work and time limited contracts. What can you do now to
prepare yourself for your future career? What options are available to you and how should you go about
the job search? More importantly, how are you going to make a living out of your research skills now and
into the future, while facing conditions of uncertainty? In this lecture, Associate professor Inger
Mewburn from ANU outlines the research showing the demand for researchers outside and helps you to
think about how you can plan, now, for your future career - whatever it might be.
Speaker bio
Associate Professor Inger Mewburn has specialised in research education
since 2006. She is currently the Director of Research Training at The
Australian National University where she does inter-disciplinary research
training and research on student experience and employability. Aside from
editing and contributing to the Thesis Whisperer Blog, she writes scholarly
papers, books and book chapters about research student experiences, with a
special interest in employability and digital transformation. You can find out
more about Inger and her work on her Linkedin profile, Amazon author page,
Google Scholar and OrcidID.

You can download a high

resolution picture of Inger here
(103 Mb)
 The Hidden job
Market for PhD
Graduates
(and what you can
do about it)

Associate Professor Inger Mewburn

Director of Research Training, ANU
Google: ‘Thesiswhisperer’
People have been
worried about the
PhD as a qualification
for academia for a
long time.

Dale, E. (1930). The Training of Ph.D.'s.

The Journal of Higher Education, 1(4),
198–202.
 Is the situation
really this bad?

Source: The Scientific Century’ report, from the Royal Society.

Data represent career patterns in science in the UK.
 Yes, there are “a lot more people out there with PhDs”...

From: “Advancing Australia’s knowledge economy: who are the top PhD employers” (McCarthy and Weink, 2018),

… but, there are also just more

people.
Australian graduate
destinations survey 2018
shows that half of all
graduates are employed
outside universities.

Only 30% of graduates

are employed inside
Australian universities
(and most are on
precarious contracts)
The PhD is still an ‘elite’ qualification.

1.17% of
Australia’s
population

From: “Advancing Australia’s knowledge economy: who are the top PhD employers”,
If current trends continue, there are likely to be less
PhDs per head of population in Australia’s future.

HDR commencements by discipline. Graph by Nigel Palmer, using Australian Department of Education data, 2018
 Skills not necessarily developed during the PhD Skills developed by doing a PhD

What do
academic
employers
want?
Pitt, R., & Mewburn, I. (2016).
Academic superheroes? A critical a
nalysis of academic job descriptio
ns.
Journal of Higher Education Policy
and Management, 1–14.

A content analysis of academic

job ads guided by the Vitae
researcher development
framework (RDF)
Lecturer in Psychiatry 0.3 Lecturer in Marketing, full time
ESSENTIAL ESSENTIAL
1.A medical qualification recognisable in Australia and a PhD and experience in the field of psychiatry or a 1.A PhD in an appropriate discipline by commencement of appointment.
relevant discipline. 2.A capability to undertake research that has been or is of a standard that it will be published in high quality
2.Fellowship of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists or in advanced stages of obtaining research outlets such as peer reviewed conference proceedings, journals, chapters in books and books in the
same (i.e. no remaining hurdle requirements); or an equivalent postgraduate clinical qualification and Marketing discipline.
experience in psychiatry that would meet the eligibility criteria for Fellowship of the Royal Australian and New 3.An ability to teach effectively at undergraduate and graduate levels, preferably including experience in
Zealand College of Psychiatrists. teaching large classes in Marketing and possibly Management subjects.
3.A record of quality research in the discipline of psychiatry leading to publication, with the ability to publish in 4.A demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and collegially within an academic unit.
high impact journals.
4.Demonstrated expertise (knowledge and experience) in Psychiatry. DESIRABLE
5.Demonstrated excellence and expertise in clinical teaching practice and ability to undertake teaching in a 5.Being a productive member of research and/or teaching teams.
higher education setting. 6.Capability to undertake effective supervision of research higher degree students, honours and masters.
6.Excellent administration skills that reflect an understanding of the organizational requirements.
7.Effective organisational skills to plan and organize work to meet competing deadlines and ability to work
independently with minimal supervision, showing initiative and flexibility
8.Demonstrate an ability to listen to others, actively contribute to the team and demonstrate flexibility in
adapting to team priorities
9.Demonstrated capability to develop an effective professional relationship with all levels of medical
practitioners and other health professionals in hospitals and the community.
10.An understanding of the needs of medical students of all backgrounds, and willingness to counsel students
and provide academic feedback.

DESIRABLE

A comparison of
11.Completion (or evidence of work towards substantial completion) of a research higher degree in psychiatry
or an appropriate discipline.
12.Specific research experience in mindfulness training in clinical or non-clinical populations.
13.Experience or training as a mindfulness training facilitator, ideally in either Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy or both.

two Level B
positions at the
same institution…
Lower Pay

You are expected to be more

‘well rounded’ as you become
more senior.

BUT, given a majority of entry

positions are at a B...

You will need more ‘ancillary’

skills than you might think to be
competitive.

In particular, communication,
budgeting and teamwork skills.
Higher Pay
What about
non-academic
research job
opportunities?
What about Australia?
‘Industry’ (purple) looks like this:

From: “Advancing Australia’s knowledge economy: who are the top PhD employers”,
What about Australia?
Government and NGO (green) looks like this:

From: “Advancing Australia’s knowledge economy: who are the top PhD employers”,
How do you find these non-
academic jobs?

Most are effectively hidden.

80% of employers who are

looking for a researcher do not
use ‘PhD’ in the ad.
We set out to find out the nature
and extent of this hidden job
market.
We used ML-based NLP methods to train
a machine to ‘see’ PhD-shaped jobs in a
large dataset supplied by seek.com.au

We found that 80% of job ads for

researchers do not use ‘PhD’ as a
keyword.
 Administration and
Truck drivers and management
support personnel Innovations, such as big data
techniques, 3D printing,
machine learning and AI
applied to industry problems

We looked at the distribution curves for

each industry and saw new research
intensive jobs emerging.
There are a lot of suitable jobs - perhaps
 Each year we plan to put out a report listing the number of
jobs suitable for PhD graduates in each occupation cluster.
The next one will be released on Postac.com.au on the 10th
of December

Occupation Nerdiness Ranking Range Number of jobs ranked as Percentage of all jobs listed in this
highly research intensive occupation that are highly research
(at seven or above on our intensive.
10 point scale)

Media Professionals 3-9 1393 28%

Accountants, Auditors and Company Secretaries 3 - 10 11783 31%

Financial Brokers and Dealers, and Investment 3-9 1851 34%
Advisers

Human Resource and Training Professionals 3-9 3638 17%

Information and Organisation Professionals 3 - 10 21619 62%

Sales, Marketing and Public Relations Professionals 3 - 10 8697 40%

Architects, Designers, Planners and Surveyors 3-9 2774 21%

Engineering Professionals 3 - 10 8018 26%

Natural and Physical Science Professionals 3-9 1617 22%

Miscellaneous Education Professionals 3-8 261 8%

Health Diagnostic and Promotion Professionals 3-9 1351 11%

We will look for interesting patterns. For example,
there were far more jobs suitable for PhD
graduates in marketing and communications than
science in 2015.
What skills are non-academic employers looking for?
Lower Pay

Content of non-academic job ads mapped

against the RDF - what a ‘PhD shaped’
Higher Pay graduate looks like for industry.
Our new model of the
ideal non-academic
researcher challenges
the ‘transferable skills’
discourse.
 The PostAcTM (App. No. 1872576) Project Team

Dr Will Grant, A/Prof Hanna

expert on science Suominen, expert
communication on Natural
Language
Processing and
machine learning

A/Prof Inger Mewburn,

scholar of research
education.
We’ve made our algorithm
into a learning platform
called ‘PostAc’, which
makes the otherwise hidden
PhD shaped jobs visible.

The platform enables you to

explore your research job
options while you are still
studying and make decisions
about how to invest your
(remaining) time at Uni.
PostAc University is
available now on:

www.postac.com.au

PostAc will be available

to other universities in
Australia as a
subscription service.

Email:
postac@anu.edu.au for
more information.
Our research is about Employer’s
latent desires...

This does not mean they

necessarily want to hire you.

In fact, there’s some evidence to

suggest that some actively don’t
want to hire PhD graduates.
Is it true that
those in charge
don’t know
talent?
Reasons for not hiring PhD grads
Not the right experience / no
experience in the exact area of need

They think you are just marking time

and probably leave as soon as an
academic job comes up.

Previous PhD graduate hires were not

a good ‘cultural fit’ in their organisation.

Think you will want too much money (!)

Should you leave your PhD off your CV?
Pros: May help you get shortlisted if employer is prejudiced against
recent grads

Cons: Explaining the ‘gap’ in your CV. Some employers will see it as
dishonest.

Strategies people use to ‘disguise’ or minimise the PhD:

● Framing the PHD as an outcome of a project

● Framing the PHD as a ‘hobby’ that happened alongside other work
● Talking about the skills and expertise first, leaving education
section last
● Don’t mention it in the cover letter, bury it way down in the CV
Recommended next steps:
If you have access through your university, go to postac.com.au
to explore your job options. Here’s a video of
how to search using the PostAc tool.

Visit the Careers centre for personalised counselling and advice,

including interview techniques.

Register with a recruiting firm in your target area and have an

interview with a consultant if possible.

Access as many ‘extra’ courses as you can while you are still
here - especially technical, communications and business skills.

Experience! Look for opportunities to intern, shadow or do work

experience in your target area - the earlier, the better.
Further reading

If you want to be an academic: my book! “How to be an academic”

Latest Australian Report: “Who are the top employers of PhD graduates?” (uses
Linkedin data)

There is a LOT of crappy advice out there. Here the two best books for PhD
students about how to get out of academia, which I recommend without hesitation.

“So good they can’t ignore you” - Cal Newport

Navigating the path to industry - MR Nelson