Question: what kind of career options can you take after your phd?

Jen Gupta answered on 16 Jun 2011:

There are lots of careers I could have after I finish my PhD. Obviously a lot of people who do PhDs want to have a career in research. After finishing my PhD I would have to do a series of “post-doctoral” jobs – these are research jobs that are normally 2-3 years each and can be anywhere in the world! I have friends doing post-doc jobs in Chile, Sweden, Germany and lots of other places at the moment. Hopefully after doing a few post-doc jobs I would then get a permanent job as a lecturer at a university where I would still do research but also have supervise PhD students and teach lecture courses at the university. After long enough as a lecturer I would hopefully become a professor!

Not everyone gets to do the jobs I described above though. Some people find during their PhD that research isn’t for them, other people don’t want to move jobs (and potentially countries) every few years to do post-doc jobs. Also there aren’t as many post-doc jobs as PhD places and even fewer permanent jobs so even if you want to stay in research you might not be able to. But doing a PhD means that you can do loads of different jobs as well – I know people who have become bankers, teachers and computer programmers. I think I would like a job where I can do some research but also spend some of my job doing things like I’m a scientist get me out of here and going to schools to talk to pupils about science. I’m still young enough that I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life!