Professional Development Resources
Identifying and Translating Your Skills
- PhD Transferable Skills - List of transferable skills compiled by the University of Michigan's Career Center.
- Exploring Your Skills - An essay on identifying and broadening your skillset.
- Oh, the Things You Can Do! - How to reframe the skills you've developed in your graduate program for a non-academic context.
Résumés and Cover Letters
- Resumes and Cover Letters for PhD Students - Guide developed by Harvard's Office of Career Services. Includes examples of résumés and cover letters that effectively communicate graduate school experience in ways that are understandable to employers outside of academia.
- Transferable Skills and How to Talk About Them - How to translate your academic skills into workplace skills on your résumé. Includes a printable list of academic skills that translate to specific workplace skills and a short resume writing guide.
- Do You Speak Résumé? - How to translate your skills and experiences when writing a résumé.
Informational Interviews
- Top Tips for Informational Interviews - The value of informational interviews and how to navigate them.
- Try on Someone Else's Life - Rethinking informational interviews as "prototype conversations."
Enhancing Your Skillset
- How to Get Experiences Corporate Employers are Looking For - Tips on expanding your skillset while completing your degree.
- Transitional Work Experience - Gaining experience while finishing your degree.
- Owning Our Graduate Education: Preparing for Career Diversity - Two PhD grads discuss how they used their time in graduate school to gain new skills and experiences.
Resources from Professional Organizations
- American Historical Association - The AHA's career diversity initiative with resources to help historians prepare for a wide array of careers options.
- Modern Language Association - MLA's resource page for doctoral students in language and literature seeking careers beyond the academy.
- American Philosophical Association - APA's guidebook for philosophers who wish to pursue careers outside of academia, updated in 2016.
- Council of Graduate Schools - Resources, scholarship, and data compiled for the Rethinking Humanities initiative geared toward humanities grad students.
- Inside Higher Ed - The Career Advice section includes two blogs relating to careers beyond academia, Carpe Careers and Alt-Ac Careers.
Career Exploration and Development Resources from Other Universities
- Imagine PhD - A career exploration and planning tool developed by the Graduate Career Consortium for graduate students in the humanities and social sciences.
- University of Michigan - Resources for graduate students interested in non-academic positions.
- Columbia University - Resources for humanities and social science PhDs searching for careers in various non-academic fields (ex. publishing, cultural organizations, consulting).
- Humanists@Work - An initiative from the University of California Humanities Research Institute that includes a wide variety of career exploration and professional development resources, stories from graduates working outside academia, and a podcast.