How long did you find a job in academia or industry?

This isnt a useful question since it depends too much on the person and field (I had my fellowship lined up before I finished my PhD and then I turned down multiple permanent lecutreship offers during my fellowship due to hating the cities, and eventually chose one in a city I wanted to live in. How does this information help you?).

Here is some actual advice:

1) Discard the contract/internship lecturer ideas immediately, these are not real jobs. If you are smart enough to get a PhD (even in arts/social science) then you shouldnt be happy earning £30-40k with zero job security

2) Postdocs are comparatively very easy to find (fellowships and permanent positions are much harder). If you are finding it hard to get a postdoc then this is a huge red flag; either you are not a strong candidate or your field is far too competitive and I would consider industry

3) Whether you are employable in industry depends on your skillset. Unless you have a directly employable PhD (CS PhD in machine learning, Bio PhD in pharma, Econ PhD in <wherever>) then this means learning extra transferable skills. If your PhD is quantitative (physics, chemsitry, etc) then "learn to code" is the obvious and standard advice. But you cant just apply to industry jobs with a PhD on your CV and zero relevant skills learned from it

/r/AskAcademiaUK Thread