Successful start-ups are built on innovation and the ability to create new products and services by harnessing creativity, specialized knowledge, technical expertise and a sense of mission.  In other words, a perfect work environment for many with advanced degrees.  But there is more that may appeal to those in search of work in the start-up community: the value of research and science which is central to many enterprises; work environments which are nimble and often less bureaucratic; financial incentives; the focus on social impact; and, for some, free food.

We also know that smaller companies increasing drive employment opportunities in the US, as shown by the charts below illustrating (a) the distribution of employment in the private sector by firm size (smaller firms are creating more jobs) and (b) the number of enterprises which are less than one year old (on the increase and at record highs).

A previous post on start-ups provides more perspective on the value of capital being raised to fund existing and new ventures — and career opportunities.

Within this environment, this week’s job feed includes a wide range of start-up and early stage venture opportunities in health, agriculture (agtech), financial (fintech), education technologies and schools, electronic scooters, neural analytics, child psychology, space travel, or within venture capital and consulting firms that focus on specific industries such as medical technologies.

This is a promising area of work for PhDs.  Get started.

HSS

Regional Director, Government Relations, Skip Scooters

Senior Industrial Organizational Psychologist, Pymetrics

Research Manager, Samba TV

Manager, Instructional Design, Bridge International Academies

Director Marketing, Full Harvest

STEM

Data Scientist, Content Acquisition, Spotify

Head of Data Science and Analytics, Task Rabbit

Artificial Intelligence Product Architect, In-Q-Tel

Senior Data Analyst, Talent Inc

Turbo-Machinery Development Test Engineer, Relative Space

Vice President, Venture Capital, Boston Scientific

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact at smartjobs@versatilephd.com. 

We want to hear from you.

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

Consulting work is often an attractive option for those with PhDs and advanced degrees as it reaches across virtually all knowledge domains and areas of academic expertise, while utilizing a wide range of transferable skills.  Consultants are generally hired to solve problems and can be found in specialized firms (eg. Deloitte, Bain) or within companies or enterprises seeking a specific level of expertise.  And for those with a more entrepreneurial bent, starting your own consulting business may also be an attractive option, offering the potential for independence, higher pay, IP ownership and greater flexibility on the choice of work and clients to serve.

What makes a successful consultant?  According to one article a great consultant might contain traits such as attention to detail, ability to ask pertinent questions, having domain knowledge, knowing how to think before doing, and being resourceful. Another view from a McKinsey recruiting director underscores the high demand for those with advanced degrees who can also collaborate well with others.

For a more practical view of past individual PhD narratives for those who found work in the Consulting field after a PhD program, take a look at our PhD Career Finder.

Finally, our cluster of consulting jobs this week offers a wide range of opportunities across HSS and STEM, from learning to healthcare and energy. Start your research here; there is wide range of opportunities available and many paths to success in this field.

HSS

Senior Consultant, Finance Strategy and Transformation, Deloitte

Senior Consultant, Digital Strategy, Epsilon

Learning Consultant, Exec Comm

STEM

Senior Consultant, Energy Sector, Innogy Consulting

Director of Strategic Alliances, Consultant Health Care, Grand Rounds

Sr Research Consultant, Advisory Board Research, United Health

Consultant, Financial Improvement, Nexera

IT Cost management and Modeling Consultant, Grant Thornton

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact at smartjobs@versatilephd.com. 

We want to hear from you.

How relevant are your academic research skills to Facebook, the development of pharmaceutical products, or deciphering the infinite range of consumer choice and behavior?

Today’s market research utilizes everything from anthropology and linguistics to machine learning in an effort deciphering human behavior, and enterprises–private and public sector–employ a wide array of people across every imaginable specialty to get the work done.  This, of course, is nothing new.  InIncreasing demand for market research skills has been a theme we’ve highlighted in the past, and these trends in hiring continue to favor a level of research skills suited to graduate students and PhDs.

You can find a few useful data points on the general employment demand for jobs labelled under “market research” in a past post here.

As always, we encourage you to explore the SmartJobs page further and to extend your career search from some of the ideas presented here by contacting representatives of enterprises and industries to  knowledge of available options, and your network.  It’s never too early or late to start.

HSS

User Experience Researcher, Yext

STEM

Associate Director, Quantitative Insights and Strategy, Kelton Global

Senior User Experience Designer, Moody’s 

Senior Manager, NASH Market Development, Intercept Pharmaceuticals

Associate Director, Strategic Digital Analytics

Health Service Researcher, Mathematica

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact at smartjobs@versatilephd.com. 

We want to hear from you.

Does the prospect of working in the commercial world get you down?  Is your academic or life mission focused on changing the world, but not working for Google?  If so, perhaps a career in the non profit sector is for you.

There were over 1.56 million non-profit corporations registered in the US by 2015, a more than 10% increase from 2005. 75% of these corporations were public charities. In 2017 alone, private giving exceeded $400 billion.  Giving is often linked to solving problems–and the demand for PhDs and those with advanced degrees are an integral part of this work.

To learn more about the scope and size of the non-profit and charity sector, what sub-sectors are most active, and how funding trends point to new areas of development, you can reference the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

In terms of potential jobs and ideas, we look this week at a number of opportunities from career pathways to youth; working with at-risk communities and homeless services; managing programs for a wide range of causes and advocacy groups; researching and promoting rule of law around the world; or developing and managing programs for family programs, health, urban development, earthquake engineering, national parks, international rescue operations, and girls who code.  In other words, there are opportunities as diverse as the problems we face, and try to solve, every day.

HSS

STEM

Research Fellowship, Analysis of Cancer Surveillance, CDC 

Program Manager, Life Science Conferences, New York Academy of Sciences

Research Scientist, Reproductive Health and Family Formation Child Trends

Program Coordinator, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)

Senior Plant Scientists, Aero Farms

Program Manager, Life Science Conferences, New York Academy of Sciences

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact at smartjobs@versatilephd.com.  We want to hear from you.

The value of venture capital invested in a particular field is often a leading indicator of new company formation, future innovation, and employment.  In the life sciences, recent indicators suggest increasing career opportunities across many new and well-established institutions and corporations (see charts below).

PhD employment in this field is already significant, and growing.

More importantly, this STEM-driven field touches so many parts of the economy and society that a wide range of positions are available, from medical writers to marketing, research and lab opportunities, business roles, communication, intellectual property specialists, and teaching.

To learn more, check out the Bureau of Labor statistics site which provides a detailed overview of life science employment by geography, type of institution, average salary levels and other useful data, all providing a good starting point for any job research in the field.

We also collected a sample of diverse opportunities available to peruse below, as well as more life science jobs on our SmartJobs page.

HSS

Science Writer, Walensky Labs, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

Marketing Manager, NanoView Biosciences

Director, Regulatory Affairs, Kezar Life Sciences

Director, IP Counsel, Biogen

VP, Strategic Partnerships, PathAI

STEM

Project Team Leader gRed, Genentech

Research Scientist, Translational Sciences, Cell and Molecular Biology, Broad Institute

Biological Data Scientist, Axle Informatics

Senior Medical Writer, Institute of Medical and Nursing Education (IMNE)

Cancer Epigenomics and Computational Analysis, Hodges Lab (Post-Doc)

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact at smartjobs@versatilephd.com.  We want to hear to you.

Domain expertise and excellent writing skills can be a powerful combination in the job market, as represented in this week’s cache of open positions.  Specifically, we found significant demand for technical writing skills related to public policy across a range of specialties, from forestry to fiscal policy to medical human rights issues (see below).  Private sector, foundations and policy shops need PhDs and other advanced degree holders to solve problems and support advocacy across a range of issues–and those with applied research and writing acumen are well placed for meaningful careers in this field.

To learn more, peruse some information here as well as links to medical, science and technical writing associations.  Or check out median salary and related data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics including future estimated hiring trends (above the national average).  Finally, reading through specific job postings might also provide you with a better sense of what potential employers are looking for and want to achieve (as well as clues to how you might fit with the job).

HSS

Senior Researcher, The Boston Consulting Group

Senior User Experience Researcher, The New York Times

UX Researcher, Ro

Technical Writer, Learning Capabilities and Technology

Technical Writer, Veeco Instruments

STEM

Post-doctoral, Machine Learning in Drug Design, Pfizer

Senior Researcher, Physicians for Human Rights

Senior Medicaid Researcher, Mathematica Policy Research

Program Manager, New York Academy of Sciences

Technical Writer, Medtronic

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.

If there are areas of work you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact us at smartjobs@versatilephd.com.

We want to hear from you.

A few years ago an article in the Washington Post explained that there are more museums in the US than Starbucks and McDonalds combined. Many people, in disbelief, had to look it up. That statement is still true today.

According to the American Alliance of Museums, museums support more than 726,000 jobs, and for every direct museum job an additional job is supported elsewhere in the economy.  There are over 35,000 museums in the US supporting 850 million visits each year.  Researchers, curators, digital content specialists and executives are all well represented–including those with PhDs in the humanities and sciences.  Indeed, demand for museum employment is expected to outstrip demand for all occupations on average between 2016 and 2026 (see the chart below, you can read more here.)

Here is another perspective.  A quick search on the Department of Labor’s O*Net under “museums” lists several occupations, including:  Librarians, Curators, Historians, Art Therapists, Archivists, and Museum technicians and Conservators. If you click through any of these classifications a wide range of job titles, classifications and transferable skills are listed, providing possible clues for you in your employment discovery and search. One thing is clear: museums and libraries require a vast collection of knowledge and skills, from almost every field of study.

We have collected a sample cluster of jobs, and others posted on our site, to get started. We would also encourage you to use these examples as a point of reference for future searches in your field of interest. And if there are areas you would like us to explore in more depth, please contact us at smartjobs@versatilephd.com

HSS

Conservator, Smithsonian Institute

Slavic and European Studies Librarian, U Chicago

SVP, White House Historical Association

Senior Product Manager, Global Learning, Pearson

Research Assistant, European, Dallas Museum

Interactive Media Producer, Cortina Productions

Head of Teaching and Learning, Rare Books, Houghton Library

STEM

Post-Doctoral Research Scientist, Vertebrate Paleontology

Post-Doctoral Research Scientist, Natural History Museum, Dinosaur Institute

For access to more jobs as well as archived and searchable opportunities, visit our SmartJobs page.  Note: SmartJobs access requires a university affiliation. User-generated jobs are open to all members and can be accessed here.