Help

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Forums

Versatile PhD has two discussion forums: the Humanities Forum (Humanities and Social Science) and the STEM Forum (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). All members may participate in either or both forums, at will.

To start a topic: click "Add Topic" at upper right of the Forum page.

To reply to a topic: click "Add Reply" when viewing the topic.

To search: Advanced Search works best. Find Advanced Search at the top of the forum you want to search and follow the prompts.

To follow forum discussions by email, visit your profile, click Settings, then Notifications: Forums, Jobs and Other. All the email options are there.

Jobs

Jobs are posted for free by volunteers and are "PhD-appropriate," meaning even if a graduate degree is not a requirement, the job uses skills that are typically developed in graduate degree programs. Jobs are classified as appealing to HSS (humanities and social science), to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), or both.

To browse all job listings, click on "Jobs" in the navbar up top. The most recent listing is at the top. To see only certain kinds of jobs, such as jobs for your discipline and/or located in certain geographical areas, click "Filter" at the top of the Jobs page, tell it what to look for, then click "submit" at the bottom. To stop filtering, click Clear. You can change your filter by clearing, then filtering again in the new way.

To post a job, click "Post a Job" on the Jobs page. Job posts are much appreciated by your fellow members!

To receive jobs by email, click MyVPhD, click "Notifications" and scroll down to Other Notifications.

Members

The Members page helps you find other members.

To search for a specific member, either click on their picture if they have posted in the Forums, or visit the Members page, click on Basic Search and try to find them that way. You can also search for people you don't know (yet) by typing in any string of characters. That will unearth everyone who has that exact string in their profile.

Institutional subscribers can use Power Search to search by multiple criteria simultaneously. For example, you could search for humanities people working in business in New York City. Handy way to identify people to ask for informational interviews!

Subscription-Only Resources

If you are affiliated with a subscribing institution, you probably have access to the subscription-only resources on Versatile PhD. Students definitely have access; postdocs, faculty, staff and alumni may also have access depending on the nature of the subscription. Subscription-only resources consist of the "How to Break In" content in the PhD Career Finder, and the Power Search feature on the Members page.

"How to Break In" is at the right of every page of the PhD Career Finder. It contains:

Panels – rich, in-depth discussions of specific PhD careers, each career represented by 4-6 helpful, articulate PhDs/ABDs currently working in that career. These discussions took place on the VPhD site and are now archived for your benefit in the PhD Career Finder.

Hired – authentic resumes and cover letters that got PhDs or ABDs their first post-academic jobs, with clear, step by step narratives written by that person telling you exactly how it happened and giving you advice at the end.

Bio - fascinating first-person narratives by experienced Versatile PhDs who have been out of the academy for several years, describing their journeys into satisfying non-academic careers. These are not short, superficial stories: they are deep, detailed narratives that show how the person's career really advanced.

If you are at a subscribing institution, you can upgrade your account by logging in through a special link on your institution's website.