Blog

The After Your PhD Blog is a free resource with interviews from PhDs with industry jobs and career advice from an SEO Manager (formerly analyst) with a PhD. The text-based interviews are brief interviews that provide insight into the journeys of academics who made the decision to leave academia and pursue careers. Some of the careers already featured on the After Your PhD include:

  • Data Scientist
  • Educational Technologist
  • Content Designer

Share your experience and your story. My perspective is not enough. As more people leave academia, chances are you’ll want a faster way to share your story with folks.

How An Interview Works on After Your PhD

I’ll briefly interview you (whatever medium works for you, video, audio, or just text) and let you tell your story and help others in the process by sharing your story on the blog. I’ll edit the interview for brevity and clarity and try to reach as many people as possible.

Email afteryourphd@gmail.com with inquiries.

Recent Blog Posts

  • How To Use Effective Note-Taking In Your Professional Life

    Note-Taking in Graduate School When you go to graduate school, there’s one skill that you surely developed – notetaking. Note-taking can seem like a simple task that people do in an academic setting, but it can also be a valuable skill to enact in your professional life and help you pivot into a new fulfilling…

  • Why Should I Make a Career Pivot?

    Let’s face it, there’s no perfect time to pivot in your career. It’s not easy to make the leap from one drastically different field or even an adjancent field. Especially for academics, they can be caught up in semester schedules that often leave little time for the thought of career pivots. Career pivots take time…

  • After Your PhD is Back

    After a brief hiatus – I’m back to working on the After Your PhD website. If you didn’t know already, I’m Ryan Collins (PhD), the founder of After Your PhD. I wanted to become a film studies professor. However, reality soon set in and I pivoted into a new career path (SEO) after finishing my…

  • Embracing Self-Advocacy in Your Career Development

    Talking about myself used to be my greatest weakness. I was afraid that if I mentioned my accomplishments offline or online, it would be viewed as bragging. The stigma around self-promotion often makes folks feel uncomfortable advocating for themselves. We may fear that others will perceive us as arrogant or narcissistic, which could damage our…

  • Beyond Academia: How To Make A Leap To Industry with Matteo Tardelli

    Leaving academia is a pivot for some folks, and a leap for others. I spoke with Matteo Tardelli about his new book called “Beyond Academia: Stories and Strategies for PhDs Making the Leap to Industry.”  Matteo is currently a Consultant and Project Leader at PreScouter Inc. He completed his PhD in 2017 for Immunology and…

  • How To Stand Out in Informational Interviews

    When I started exploring careers outside of academia, my network was thin. That changed after I started scheduling informational interviews with people in careers ranging from, UX, data science, and digital marketing. I slowly began having conversations with folks across different industries and had a better understanding of the world around me. Informational interviews are…

  • What I Learned About PhDs With Fulfilling Careers

    “I’m so glad that I took this leap. I have no regrets, like zero regrets.I was stuck in so many misconceptions that are a lot of ways that I thought of academia and the non-academic world that were just false.“ – Dr. Ravit Dotan “I’m so glad that I took this leap. I have no…

  • What To Do After You Lose Your Job

    Author’s Note: This article is outdated (I’m currently a SEO Strategist), but there’s still truth in it. I lost my job a week ago. I was was SEO Analyst for a consulting company. However, I am not discouraged in my job search. Through the process I learned to be more confident in myself and the…

  • Trapped in Academia: An Anthropologist’s Job Search

    In the continuation of the sharing stories and experiences of PhDs on the job market, I spoke with Dr. Pranav Kohli. Dr. Pranav mentioned earlier in our conversations on LinkedIn about the feelings of being trapped in academia. These feelings are felt by many PhDs looking for opportunities inside and outside of academia. Dr. Pranav’s…

  • Why I Transitioned from Academia. Twice.

    My Chemical Engineering Path Going through school, my affinity for math and chemistry led me to a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering. When I started my first undergraduate fellowship in Brazil, my mom – a career professor at a traditional Brazilian university – always praised my academic fate. I confess that it wasn’t my first choice. …