Thank you for the lovely message satchi.

I think you have a good point, it's actually not a PhD problem, but a life problem. I may be into my post PhD life crisis... what is life? what is my purpose here?
I am also afraid of making mistakes in the sense that I don't want to wake up in 10 years only to realise that I have made the wrong career choice and what I've done is useless. Of course you can never know but still...

Thank you for your advices.

Note that I was quite pessimistic in my first post --- but I did like some parts of my PhD and I think I will see it as a good experience in a few years. But as of today it is too recent and it still hurts!

I did applied for quite a few jobs earlier when I had submitted the draft thesis. I got a lot of calls from recruitment firms but my mistake is that it was too early --- at that time I had not had my viva/corrections and did not want to accept a job before finishing completely.

Yes, I am also looking for jobs in other country/cities (eg NY, Paris, Singapore). I don't think I can live in smaller and "non international" cities... I am international and as of today still single and young (hopefully!).

It's indeed very possible that I am trying too hard getting the perfect job.

Hi,

I obtained my PhD last month after 4 years (MRes+PhD) of research at a university in central London. My PhD was in science/engineering/computer science applied to healthcare industry.
Although it was planned for 4 years, I didn't expect this journey to be that long and exhausting. Many times during my PhD I wanted to quit asking myself "what am I doing here?", but at some point as you know there is a point of no return. So I finished despite being many times bored and uninterested. I did manage to publish in a good journal and conferences though. My supervisor was this bored-of-life prof with tenure position with an impressive list of pulications/citations and had absolutely no interest in my research. He gave me very little psychological support and almost no technical support. I was basically on my own, though at some point I was working with a post doc who was supportive on those aspects so it helped.
I also did not like my lab too, which felt as a PhD slaves laboratory with about 10% of academics and 90% of postdocs/phds doing all the research.
Anyway, I came to a conclusion that academic research was not for me because it was making me anxious not having good results and/or not knowing when you will finish (because you actually never finish as this is research...).

At this point, I am looking for a job now, but I feel utterly confused about what I want to do for the next 5 years.

It seems there is also a point of no return here, in the sense that because I have obtained my PhD, I now want to value it at its best and despite having had a not so good PhD experience, I am still looking at post doc positions even if I know it is probably not a good idea. I fear that my PhD will not be valued in industry.

There are many job offers in industry, but firms are looking for either work experiences (that I don't have) or for a PhD in some specific subfield of my general PhD field that I haven't studied (though I am very keen to learn and work on). Also, because my PhD is in a quantitative subject with computational maths, I feel lost because I could potentially work anywhere where there is analytical reasoning. I see many job titles that I will never have the chance to try in my lifetime. This makes it harder to research a job when you don't know your job title. Last but not least, the fourth year of my PhD I was truly thinking it had been a huge mistake to have accepted a scholarship that is not indexed with the inflation. I am now in this position where I refuse to apply for job that are not so well paid, especially in big cities such as London.

To sum up, I think I am asking
- for advices from people who have transitioned from academic research to industry with no other experience than a PhD thesis that was not directly relevant to the position they were applying for.
- any career or self help books that could help regarding this problem