In terms of employment?

I am coming to the end of my PhD journey and have been submitting the odd job application over the past few months. I am about to start making applying for jobs my new full time job. Had a couple of interviews recently, both unsuccessful (was close with the last one apparently).

I was just curious really as to where you guys wound up post-PhD?

I did a humanities/social sciences PhD. I decided not to apply for post-docs etc because my heart was not in academia, I really couldn't compete, also thought jumping ship now (28) rather than after several postdocs would be better. I 'found' market research and got interviews at Research Assistant/ Graduate Exec/ or (full) Executive levels but did not get anywhere, quite poor performance in interviews, though more particularly because i couldn't convince them I could work to tight deadlines (3 month projects rather than 3-4 years). So, I have been volunteering 1 day a week with the Citizens Advice Bureau as a Research and Campaigns Coordinator for my local office. More recently I have considered school teaching. I did alot of teaching at Uni (very different of course!). I have been applying to junior support positions with the idea of gaining experience to consider whether it is a viable path (and if it is, experience for PGCE), recently had one interview for a 'Graduate Learning Mentor' (abysmal pay, c12-13k). Currently have a placement in a primary school, looking to get one at Secondary as well. I have started Private Tuturing, agencies love PhDs
I have heard other people say they get turned down from non-academic jobs because they are 'overqualified'. I have found this not to be the case with me. I have had quite a number of interviews with the Civil Service's telephony team (call centre), and an interview for a job I did back during A levels.
Although i said at the beginning I was not looking at staying in academia, i did have a flutter on 2 or 3 positions, chosen because of their applied nature and thus could help me move away from academia. One was at Cambridge Uni, got an interview, but I could not comprehend an important question, could't understand it and did not give a confident answer. So that went up in smoke although a tale to tell in the future

What a great question!

I did a social sciences/cultural studies PhD. About two months before I submitted I began considering alternative career paths, particularly market/social research with an eye on the social research aspect. I ended up joining a recruitment agency in that field but sadly that never went anywhere. I too fluttered on the academia aspects as I just wasn't sure. I joined a market/social research org and through linkedin, I ended up putting my hand up to do a pro-bono applied social research project, with a view to start thinking about getting into the industry.

What happened though, was I was also teaching at my university at this time, submitted PhD, and was the chief examiner for a major unit that I was handling all on my own. End of November as I was about to go do the applied social research project, my PhD results came through (pass very very minor corrections from one examiner). I was then asked if I'd be interested in a teaching/research position so I said sure and sent off my CV, then went to do the project (Had to drive to a different state and stay there for a week).

During that time while I was completing that project with a mentor and my eye on thinking about doing social research, I was offered a teaching and research position at my university on a one year full-time salary contract. I took the position because I thought "I'll give it a go and I do love teaching.' I finished the applied social project as well.

Took up the position, was asked to turn applied social project into a potential journal article as the data was quite good and innovative, then about 5 months in a research only 2.5 year contract (kind of a postdoc if you will on a major ARC discovery project) popped up at a research centre I had my eye on for a few years.

Ended up applying, interviewing and getting the job, negotiated four days a week so I could continue working at my teaching and research role one day a week to see out my teaching obligations, as this role would start in the middle of the semester. So now I’ve been at my research centre for over a year now, and even though I’m actually getting less money than I did at my old University, I’m getting a heap of experience I wasn’t getting, in particular getting publications etc out.

You might be wondering, what on earth did the applied social research project have to do with anything? Well, because the project was dealing with a particular topic that this major ARC project is dealing with, that gave me some extra experience they were looking for, and because this particular research centre does a mixture of theoretical, cultural, quant/qual and applied research, I had a strong background in those areas. That little project that I did just to get some extra experience, I was able to publish in a good high impact journal with my mentor as well.

For me, I’m still not 100% sold on Academia but I’m giving it a go. I’ve been really lucky in that I had a heap of teaching experience (tutoring, lecturing, unit development/coordination, chief examination) and really needed to get my research experience up. But I might not stay, and have back-ups in place that including teaching, project management, community development and applied social research.

My advice here is that do volunteer work and take on pro-bono work once in a while when you can, as that might lead to other things. And depending on your PhD, think about what other areas you can explore if Academia is just not where you want to be, project management is a great one, technical writing, if you did community stuff then community development, applied social research, etc.