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This page contains career and professional development resources for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. It is being continually updated, so please check often for new links to career resources within and outside of academe, help with the career search process, and professional development ideas and opportunities.

  Career Resources
Links to numerous sites with current job opportunities inside and outside of academe.
    Professional Development at MSU
Seminars, programs, and resources to help you get the most out of graduate school and become the teacher/scholar/professional you want to be.
 Professional Development on the Web
Links to oter interesting and helpful resources around the country for graduate students and post-docs, as well as links to resources on evaluating job prospects, applying for positions, and interviewing in academe and industry.
 		   Life as a Graduate Student and Post-doc
Think "it" only happens to you? This collection of articles, essays, and other writing by and about graduate students will help dispel that myth!
 Career Resources
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The Chronicle of Higher Education Jobs site is one of the best resources on the web for academic positions.
   The CareerJournal from the Wall Street Journal focuses primarily on management, executive, and professional positions, and has resources for switching careers, career management, and working with recruiters.
Academic360.com is a meta collection of discipline-specific, position-specific, and geographically-specific job resources. Many of the linked job sites are those of major disciplinary societies and associations. However, positions are not limited to academia.
   The Escape Pod for Humanities PhDs is an excellent site exploring career opportunities for Humanities doctorates. It is upbeat, but dead serious in its resources, tips and success stories. A great site for even non-humanities graduate students considering careers outside academe.
The Academic Position Network is the oldest academic job search site on the web.
   NextWave, sponsored by Science Magazine, is a comprehensive career development website for the sciences. It includes international job opportunities inside and outside academe, as well as postdoctoral resources.
HigherEdJobs.com has extensive position listings, a resume posting section, and a weekly e-mail service that announces new openings of interest.
   A Yellow Wood is another thoughtful website exploring career opportunities for Humanities Ph.D.s inside and outside of traditional teaching and academic tracks.
The Academic Employment Network lists available positions in colleges, primary, and secondary educational institutions for faculty, staff, and administrative professionals.

   Careers in Business offers resources such as descriptions of job categories in business and their requirements, books on business careers, and numerous links to business job websites.
     

 Professional Development at MSU

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Workshops, Programs, and Web-based Resources

The Certification in College Teaching Program cosponsored by The Graduate School and academic departments. It is designed to help graduate students organize and develop their teaching experience in a systematic and thoughtful way.

   Career Guide -- developed by The Graduate School. Contains information for graduate students on resume and curriculum vitae writing, job interviews, job searches, and more.
The Conflict Resolution Program focuses on helping graduate students and faculty develop effective communication and interest-based negotiation skills. The program is available in various formats for the MSU community.
   The Teaching Assistant Program offers a host of services to MSU graduate students, including orientations, workshops, and peer consultations on teaching, links to numerous websites related to college teaching, and college teaching career preparation resources.
The Writing Center offers graduate students numerous opportunities to improve their academic and professional writing. Graduate students can work one-on-one with writing consultants to improve their dissertations and theses; class and conference papers; and CVs, resumes and cover letters. The Center offers dissertation / theses writing workshops, and grad students are encouraged to form dissertation writing groups with Writing Center consultants.




   MSU Career Services and Placement Center
While the center is gear primarily to undergraduate career placement, many of their services can be of help to graduate and postdoc students.
  Professional Development on the Web
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The CV Doctor on The Chronicle of Higher Education's website personally critiques submitted Curricula Vitae and write a column with advice on improving your CV.
 		  From CV to Resume discusses the uses of both CVs and resumes, and explains how to turn your academic CV into a resume appropriate for a nonacademic job search.
The Ph.D. Interview Preparation Guide offered by the University of Texas at Austin is an invaluable resource for graduate students preparing to enter the academic job market. The guide reviews what academic employers are likely to be looking for in candidates, the kinds of questions they may ask, and how to prepare for interviews, as well as questions candidates may want to ask and what candidates should expect on an interview trip.
   Re-Envisioning the Ph.D. is a large scale research project housed in the University of Washington to support new paradigms and practices in doctoral preparation. 14 universities around the country are serving as demonstration sites for changes in doctoral education. The website has information about the project, the current status of graduate education and graduate students, promising practices in graduate education, and a selected bibliography of issues in graduate education.
Acorn Resume offers tips on creating effective resumes. This consulting firm also offers career counseling and writing services for job-seekers.
   The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a nonprofit foundation that offers fellowships and grants for research in the sciences, education and technology, and selected national social issues.
Professional Portfolios are a good way to organize and present work that will be of interest to academic and nonacademic employers. Ball State University offers a quick guide to creating portfolios, as does theProHealthConnection. More links to portfolio information sites will be up soon.

 		  The Chronicle of Higher Education's CareerNetwork Bookshelf reviews and links to numerous new books on academic and nonacademic careers.

Tomorrow's Professor Listserv is an e-mail listserv that delivers "desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year" The list cover a range of professional development topics, and you can access the archive of postings.

Anyone can subscribe to Tomorrows-Professor Listserv by sending the e-mail message "subscribe tomorrows-professor" (without quotes) to: [email protected]

  		 

   




  Life as a Graduate Student / Post-doc   Back to Menu 

Getting the Most Out of Your Graduate and Post-Doc Experience

The Spotlight Archive of articles on the Chronicle of Higher Education website has numerous columns about job searching, the doctoral experience, and life in higher education.
 		  How to Be a Good Graduate Student, by Marie desJardins, looks at the research process, the advisor-student relationship, becoming part of a research community, and well-being issues for graduate students.
Myth Busters, from the book, So what are you going to do with that? Explores 5 myths about life in and after graduate school, and the kind of work PhDs can do in the business world.