The Versatile PhD helps postdocs envision, prepare for, and excel in non-academic careers. It is the oldest, largest online community dedicated to non-academic and non-faculty careers for PhDs in the humanities, social sciences and STEM disciplines.

Access the full content via your UW–Madison subscription here.

Discover interesting career paths

PhDs go many places. The PhD Career Finder is an interactive tool that lists and describes non-academic careers for PhDs in your discipline, with suggestions for how to prepare - all from the PhD perspective. Resources include examples of successful resumes and cover letters for each career path.

Consult the community

The threaded discussion boards enable you to get answers to your career questions either by posing your own questions or by reading previous discussions. There are also archived discussion panels in which PhDs working in non-academic fields describe their jobs and answer questions from members. The Versatile PhD community is special because of its richness of experience, compassionate tone, and privacy - nothing shows up in Google.

Network with successful PhDs nationwide

The 50,000+ members across the US and Canada constitute a rich resource for networking. Use the searchable Membership Directory to identify contacts in employment sectors that interest you and reach out to them to learn about their careers.

See job listings appropriate for PhDs

Members frequently post jobs that they feel are appropriate for PhDs and ABDs. The flow varies but seems to average about 50 jobs a month. Jobs can be viewed on the site or you can subscribe to email notifications of humanities/social science jobs, STEM jobs, or both.

How do I access it?

Thanks to an institutional subscription funded by the UW–Madison Graduate School, postdocs have access to additional content and features that basic members don’t get. To access the site's entire content, you must log in once with your NetID through this link and establish your account. After that, the site remembers you for a year as a UW–Madison subscriber, so you can log in directly to the site and still access all the content.