Higher Education (HE) is a popular employment sector for doctoral graduates and as such one of the most competitive to get in to.
The postgraduate research programme is essentially designed to equip you for an academic career and can be viewed as a stepping stone toward one. It would not be surprising if your programme has set your job search towards an academic career in a lecturing and/or research position within a university. However, you may want to look beyond the obvious research and lecturing jobs. As academia modernises many opportunities and potentially fulfilling careers could be found within academic administration, staff training and development, careers support, student recruitment, knowledge transfer, research governance and research enterprise as well as traditional lecturing positions.
An academic career:
However an academic career can offer:
We would strongly recommend that you ask yourself the following questions to assess your motivations and commitment to a career in academia:
Explore the University of Southampton resources for research staff.
Careers, Employability and Student Enterprise has e-books available to view which you may find useful for planning a career in academia. Please see our Careers Resources and e-books webpages for more information.