The Versatile Ph.D. is a tool that helps graduate students interested in non-academic careers explore the extensive range of available options.
It offers assistance to students in the humanities, social sciences and STEM disciplines, and contains free content available to anyone and premium content available by institutional subscription. The University of Texas at Austin’s institutional subscription makes available premium content to all current students, faculty and staff with valid UT EIDs.
Features on the site include authentic application materials used by Ph.D.s to secure their first post-academic jobs. These materials include résumés, cover letters, additional correspondence, position announcements, curriculum vitae and narratives written by Versatile Ph.D. members explaining exactly how the jobs were won. These members are often available to answer questions and offer advice.
Visitors of the site will also find first-person career autobiographies in which advanced Versatile Ph.D.s describe how their careers evolved after leaving the academy, as well as panel discussions including small groups of Ph.D.s working in the same non-academic field who describe what their work is like and answer questions from users.