Top 8 Jobs that Will Add Weight to Your PhD

A PhD is challenging, and there are no doubts about it. But when you are trying to combine full-time research with a part-time job, or full-time job with part-time research - you get what many will call a fatal dose of work for any sane person.

Some people have already done it - making money while doing their PhD and adding real-world experience to the academic research they have undertaken. Finding a supportive supervisor is the key to the success of this endeavour.

If you are in a full-time job you don't want to leave because of your PhD or looking for study leave and financial support from your employer, you might want to convince your boss that your PhD can help in your professional development as well as benefit the business in the long run.

Otherwise, you can only look for jobs that can enrich your PhD experience and also earn you enough money to fund yourself during your academic journey. Here are some of the professions that suit the tastes and preferences of a doctorate student:

1. Teaching Job

Teaching is the most common and the best-paid option for a PhD student. However, teaching often comes with prep and marking, which eat up a significant chunk of your precious time.

Practically speaking, it is easier for PhD students to find teaching jobs. Universities find it a good way to cover their teaching responsibilities, and PhD students use it as a way to make money that they can use to pay their tuition fees or cover their living costs.

Teaching also allows PhD students to develop a range of transferable skills that they can use later in their career.

You learn the essentials of teaching - from marking the papers to learning the basics of different pedagogies, to running successful seminars and handling academic events.

You can add more weight to your teaching experience by developing specialized modules and teaching at different levels and different institutions.

Teaching also involves some amount of administrative work that comes with convening courses, such as filling out the students' assessment reports. So, you must be prepared for it.

2. Offering Assignment Help

Many PhD students would love to go back in time and help their past self. You can’t do that. But you can certainly help students who are in the same place now, where you were a few years ago.

You can work with a company that provides online assignment help or homework assistance online to undergraduate or graduate students. Here, you can help those who are struggling with writing an academic essay or a research paper or a dissertation.

When you work on assignments in your field for students enrolled in different colleges and universities across the world, you get invaluable exposure to various topics and different perspectives on a given topic.

You also hone your research and writing skills and become well-versed with different academic writing styles which can prove to be quite useful if you to join academia later.

Dealing with undergrads and grads give you a chance to show them why your subject is fascinating; this, in turn, reminds you why you fell in love with the subject or your research topic in the first place.

3. Consulting Job

Management consulting jobs require one to assess big-picture problems, break them down into smaller problems, analyze them using various quantitative and qualitative methods, and come up with possible solutions to the issues.

PhD students can apply their research and analytical skills to come up with creative and innovative solutions to the industry.

Mary Anne Kidwell, who did her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology, shared how she found exploring the business side of biotech and pharma industries an exciting career path.

You may read how she took a few business classes, did a few internships, and eventually became a management consultant by clicking on her name.

4. Starting Your Venture

When you have a great idea that can address the needs of an open and unsaturated market, there is nothing more satisfying than rolling up your sleeves and start up your own business. It is true that starting a new business while doing a PhD is not easy.

It is risky and highly stressful, and need a lot of hard work over the next few years. But the financial and personal recognition your new business can fetch are limitless.

If you are doing PhD in a technical field where you can get a patent for the product or process you have come up with, you may build a business around it.

Entrepreneurship can teach you some vital life lessons which your PhD cannot teach you directly. If your business idea is good, your professor or colleagues may become your partners or investors too - or offer you high-quality references that can help you in your business.

In the worst-case scenario, if your business does fail, the experience you learn from the whole exercise can help you in finding a good job once you graduate with the PhD degree. Your interviewer is likely to question you more about your venture, and the lessons you learned from it.

Being an entrepreneur and starting your own company is incredibly hard. Add to it the requirements of a PhD, and it becomes harder. But it is still do-able if you are ready to forget your sleep and entertainment for the next few years.

5. Online Tutoring

You love teaching and helping students, but you don’t want to compromise the time you spend on your PhD You are not sure if you can handle the rigours of a full-time or a part-time job with a full-time PhD In such a case, you can look for an ultra-short tutoring assignment that will only take 1-2 hours of your time every day.

Full-time PhD students often spend 12-15 hours per day to fulfil their academic and research requirements and other commitments. Online tutoring allows you to earn anywhere between $12 to $30 per hour – depending on the subject you teach and the experience you have.

Teaching high school or undergraduate students in your study area can be refreshing or even relaxing at times, and might not require you to spend as much time in preparation and marking as a full-time or a part-time teaching job.

If you don’t mind leaving your study desk, you may opt for face-to-face tutoring jobs too. As a PhD student once shared with me, “I loved being a tutor. I had a late-evening tutoring assignment where the family of my student often used to invite me to dine with them. Though I mostly refused the offer, I didn’t mind a break from the hostel food once a month.”

6. Assisting an Intellectual Property Lawyer

A PhD student in the field of Biotechnology or those who have technical expertise might already know a lot about intellectual property laws, such as laws related to patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Hence, they can excel as scientific advisers or technical advisers to law firms.

As a technical adviser, PhD students may be required to do ghost-writing for other patent agents or patent lawyers. In the US, anyone who has 30 credit hours in a technical field can sit for the patent bar exam. If they clear the exam, they can write, file, and prosecute applications related to patents and trademarks. However, they cannot practice law or offer legal opinions to clients.

If you are interested in the careers related to IP Laws, you may choose this line of work as a PhD student.

7. Writing Articles and Features

Besides writing assignments for other students, you can also use your scientific knowledge and technical expertise to write articles and features that appeal to other intellectuals of the world.

You can find several freelance writing and technical writing assignments only that are easy and offer a decent hourly rate of $20 to $30.

Writing a piece can be quite relaxing, and you can become addicted to it. As you build your writing skills, you can target high-quality scientific magazines and journals which not only pay well but also do wonders to develop your repertoire as a subject expert.

You can mention your most-liked articles and features in your resume later, and add weight to your PhD experience.

8. Editing and Translating

Textbook publishers often have opportunities where they need ‘subject experts’ to edit the textbooks they publish or translate the manuscripts they have.

PhD students can apply for contractual jobs they offer where they have to edit or translate a book in a given period – and work on it as and when they find the time (within the deadline).

These kinds of jobs suit best for students who are speed readers and have impeccable command over languages. When you get used to editing work, you will build the required skills and flair to write a thesis for your PhD that is error-free.

When you are looking to earn money as a PhD student, don’t go for any job that comes your way. You must act like an expert, analyze your options, and choose the jobs that can help you earn enough to sustain you through your academic years, and can become a part of your resume later.