
A Selection of Excellent Resources
Professional & Beyond Academia
Books
- What Color is Your Parachute? 2018: A practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers. Bolles, Richard Nelson. 2017.
- Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. “In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are.”
- Getting from College to Career (Revised Edition): Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World. Pollak, Lindsey. 2012.
- Now What?: The Young Person’s Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career. Lore, Nicholas. 2008.
Websites
- “Inside HigherEd”: Contains occasional columns about nonacademic careers: E.g. advice for talking to your adviser about nonacademic career plans. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2016/11/07/how-talk-your-adviser-about-your-nonacademic-career-plans-essay or preparing for the non academic interview.
- Lord, Alexandra, “BeyondAcademe”: This resource is primarily written for historians seeking employment beyond academia, but has good general advice on constructing resumes, CVs, and informational interviewing.
Resources for putting to practice BA/BS Degree
Books
- RealWorld Evaluation: Working Under Budget, Time, Data, and Political Constraints. Bamberger, John, Jim Rugh, and Linda Mabry. 2012.
- Great Jobs for Sociology Majors (Great Jobs Series). Lambert, Stephen. 2008.
Websites
- “Sociology at Work”: provides articles, videos, podcasts, graphics and other resources to promote the excellence of applied sociologists and to support the career planning of sociology students.
- “ASA Career Research Department”: Reports on jobs and careers, including topics such as academic careers, careers with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, the job market for sociologists, mentoring and networks, and work and family.
- “100 Reasons Not to Go to Grad School”: Mission statement of this Blog: “This blog is an attempt to offer those considering graduate school some good reasons to do something else. Its focus is on the humanities and social sciences.”
- “Top Jobs for Sociology Majors”: This website offers a list of possible jobs for sociology majors, as well as a detailed list of skills sociology majors possess and can offer to employers.
- “Chronicle of Higher Education”: Contains articles about non-academic careers and non-faculty jobs at universities, in their advice section.
Resources for putting to practice Graduate Degrees
Books
- So what are you going to do with that?: Finding careers outside academia. Basalla, S., and M. Debelius. 2014.
- Phd Alternative Career Clinic. USA. “This concise guide gives PhDs an insider’s look to employers’ thinking process and field-tested advice to help PhDs improve their odds of success when competing for careers outside academia” Chin, Jane Y. 2011.
Websites
- ASA’s “Trends in Sociology” site, see particularly the specific links to Employment and, separately, Faculty Salaries.
- The annual AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey is the largest independent source of data on full-time faculty salary and benefits at two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. Comparison charts for salaries by institution and rank for hundreds of institutions Latest edition 2016-2017.
- Polk, Jennifer, “From Phd to Life”: A comprehensive list of resources (including books, websites, podcasts, and etc.) for academics’ career planning outside of academia
- “#Alt-Academy”: is both an edited collection and a grassroots, publish-then-filter approach to networked scholarly communication. Compilation of essays and perspectives about “alternative” career paths for humanities and social sciences (Last update 2014).
- “Versatile Ph.D”: Online platform dedicated to non-academic and non-faculty careers for PhDs in humanities, social science and STEM. The platform exists since 1999.
- “NCIS” (National Coalition of Independent Scholars): Formed in January 1989 to facilitate the work of independent scholars.
- “Beyond the Professoriate”: This is an online networking community for graduate students and PhDs — at any stage of their career — to connect with like-minded people in a safe space to explore career options. It also offers free 7 day course online.
- “Alternative Phd: Thinking of Quitting”: Diverse resources, including blogs, personal accounts, and websites containing about quitting academia.
- “Academic 360”: Offers a comprehensive job search site for university jobs not limited to teaching.