Enhancing the career development and career preparedness of MU graduate students – across all disciplines – is a Graduate School priority. Across every stage of the graduate education timeline, students are encouraged to prioritize career exploration, development, and preparedness and consider careers in a variety of settings including academia, industry, nonprofits, and government.
Versatile PhD
PhDs go many places. They’re in academia, government, non-profits, industry. They use their skills, their knowledge, their agile minds, their expertise. They’re happy, successful, and feel rewarded by what they’re doing. But how did they get there? The Versatile PhD (VPhD) helps you answer that question.
VPhD is the largest online community dedicated to non-academic and non-faculty careers for PhD graduates in humanities, social sciences and STEM fields. Best of all, its free to MU students, faculty, staff and postdocs.
Before you can access Versatile PhD, you must authenticate with your MU credentials.
Once you’ve authenticated, you can then log in (or sign up) to access MU’s VPhD portal.
VPhD Feature Spotlight
Career Finder: VPhD’s Career Finder lets members access resources that detail experiences of humanities, social sciences and STEM PhD graduates who have embarked on non-academic career paths, informed by resumes, cover letters and narratives.
Smart Jobs: The smart jobs feature provides new career ideas and opportunities to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Smart jobs keeps an updated list of available jobs around the U.S. and provides easy access to apply for these jobs.
Power Search and Networks: Use these networking tools to search a database of over 95,000 active members, by name, discipline, employer, location, and more. Additionally search the volunteer-led meetup database for in-person support and networking.
Options for Success Course: Options for Success is a six-module course designed for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to identify career paths, understand how their degree is linked to the career and navigate the transition from student to professional. Course participants will assess their strengths, identify interests, build a network, learn to market their skills, and more.
My Plan: My Plan allows you to enter your anticipated date of graduation as well as the field of study or degree program you are in, and generates a personalized board of dated goals for your graduate journey. Each of the dated goals comes with a detailed objective and best practices on how to achieve them.
Forums and Webinars: Visit the VPhD forums and watch the pre-recorded webinars featuring experts in various career fields, resume examples, inspiring biographies, question and answer sessions, meetups, panel discussions to help you prepare for your transition into a career, and much more.
Document Review: by appointment
Students seeking feedback on their resume, CV, or cover letter may contact Dr. Laura Page for an individual appointment, offered in-person or over Zoom. Once scheduled, students should email the document in advance for review. The goal of the 30-minute meeting is to discuss feedback and suggested revisions: PageL@missouri.edu
Goin Global
GoinGlobal helps connect students to job opportunities both at home and abroad. The site includes links to H1B visa info and company lists for international students, city and country guides for more than 120 international locations, and cultural overview and job search advice for non-native applicants.
Professional Development Certificate
An opportunity for any graduate student to earn a professional development certificate* from the Graduate School by engaging with the gradESSENTIALS professional development program during MU graduate studies. Gaining a range of professional development experiences during graduate school will assist students in marketing themselves as well-rounded candidates as they embark on the job search, particularly in the exploration of diverse career pathways.
For requirements and steps for participation, contact Dr. Laura Page, Assistant Dean of Professional Development and Leadership at PageL@missouri.edu
*Professional development certificate awarded by the Graduate School will be non-transcripted, thus, no approvals are necessary.
Research Development Certificate
TBD
Postdoctoral Funding Opportunities
Click here for a comprehensive list of postdoctoral opportunities. The downloadable list is updated regularly.