Career paths outside academia

Your academic qualifications open up an array of career paths outside of academia. Statistically speaking, only 1 percent of doctoral graduates are unemployed (according to a study by the German Federal Statistical Office from 2011) and almost 50 percent of all chairpersons of DAX companies have a doctoral qualification.

However, many people are unsure how to transition to a non-academic career. The Hamburg Research Academy offers a range of support in this area:

• individual career coaching, every fourth Monday of each month
• a regular, German-language information session on how to write a letter of application and curriculum vitae
• workshops on career development
• career programs for doctoral researchers in the final phase of their dissertation and postdoctoral researchers at all career levels
• a career day for those embarking on a non-academic career (planned for Fall/Winter 2019)

We recommend that you plan your non-academic career and start cultivating relevant contacts at an early stage. To give you some insight before you take these steps, we recommend you read the German publication on non-academic careers beyond the doctorate Perspektiven nach der Promotion. Berufswege außerhalb der Wissenschaft. Universität Hamburg participated in this study, published by the German University Association of Advanced Graduate Training (GUAT/UniWiND) in 2018. In Sections 1 to 13, you will find profiles of people with doctorates who have established successful careers outside of academia. Section 2 consists of interviews with over 40 companies giving their perspective on employing persons with doctoral qualifications.