Why ‘Just Finish First Before Preparing for Jobs’ Is Bad Career Advice for Most PhDs

I entered my PhD program assuming I would not pursue academia as a profession. I wanted a doctorate because I was genuinely drawn to the questions in my field and wanted the time and training to explore them deeply. At the outset, the PhD was about learning and not job placement.

Over time, though, the culture of academia did what it often does. The implicit assumption that doctoral students should aim for tenure-track positions exerted its pressure. I eventually absorbed that logic enough to take it seriously, even as I remained clear-eyed about the realities of the academic job market. Rather than choosing one path over the other, I made a different decision: I would prepare for both.

Aside from my first semester (when I was simply trying to figure out how graduate school worked), I treated non-academic career preparation as part of the PhD, not something that came after it.

Part of this was pragmatic. Like many others, I wanted to minimize the amount of time I would be without stable employment after graduating. I had also watched what happened to many PhDs who didn’t secure tenure-track jobs quickly: piecing together multiple contingent faculty roles just to cover basic expenses, while slowly realizing they needed to pivot to non-academic work...but lacking the time, energy, or financial cushion to do so.

That observation stayed with me.

Because when preparation is postponed until after the PhD, it often collides with the most precarious period of a scholar’s working life.

Waiting until you finish your PhD may feel right...but it's not

From inside a PhD program, delaying career preparation can feel not only reasonable but virtuous. Doctoral training is time-intensive, poorly compensated, and culturally suspicious of anything that looks like divided attention. Career exploration—especially outside academia—is often framed as a reflection of not being a serious scholar.

There is also a widespread belief that the credential itself will open doors, or at least buy time. Finish first. Then you can think.

None of this is illogical. But it rests on an assumption that rarely holds: that the end of the PhD is a moment of relative stability. Oh, how it is not. Sadly, it can often be more unstable for PhDs than it was during their program.

How “after I finish” becomes a moving target

In practice, completion rarely arrives cleanly. Dissertations expand. Funding shifts. Teaching loads increase. Personal responsibilities intervene. Even when someone technically finishes, they often do so in a state of exhaustion and financial vulnerability.

At that point, career preparation doesn’t happen under calm conditions. It happens under pressure.

Non-academic job markets are indifferent to academic timelines. They reward familiarity with roles, language, and expectations—forms of knowledge that are difficult to acquire quickly when the stakes are already high.

What gets lost when preparation is postponed

When preparation is delayed until the end, it often becomes reactive rather than exploratory. People apply broadly instead of strategically. They default to roles they’ve heard of rather than ones that fit. They struggle to articulate their skills because they’re translating years of academic work for the first time under urgency.

Ironically, waiting in order to preserve options often narrows them.

This is how people end up stuck in contingent roles longer than they planned: not because they lacked ability, but because the conditions under which they were forced to pivot did not allow them to be able to do the important research, reflection, and legwork needed to help create a solid foundation to pursue non-academic jobs.

Prepare now, but strategy is key

Preparing for non-academic careers during a PhD doesn’t mean abandoning academic goals or applying for jobs early. It means acknowledging that academic labor markets are volatile and that postponing preparation concentrates risk at exactly the wrong moment.

Preparation, at its core, is about building familiarity before urgency sets in—about understanding what kinds of work exist, how your skills translate, and what tradeoffs different paths involve.

Strategy is key, and, as a PhD, this is one of the skill sets you are strong in. It's about using it slightly different manner than you have for your PhD work.

Next week...

In Part 2, I’ll walk through what this looked like in practice during my own PhD: what I paid attention to early on, how I used limited windows of time, and how I made preparation work under real constraints around money and energy. Furthermore, we'll explore how you can create a plan at any stage of your PhD to develop a strategy to prepare for a non-academic job—whether that is your top choice or a backup.

Looking for support in navigating your career journey? Let’s chat — it’s free, and you’ll walk away with actionable steps to start your journey.

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© 2026 Marya T. Mtshali. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.