Women in STEM struggling to find jobs after PhDs, 1 turns to social media to make ends meet

A photograph of a woman working on an equation. (ThisIsEngineering/pexels.com)

Looking back on the last year, Claudia Belliveau says she never thought she’d be sitting in her Montreal home, jobless.

After all, she graduated from McGill University with a prestigious PhD in neuroscience.

Belliveau explains that she defended her PhD on March 26, 2024, having already started job hunting.

“Then, the answer was, ‘Oh, you don’t have your PhD yet’ ... and then, here we are a year later, and I’m getting to the end of interviews, and they’re like, ‘Oh, but you still have no experience,‘” she said.

In a move to keep herself afloat (and entertained), Belliveau says she started using her PhD in a very modern way.

“I started my Instagram,” she said. “I share tidbits for how to get through grad school, or how to survive grad school, and now how to leave academia and hopefully find a job in industry.”

Through her honest reflections and witty humour, Belliveau’s humble following has grown to more than 89,000 followers.

“My account blew up right before my graduation. I started getting brand deals and sponsorships with different companies, which have allowed me to have an income in this time of not being able to find a job in a pharmaceutical industry,” said Belliveau.

The money she makes has allowed her to thrive, not survive, during a time that could otherwise be a financially headache.

She says she was influenced, if you will, by other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) creators – STEMfluencers.

“I’m using a lot of the talents I gained through my PhD trying to find answers for people, or trying to be resourceful,” she said. “I’m stressed that I don’t have a job, but I’m lucky that I have these other sources of income, and I can be a year without a job.”

In between being a content creator and looking for her dream job, Belliveau says she also does freelance scientific consulting and science communication, having started her own firm in 2022.

She also has an online store where she makes gifts for PhD graduates.

“I have to make my own doors,” she said. “I have to open my own future up to myself.”

Belliveau says she still hopes to plant her feet somewhere firm (and scientific) but adds she’s taking it one day at a time and pouring her heart into her own endeavours in the meantime.

“One year ago today, I had no idea I would be here, at all,” she said. “I assumed I would have a job and love it. So, I’m trying not to set expectations because I was really sad when I was coming up to this [one] year mark and still no job.”

Not alone

Belliveau’s experience isn’t unique; other women in STEM who have graduated with PhDs say they were dismayed to find the job market so limiting.

Though currently unemployed, Lilit Antonyan, says she’s always had a strong interest biology and genetics.

She gushes that she loved doing her PhD, and “would do it all over again.”

“But I would say it’s a bit frustrating, because I think you would expect companies or employers out there to know what it takes to get a PhD and appreciate that,” she said. “People with a PhD have a lot of qualities that can be used.”

Antonyan’s passion for the sciences led her down a path specializing first in bone fracture healing at the Master’s level, and then studying rare brain development diseases using stem cells for her PhD.

She defended her doctorate last November and has been looking for a job ever since, relying on her family to help support her through the transition to the workforce.

“I think when you just graduate from a PhD, you don’t exactly have the work experience they’re searching for, even though you have a lot of experience,” Antonyan said. “You’re not exactly what they’re searching for.”

Those words – “not what they’re searching for” – echo in Pascal Ibrahim’s mind also.

“I guess my title is neuroscientist, also science communicator, but currently unemployed,” she said, introducing herself. “I thought that doing a PhD at McGill, of course, is going to secure me a job immediately, but that wasn’t the case.”

Ibrahim recently also passed the one-year anniversary of her doctorate defence, “and I’m still looking for a job.”

“We finish our PhD, so excited to finally start our life and be financially stable and all of that, and then it just doesn’t happen,” she said. “It’s frustrating. It takes a major toll on my self-esteem, to be honest, making me doubt all the time. Am I actually good enough? Am I actually fit to work? What did I do? Did I make the right decision?”

She says she would like to see universities create internship opportunities and other programs specifically for students graduating with higher degrees.

“I enjoyed my time doing research and neuroscience, and the things we did were amazing, but eventually you get really tired,” Ibrahim said. “You are so consumed in that bubble of research and molecular biology, in my case, that you don’t really know, OK, what am I? What do I want to do as a job?”

The stats

When it comes to following students post graduation, McGill University pointed CTV News to its TRaCE McGill Project, which tracked the career outcomes and pathways of 4,500 PhD graduates – from a total of 5,523 alumni – between 2008 and 2018.

Of all the people followed, the project found that 60 per cent of McGill’s PhDs graduated in medicine, science or engineering.

Of those who found jobs, most work in academia (54 per cent), followed by the for-profit sector (28 per cent) and the government (eight per cent).

The McGill report did not mention the proportion of students who did not find jobs, nor how long it took the graduates to find employment.

Concordia University notes it also conducted a global impact project, following the career development and employment of 92 per cent of PhD graduates who earned their degrees between 2009 and 2019.

Of the 1,659 people followed from 29 different programs, the university states that “49 per cent of the located PhD alumni currently work in the post-secondary education sector.”

Additionally, 23 per cent found work in the private sector, six per cent work independently, five per cent are in the public sector, and three per cent are in the not-for-profit sector.

According to the survey, by one year post-graduation, the majority of PhD students had found jobs.

There was no data on those who had not found employment.

The university states that it is currently in the process of repeating the survey.

Montreal’s two major French universities, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Université de Montréal (UdeM), told CTV News they do not have data on the number of PhD graduates who manage to find employment once receiving their diplomas.