PhD Career Academy
Work With Don
Every program I run is built on the Career Decision Canon and follows the same sequence: the Inner Game before the Outer Game. The work addresses the causes of a stalled transition, not the symptoms.
There are no generic templates here and no motivational content dressed up as strategy. Whether you work with me one-on-one, in a cohort, or through your university, you get the same structured method: the six Laws of the Canon, the Purpose-Clarity-Strategy Transition Model, and the Nine Foundational Job Search Elements.
One-on-one
PhD Career Builder
Twelve weeks, built entirely around you: your background, your target market, your blocks, your strategy.
With peers
Group Cohort
The same framework and session structure, with a small group who share your background and your transition.
For universities
Institutional programs
PhD Career Builder for a cohort of your graduate students or postdocs, as a workshop or a 12-week program.
PhD Career Builder: one-on-one
For PhD graduates and postdocs who want a precise, individual transition. Every session is about you. Nothing is adapted from a group or generalized across a cohort. The Canon is taught in direct response to where you are, strategy is built for your target market, and your materials are refined against real feedback from employers.
The program runs for 12 weeks, with two sessions each week, on the same principle as a lecture and a lab:
- Knowledge Sessions (the lecture): structured teaching of the Canon’s Laws, the framework, and the sequence that governs an effective transition.
- Coaching Sessions (the lab): applying it to your situation: building your materials, clearing blocks, developing and refining your strategy.
Included: 24 sessions on Zoom (12 Knowledge and 12 Coaching); a recording and transcript of every session; presentation materials for every Knowledge Session; workbooks, templates, checklists and examples; and support between sessions.
Investment: we discuss it on the strategy call, once we both know the program fits.
Group Cohort
For PhD graduates and postdocs who want structured peer learning alongside individual attention. The cohort uses the same Canon framework and the same Knowledge and Coaching sessions as the one-on-one program. What it adds is a room of people who have lived the same experience. No time is spent on translation, and insights that might take weeks alone surface quickly.
Cohorts are deliberately small, so everyone gets real individual attention. They open from time to time; the strategy call is where we discuss whether the next one fits you.
Institutional programs
For departments, faculties, graduate schools and training programs. Most institutional career support addresses the Outer Game: résumé workshops, interview practice, networking events. These have value, but they are applied before the conditions that make them work are in place. PhD Career Builder for institutions addresses identity, direction and decision readiness first, then strategy and tactics.
- A 2- or 3-day workshop for a cohort of 24, with coaching for participants afterwards.
- Or the same material over 12 weeks, one knowledge session and one lab each week, where a unit’s schedule suits it better.
- Your program, your name. Organizations or units often give the program their own name, we are happy to accommodate.
Institutional conversations begin by email: don@phdcareeracademy.com. More for universities