Redesigning PhD Career Support Around Happiness, Not Just “Plan B”

When we talk about PhD careers, the conversation often narrows to a tired binary:
Academic career vs. everything else.

But what if we started somewhere completely different – with happiness, identity, and emotional well-being?

In the latest episode of the Career Leaders Show, CareerOS founder Albert Segura sits down with Heather Campbell, Head of Career Services at Central European University (CEU) and long-time specialist in doctoral career development. Together, they explore what it really takes to support PhD candidates as whole humans, not just future job titles.

Beyond “you probably won’t make it in academia”

The data is clear: most PhD graduates will not end up in academia. For years, many of us in career services have tried to use this as a wake-up call: “Your chances are slim; you need to look beyond the university.”

Heather’s experience?
That message doesn’t land.

PhD candidates are, by nature, determined and deeply committed. Telling them, explicitly or implicitly, “you probably can’t do this” doesn’t open doors – it often shuts the conversation down. Instead of sparking curiosity about other paths, it can trigger shame, resistance, or a sense of failure.

So Heather reframes the narrative completely. Rather than “academia vs non-academia,” she talks about career diversity:

• Careers as something dynamic, non-linear, and unpredictable
• The idea that your PhD can lead to many fulfilling futures – both inside and outside academia
• Preparing for an uncertain future, rather than defending a single, fragile plan

It’s not about pushing them out of academia. It’s about expanding the map.

The emotional weight of doctoral careers

One of the most powerful threads in the conversation is the emotional load that comes with PhD career decisions.

PhD candidates often:

• Feel like outsiders if they decide not to pursue academic careers
• Experience a deep sense of failure if they try for academia and don’t get in
• Struggle to separate their identity as a researcher from their identity as a person

Heather highlights something many of us intuitively know but rarely name: for PhD students, the PhD isn’t just a qualification. It’s identity work.

Universities, often unintentionally, shape people into “researchers” – not just workers who do research. So when a candidate considers leaving academia, or is forced to, it can feel less like changing jobs and more like losing a piece of themselves.

For career services, that means one thing:
We’re not just having “career chats.” We’re holding space for grief, belonging, and reinvention.

Why happiness belongs at the center of career education

Throughout the episode, Albert and Heather keep circling back to one “simple” but radical question:

What if we designed career education around happiness and fulfillment – not just employability?

Drawing from positive psychology, Heather argues that career conversations should explicitly address:

• What a happier life might look like for each student
• How societal and family expectations shape their ideas of a “good” or “successful” career
• The difference between careers that look impressive on paper and careers that feel meaningful in practice

Career services already do this implicitly. We care about our students’ lives, not just their CVs. But Heather suggests we need to name it out loud: talk about happiness, well-being, and emotional outcomes as legitimate, central goals of career development.

Lego, identity, and playful self-discovery

One of the most unexpected parts of the episode?
Lego.

Heather and her team have been experimenting with Lego® Serious Play® as a tool to help students explore identity and career stories in a more embodied, playful way.

By building scenes and characters with Lego, doctoral candidates can:

• Externalize their inner narratives
• Visualize how they see themselves in academia (or beyond)
• Play with possible futures in a low-stakes, creative format

It’s not about “gamifying” careers. It’s about giving students new language and metaphors to understand who they are becoming – and how their careers fit into their wider lives.

What this means for career services

If you’re a career leader wondering how to better support PhD candidates, this episode is a powerful invitation to rethink your approach.

Some of the key implications:

• Stop framing non-academic careers as a consolation prize
• Talk openly about career diversity, not “exiting academia”
• Build space for emotional conversations: identity, pressure, belonging, burnout
• Bring happiness and well-being into the core of your strategy, not the margins
• Experiment with creative tools that help students tell their stories differently

As Albert says in the episode, career leaders show up every day to support others’ futures – and we also deserve to feel proud, fulfilled, and seen in our own careers.

This conversation with Heather is a reminder that career development is human development. Nowhere is that more true than in the world of PhD careers.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Career Leaders Show with Heather Campbell! 
If you work with doctoral candidates – or you’d like to – this one is worth your time.

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