December
Success for PhD placements
Despite the very competitive job market, several PhD students from the Department of Economics have landed great jobs and are looking forward to promising careers.
From 2015 to 2022, 56 PhD students were enrolled in the department, indicating an average of seven per year. More than 95 percent of all PhD students complete their thesis.
So far 20 students have been placed in academic positions, six in government positions, and the remaining with industry jobs.
Although the labour market is increasingly competitive, in the last two years, six PhD graduates obtained academic positions in leading universities including the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, RMIT, Curtin University, and Xiamen University in China.
One of the department PhD graduates, Ben Grodeck, recently obtained a prestigious postdoc position. He will be starting his research fellowship in behavioural and experimental economics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany and at the University of Exeter, UK.
“I saw the postdoc opportunity on the ESA email list. I thought it would be a really good fit for me, so I applied. A number of factors contributed to getting the postdoc,” he says.
Dr Grodeck’s says his research topics (on cooperation and encouraging altruism towards future generations) aligned with his experience running economic experiments.
“As usual, luck and timing also played a crucial role. I feel very fortunate to have received the offer. I could not be more excited.”
While many of the Department’s PhD students achieved a good outcome in their job search, we observe that many of them found jobs through informal pathways or personal contacts. Some also choose to delay their job market entry and stay on at Monash Business School for a longer period.
PhD placement coordinator Dr Chengsi Wang believes more graduates would benefit from trying a more formal job market process, which is a standard practice in many good US and European departments.
The Department of Economics at Monash will potentially fund their trips for interviews (however, now most interviews have been moved online due to COVID-19).
“The process of going to the US to present yourself in front of numerous interview panels is very stressful but it is also fun. It is an experience you don’t want to waste,” he says.