Career Toolbox Preview #1: Find your Job Title

One way to explore your career options is to look at common job titles held by people with physics degrees and see what interests you. You might start with the list of common job titles below. The titles come from a survey of physics bachelor’s degree recipients from the classes of 2009 and 2010 who went right into the workforce.

You may need to do some digging and read profiles of people with these titles in order to narrow down what a specific title means—also note that the same title can mean very different things to different employers. However, this is a useful place to start because many people who go into the nonacademic workforce have titles like these, titles that do not contain the word “physics”.

Common areas of employment for bachelor’s-level physicists include engineering, computer hardware and software, research and technical pursuits, and education. But you can find physics majors in ALL kinds of professions—science writing, medicine, law, history of science, acting, music, health care, etc. This list is therefore neither exhaustive nor exclusive.

For more information on the common job titles of physics bachelor’s degree recipients and how to use this list, check out Tool #1 (“Common Job Titles”) in the Careers Toolbox at