You’ve had enough: You’ve tried as hard as you can yet can’t find a good-enough job in higher education. (You mean, you don’t want to continue driving 30 miles to a campus on which you can’t park to teach three classes a week for 15 weeks to a group of underprepared undergraduates, for which you are paid a total of $5,000, with no benefits? Where’s your dedication to The Cause?) ;-)

What the hell do I want to be when I grow up?

It’s often scary. By the time that most aspiring academics have finished their doctorate and spent a year or three trying to land a sustainable position, they’re around 30, when many of their peers outside of academia are in full career flower: six-figure-income, power and influence, and a job title their parents just love to brag about.

And there you are, still fumbling around, toting a copy of What Color is Your Parachute or the results of the Strong Interest Inventory or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Here are some other ways to figure out what the hell you want to be when you grow up, even if you’re already supposed to be a grownup:

— Check the Web sites of your professional organization and that of the doctoral program from which you graduated. They sometimes contain a list of nonacademic careers that people have entered with your degree.

— Attend an alumni event at which people from your doctoral program will be in attendance.

— On an online discussion group in your field, post a query such as, “Outside of academia, what sorts of careers are people entering with a Ph.D. in insert your field?”

— Google terms such as careers philosophy or Ph.D. careers “molecular biology.”

— Visit the exhibit area at professional conferences in your field. Many of the companies, non-profits, and government agencies with booths there employ doctorate holders. Those booths are often staffed by senior people, whom you’d otherwise have a hard time gaining access to, yet at a conference, are available to you in quantity.

One approach to a booth is to scan the written material on the booth’s table, then approach its staffer. Explain the sorts of things you might do for that organization and ask if that might be of interest. Then ask if the person could imagine other ways the organization might use someone like you. If you find a hot prospect, you might invite the person to a meal or a drink. That request might be too forward under normal circumstances, but at a conference, if it feels right, it’s probably an appropriate request.

— Browse annotated lists of careers. For example, there’s the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which comprehensively profiles 250 careers. Or consider (Warning: bias-alert here!) my misleadingly titled, Cool Careers for Dummies, 3rd Edition (Wiley, 2007), which offers brief, more subjective profiles of 500 careers, each with a recommended website or book for more information. The book also contains “The 35 Most Revealing Questions,” which also may help you home in on the right career choice.

Landing the job.

There are four major ways to land a job:

— Answer ads. An easy way to sort through literally millions of job ads is to visit http://www.indeed.com and http://www.simplyhired.com. Also, your professional association and other field-specific Web sites may list non-academic job ads. For a collection of general and field-specific sites see: The Riley Guide’s Job Site Directory.

Unless the ad gives you reason to do something else, the guts of your cover letter should consist of two columns: On the left side, list the job requirements stated in the ad; on the right side, describe how you meet that requirement.

— Recruiters/headhunters. Two ways to find on-target ones: * Use an online database. An annotated list of them is at: The Riley Guide’s Recruiter Directory..

* Contact the human resources department at your most desired employers and ask, “When you use a headhunter to fill a position such as (insert your target job.”), who do you most often use?

— Direct contact. Make a list of 25 employers you’d like to work for, whether or not they’re advertising an on-target job opening. Identify one or more people at each organization with the power to hire you. Write a brief letter that highlights the elements of your background likely to impress that employer. Sample: “I’m a Ph.D. in psychology, with special expertise in issues faced by people in Generation Y. I am skilled at ethnographic research and in explaining complicated concepts to lay audiences. If you think I might be of help to you or if you’d be kind enough to offer some advice as to where I should turn, I’d really appreciate hearing from you.” Usually, your letter can be relatively generic, but you should include one customized paragraph explaining why you’re choosing to write to that employer.

— Networking. Make a list of the 50 people in your network most likely to introduce you to someone who could hire you for your target job. You say you don’t know 50? Remember that people from your alma mater, your LinkedIn or Facebook contacts, your friends and relatives, even your hairdresser might help — they all know lots of people. Email or phone the 50, asking if they know someone at one of the above 25 employers who you should speak with, or anyone else for that matter, that might help you land your target job.

Then, of course, there’s self-employment. But I’ll leave that for another day.