Doctoral employability has become a pressing concern as academic labour markets tighten and doctorates are increasingly positioned for careers beyond academia, yet many interventions still assume a broadly uniform doctoral experience and a generic “skills” gap (Holmes, 2013; Shin, Kehm & Jones, 2018). This paper argues instead that career preparation during the PhD is a stratified process of capital formation, shaped by unequal access to social, cultural, and institutional resources (Bourdieu, 1986; Tomlinson, 2017). Focusing on a Russell Group university in Southern England, the study examines how personal and contextual factors shape students’ opportunities to build and convert career-relevant capital, and how everyday academic norms can produce subtle forms of othering for those positioned as outsiders. Methodologically, the paper draws on a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design in which survey insights informed purposive sampling for qualitative interviews (Ivankova et al., 2006; Creswell and Plano Clark, 2017). It reports findings from 30 semi-structured doctoral interviews, including international and first-generation students, analysed using a six-phase thematic analysis approach with inter-coder comparison to strengthen analytic robustness (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Findings indicate three interlocking mechanisms that shape unequal career preparation. First, familial and classed resources transmit insider knowledge and networks that advantage more privileged students, while others describe heightened uncertainty and “trial-and-error” navigation (Bourdieu, 1986; Gardner and Holley, 2011). Second, supervision operates as a key conduit, or constraint, on opportunity: access to networks, encouragement, and “permission” to engage in career development varies across students and is experienced as particularly consequential by many international candidates (Tomlinson, 2017). Third, disciplinary and departmental resource differences privilege some pathways (especially STEM-linked opportunities) and restrict comparable capital-building options elsewhere. The paper concludes that doctoral career preparation should be treated as an equity and resource-distribution issue, not merely an individualised employability problem, with implications for culturally sensitive supervision, transparent resourcing, and targeted provision that widens access to career-building opportunities (Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2017).

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