While it is said that the mobility of PhD graduates would be encouraged outside the aca- demic environment, they continue to work mostly within higher education and research. This paper explores the professional life courses of 25 PhD Portuguese graduates in the Social Scienc- esand Humanities in order to understand the process according to which they move or not from one sector to another. A first dataset results from an online survey of SSH doctoral graduates. A second dataset is made of the transcripts of 25 in-depth interviews with doctorate holders. The paper sheds light on their motivation and expectation, among other expectation emerging over the course of their doctoral research.