This article raises two inter-related issues: firstly there is a correlation between the needs of doctoral students that are strongly related to age and career stage; and secondly, because these needs differ according to their demographic, the current discourse of developing work-readiness skills of doctoral students is misplaced for the growing cohort of mid and late career students. This article draws on data from a recent qualitative study into supervision in doctoral studies in social science disciplines in Australia. The data-set for this article comes from 10 close-to-completion doctoral students. This article argues that it is the mid-career candidates (35-44 years of age) who are least well-served by the focus on work-readiness skills and this discourse serves to reinforce a deficit model where prior knowledge and experience are undervalued. This impacts negatively on the self-efficacy of this cohort by undermining established professional identities and consequently diminishing agency.