Boosting Your Employability

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Boosting Your Employability

• Dr Sara Shinton

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Who am I?

• PhD in Physical Chemistry
• Postdoctoral Research in Polymers
• Teaching Assistant (Chemistry and Communication
  Skills)
• Careers Adviser
• Careers Consultant

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How do you boost your career?

• A clear view of where you want to be
• Understanding the barriers in your way
• Recognising who or what might help you or
  influence your success
• This session is about taking control and
  achieving your career goals

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Understand your career drivers

• Link as promised during the session
• A questionnaire on the BBC website
  http//www.bbc.co.uk/health/confidence/learn/impa
  ct_3.shtml looks at career drivers and may help
  you to clarify what you want from a career
• For more detail Career Anchors Discovering Your
  Real Values by Edgar H. Schein ISBN 0883900300
  (summarized online at http//www.mindtools.com/pag
  es/article/newCDV_99.htm)

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Your career aims

• Get into groups of 3-4
• Introduce yourself
• Explain what your career aims and ambitions are
• I will ask for some of your answers to help make
  this session effective

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Career Aims

• Graduate scheme (possibly retail management)
• Start own business
• Researcher in investment management
• Teaching in academia
• Consultancy
• Postdoc
• Industrial research

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Career Aims

• Tenured academic position
• Security
• Remaining in research
• Working in industry
• Public sector research
• Leaving research

• Achieving a balance with personal life
• Working abroad
• Financial security
• Being able to have children and a career
• Winning the Nobel Prize

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Whatever your career aims,planning will help you
achieve them
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Career Planning

• Formal written down
• Committed to devote time and be consistent
• Agreed with identify motivations to achieve
• Measured know when you are making progress

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Career Planning

• Lets go back to your career aims
• Make them simple and easy to understand
• Now we will look at what barriers there are to
  achieving your career aims

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Barriers

• What might prevent or hinder you from achieving
  your aims?
• Which of these things are in your control?
• Discuss these in your groups for 5-10 minutes.
• Please share your answers

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Barriers

• Lack of work experience
• Clarity of direction
• Age
• Contacts
• Sponsors (people who will support me)
• Funding - for research
• Funding to start own business
• Language
• Relevant knowledge
• Time
• Not having finished my PhD

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Barriers

• Lack of time
• Lack of support
• Lack of experience
• Few opportunities
• Poor network
• Reputation of supervisor
• Reputation of institution
• Personal commitments

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Environment

• Your plan needs to be realistic and appropriate
  to your personal and professional environment
• It also needs to take account of changes in the
  short, medium and long term
• Well use academia as an illustration

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The Academic Environment

• How has academia changed in the last 20 years?
• How is student life different now from when you
  were a student?
• Thank about how these changes reflect changes in
  the economy and labour market.

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Changes to academia

• Departments closing, merging,emerging
• Commercialisation and collaboration
• Institutional restructuring
• More PhDs, more postdocs
• Academic opportunities static
• Student debt

based on the UK academic environment
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• More emphasis on enterprise
• More technology - less chalk and talk
• Academic pyramid is now bottom heavy
• Much more political - media - spin
• Student numbers risen
• Pressure to publish
• Accountability - RAE
• Research is more interdisciplinary / less
  pockets of discrete knowledge
• Projects getting bigger
• Taking on industrial research problems (R of RD)
• Focus on application
• Funding - more private sector/ less government

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So overall

• Enterprise
• How can you be an intrapreneur
• Population is more highly skilled
• Technology has changed work
• Multidisciplinary
• Essential to communicate effectively

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Coping with Change

• What advice would you give to someone to be
  successful in this environment ?

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Succeeding in academia

• Understand the academic market
• Develop relevant skills
• Be prepared for change
• Keep your ears and eyes open
• Broaden your knowledge base
• Be able to apply your expertise where it suits
  you
• Get connected and well positioned
• Committees learned societies conferences

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Succeeding in this environment

• Develop a niche and guard it
• Gain professional qualifications
• Show passion
• Show initiative - be different
• Move in the right circles - get connected with
  people who matter

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Opportunities

• What are the opportunities for development and
  career progression?
• In your groups discuss what you could be doing to
  make your career more successful

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Opportunities

• Awards
• Publications
• Conferences
• Involvement in professional bodies or
  collaborative groups
• International research
• Training in techniques or skills

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Make a plan

• Your aim is your vision
• A plan consists of practical steps towards this
  vision
• Each step must have a deadline
• Share your plan to improve accountability

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Unless you are perfect.

• Youll forget elements of your plan
• Youll be seduced (or coerced) by offers which
  arent really what you want
• A plan has to suit the way you work
• Your good intentions will be squeezed out by life
• Most of us need help to maintain the momentum

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Reflection

• Think about your career to date.
• What were the best elements?
• Why were these so positive?
• What were the worst elements?
• Why were these difficult for you?
• What would improve your current situation?
• What can you do to bring about change?

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How do researchers spend their time?
Researcher
List the skills and activities that are part of
your day-to-day work
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Reading articles
Planning research
Setting priorities
Instructing others
Writing papers
University Researcher
Developing new ideas and choosing options
Attending conferences
Generating data or evidence
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How am I spending my time?

• Doing experimental research
• Networking and building friendships (or making
  strategic alliances)
• Planning - anticipating the outcomes of my
  research preparing myself to do research
• Writing reports/posters/presentations
• Reading primary sources to generate data
• Literature searches - reading around my field
• Working (job to balance with PhD)
• Applying for funding
• Meeting with supervisor
• Teaching
• Writing my thesis
• Email/ebay

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Career Management

• How many of these activities are boosting your
  career?
• Which are truly your responsibility?
• Which could you avoid?
• What do you NEED to be doing each week to improve
  your career?

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The competition

• As a doctoral student you are at the top of the
  academic qualification ladder.
• But so are your peers
• How will you stand out in such an auspicious
  group?

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Career Boosting

• What are the achievements of successful people in
  your field?
• (If unsure, what would a REALLY successful PhD
  look like?)
• In your group, identify the measures of success
  you will need to demonstrate to achieve your
  career goal

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Measures of Success

• Conferences
• posters
• presentations
• attendance
• Committees
• administrative experience
• exposure to academic management
• Professional Qualifications

• Funding
• contribution to proposals
• fellowships
• support for specific projects
• Publications
• patents
• research articles
• industry reports

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What is your baseline?

• Where are you now?
• skills audits
• knowledge base
• catalogue experience
• What is available?
• are there opportunities to develop new skills?
• are there any threats to your development?

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What skills will you need?

• What job do you have in mind?
• Where is the labour market going?
• Are changes forecast?
• Can you develop skills that might be in short
  supply?
• Find experts and use them

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How do you develop skills and experience ?

• find a mentor
• support others in their development
• are there new projects that you have time to
  become involved in ?
• broaden your reading
• look for placements/secondments/new
  collaborations
• shadow people with interesting jobs
• use the training available effectively

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Keeping a record

• Simple is often effective
• Find a style that suits your preferences
• but recognise weaknesses
• Set aside time
• Commitment
• Focus on personal value
• ALWAYS SET A TIME LIMIT

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Getting There

• Look at the action points in your career plan
• How are you going to meet these?
• Do you know how to go about these tasks?
• What do you need to do to make sure that you are
  efficient in moving forward?
• What needs to be in your plan?
• Which generic skills are you going to need?
• Which career management skills will you need?

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Additional resources

• www.shintonconsulting.com
• www.grad.ac.uk/planner
• Careers Service

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Suggested Format

• Weakness/Development area
• Realistic Goals
• Resources needed and support mechanisms
• Potential Difficulties
• Time-scale

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Build a portfolio

• review progress regularly
• how have you used skills, knowledge and
  experience to achieve projects or tasks
• record what you did, how you did it and what the
  result was
• use progress meetings to cover professional
  development

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• Objectives Progress
• Comments on progress
• Main achievements
• Strengths demonstrated
• Difficulties encountered
• Steps to improve performance
• Objectives for next period

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Goals

• make goals SMART
• specific
• measurable
• agreed
• realistic
• timed
• identify DRIVERS and RESISTING FORCES
• identify BENEFITS (to yourself and others)

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Back to YOUR Perspectives

• How have these been dealt with?
• What issues remain?
• Work-life balance
• Being realistic
• Look around you

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Final thought

• The difference between what we do and what we are
  capable of doing would suffice to solve most of
  the worlds problems
• Gandhi