SEB Bulletin October 2006 - Your Future in Biosciences SEB Careers Workshop, Birmingham, July 2006
Are postgraduates aware of their career options?
Recent data from a survey conducted by the UKGRAD Programme entitled 'The career motivations and expectations of doctoral researchers' (ref 1) shows that over half of postgraduate researchers surveyed said that they had little or no idea of the career opportunities available to them. Yet University Careers Services often say that they are disappointed by the small number of postgrads and postdocs that visit them for information or to seek careers guidance. In fact, a larger number of respondents in the survey said they visited the Service as an undergraduate than as a postgraduate.
Who can help them?
A number of possible reasons for this exist, possibly based around the fact that this cohort of students/staff do not see the Careers Service as being relevant to their needs and so tend to dismiss it out of hand. Since the advent of the Roberts' Report (see information box) Careers Services have had more scope to enable them to encourage postgrads and postdocs to use their services by adapting their workshops, working with and giving talks in departments and even basing themselves within departments to make themselves more visible. In addition dedicated Career Development professionals have been employed by universities to coordinate the skills development of research staff and students. Organisations such as the Research Councils (RCUK), the UKGRAD Programme and learned societies provide additional specialised events for early-career scientists to supplement these support mechanisms. Thus, with the large majority of research staff and students in universities based in the Biological Sciences, the SEB is in a good position to offer further assistance to departments to support the career development of their early-career staff and students. Indeed, with the advent of 'Roberts Funding', which provides financial support for the training of postgrads and postdocs, there is now plenty of scope for a wide variety of training opportunities for early-career scientists to take advantage of.
New SEB career development initiative
The SEB has been running careers workshops for early-career scientists at its Annual Main Meetings for many years now. Topics covered have included CV and skills workshops, how to find funding, setting up and managing a lab, working with the media, and jobs in industry. Last year we ran our first stand-alone workshop covering aspects of science communication at Oxford-Brookes University (SEB Bulletin, October 2005) (ref 2) and this year (27 July 2006) we continued this new initiative by organising a one-day career planning workshop for Bioscientists at the University of Birmingham. Tutored by myself and Peter Lumsden (SEB education & Public Affairs Committee/Uni-versity of Central Lancashire) and attended by 45 postgrads and postdocs from Birmingham, Southampton, York, Sheffield and other universities around the region, the workshop's grand aim was to provide participants with strategies to enable them to take a self-reliant approach to career planning and management. We were also grateful for the input we received from Seema Sharma (European Programme Director, Science's Next Wave) and Hilary Jones (Skills Development Coordinator, Biology Dept., University of York) towards this aim.
SEB Careers Workshop 2006
The programme for the day was based around the career management theory of the DOTS mode (ref 3). This model uses the four main aspects which make up the basis for career planning: Decision making, Opportunity awareness, Transition and Self-awareness. Most popularly used by Careers Advisers in the more logical order: S - O - D - T, students tend to focus primarily, or only, on 'Transition' (i.e. looking for jobs and writing a CV) first before examining other aspects of the career planning process. Whilst this is still worthwhile, it may act to limit their career choices and their ability to 'sell' themselves effectively to prospective employers.
Self-awareness
Therefore, 'Self-awareness' took centre stage during the SEB careers workshop in order to increase the participants' self-reliance so that they would be better equipped to formulate their own career strategies. To this end, the pre-course task involved each participant undertaking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (ref 4) which is a well recognised personality questionnaire to illustrate the different ways in which people take in information, make decisions and organise their lives. This is relevant to, and can be used in relation to, many parts of people's lives including career choice and career development, as well as influencing the strategies people use to plan their careers. Being able to recognise their own personality strengths and weaknesses, enables people to consider the kinds of careers, work environments and ways in which they prefer to work that are best suited to them. For example, someone with an extroverted intuitive personality may prefer to work in a job which involves lots of personal interaction and creativity whilst an introverted sensing person may prefer a more stable environment working within well-defined structures.
Decision-making
An interesting group task during this part of the workshop involved deciding, out of three post-doc case studies, which one should be kept on in a research group where two would have to leave (“Who Goes? - You Decide”). Having examined the post-doc's profiles, the participants chose, as the overwhelming winner, the post-doc with the most published papers even though he was a difficult and selfish character intent on taking on no other tasks in the department other than doing his research. This certainly spelt out quite clearly the recognised evaluation of a post-doc's worth in these days of impact factors and RAEs. It also brought home the message to the participants of the need to take a proactive approach to their own career planning so that they avoid moving from one postdoc to another without a clear and achievable goal at the end.
Skills evaluation
During the Skills evaluation task this point was emphasised further. First, we arranged the 45 participants so that the 6 earliest postgrads would sit together, followed by the next 6 and so on up to the latest postdocs. Then we asked the groups to brainstorm on post-it notes the skills they use in their work, after which they had to classify them into main skill sets such as 'Communication Skills' or 'Organisational Skills' etc. The poignant result of this task was that as we watched the sheets of flipchart paper being stuck up across the back wall, it was clear how the number of skills increased and developed over the transitional period from postgrad to postdoc: Communication /Organisational/Technical evolved to include additional skills such as Management, Teaching and Administrative. Some participants also commented on the fact that, for some of their skills, they had not considered them to be classed as Management, thus facilitating their recognition of a higher set of skills.
An additional learning point from the Skills Identification task was that there is a clear limit to the amount of skills which can be developed over the course of a postdoc and that there may come a time to evaluate one's career progress and consider whether continuing with a second or third research post will really add to one's career development. Unless there is the chance of a fellowship or academic position it may be time to reconsider academic research as a career and look around for alternative options before age and personal circumstances add more barriers to a viable career change. It remains to be seen whether the UK's Fixed Term Employees Regulations 2002 (ref 5) acts to alter this situation in the future with the introduction of clear career progression paths for contract research staff.
Transition
The day was completed with the more practical 'transitional' aspects of career management - i.e. applying for jobs and going for interview. For this we used Bioscience-related materials, sourcing real jobs currently being advertised on websites and magazines. The participants had to assess a set of CVs and recommend who to put forward for a particular job. In addition, they then formed an interview panel to formulate questions to ask a volunteer from their group who would act as the interview candidate. The session was a pilot for this type of exercise and in future we will ask participants to bring their own CVs so that members of the group can offer a critique which will set up a more reaslistic and personalised situation.
Feedback
One of the dilemmas of running a workshop of this kind rather than having the luxury of dealing with people on an individual basis is that each person's needs are different and our feedback reflected this fact: we received high levels of praise for differing parts of the workshop and comments asking for more or less of one thing or another. Overall, however, we think we achieved the aim of our first SEB career planning workshop which was to offer a self-reliant approach to career management. Most people indicated that they had little or no idea of what they want to do for a future career, whilst others were looking at research in academia and industry, consultancy work, logistics and purchasing. A full list of resources was circulated at the end of the workshop setting out a variety of websites to search for jobs. The participants were also asked to put their completed action plans into a self-addressed envelope which would be sent to them in three months' time. Which is round about now!
Future help is at hand
We plan to run a series of workshops in the future with potential venues: Durham, Oxford-Brookes and Birmingham. If you would like the SEB to run a workshop at your institution please contact me to discuss this further.
Sarah Blackford
Education & Public Affairs
s.blackford@lancaster.ac.uk
Background
In 1996 representatives of institutions and the principal funders of research in the UK agreed a Concordat (ref 6) for the management of contract research staff. The Research Careers Initiative (RCI) (ref 7), under the chairmanship of Sir Gareth Roberts, was subsequently set up to monitor progress and has issued good practice guidelines concerning contract research staff. In 2002 'SET for Success' (ref 8) was published as a result of a review undertaken by Sir Gareth Roberts, comissioned as part of the Government's productivity and innovation strategy. The report sets out a series of recommendations to the Government, employers and others with an interest in fostering science, engineering and innovation in the UK. Major changes have been taking pace as a result of the 'Roberts' Report' with the government providing additional funding ('Roberts Money') to universities to support the personal and professional development of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers.
References
1. UKGRAD Programme www.ukgrad.
2. http://www.sebiology.org.uk/Public
ations/pageview.asp?S=7&mid=&id=534
3. Law, B., (1999) New DOTS: Career Learning for the Contemporary World, NICEC Briefing, Cambridge, CRAC
4. http://www.myersbriggs.org/
5. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2002/200
22034.htm
6. http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/activities/R
CIdownloads/rciconcordat.pdf#search=%22concordat%201996%22
7. http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/activities/r
ci.asp
8. 'SET for Success' www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/documents/enterprise_and_productivity/research_and_enterprise/ent_res_roberts.cfm