In this section

Supporting the skills and career development of your team

One of your most important responsibilities as a research leader is supporting the career development of your team. Although funders will expect you to show compelling plans for how you mentor and support early career researchers, in any case it should be a priority for a research leader as your role is to enable the success of others.

Here, we review the formal expectations on you as the supervisor or manager of an early career researcher when it comes to supporting their professional and career development, before looking in more detail at skills training, professional development, and careers advice.

Establishing expectations

Know what is expected of you

Imperial’s Concordat action plan to implement the Researcher Development Concordat (2019) reaffirms the College’s expectation that PIs will ‘create opportunities to nurture the careers of ECRs’, which includes helping them to make best use of their 10 development days and ensuring that PRDP processes are implemented consistently.
Similarly, the College’s supervisor guidance stipulates that supervisors should ‘discuss professional development opportunities with students and advise on their attendance to Graduate School Professional Skills Courses’ and ‘be aware of students’ career-related needs and help them achieve their potential’ (see also: the College’s Cornerstone) materials to support successful student/supervisor partnerships.
In other words, your role is to actively encourage researchers to reflect on their development needs and career aspirations; to guide and support them in identifying opportunities; and to allow them time to pursue those opportunities. Perhaps most valuable is role-modelling to early career colleagues the importance of professional development by regularly raising the topic in your conversations. If ECRs hear you talking about it, they will feel more confident to tell you what they are needing and wanting (see below).

Set clear expectations with your researchers

In addition to setting expectations for your partnership and the scientific work that the researcher is undertaking, it’s important to clarify what you expect in terms of how they approach their own professional and career development.
The Concordat says that researchers must ‘take ownership of their career, identifying opportunities to work towards career goals, including engaging in a minimum of 10 days professional development pro rata per year’. You might want to explicitly raise this point with researchers you manage and particularly with PhD students you supervise, so that they are aware that you expect them to be proactive in identifying opportunities and bringing them to you to discuss.

Skills training

Professional development

Careers advice

Career conversation insecurity

Both ECRs and their supervisors often report insecurity when it comes to discussing careers. This is most acute in the case of careers outside academia: around half of postdocs report that they do not feel able to discuss non-academic careers openly with their PI; and PIs themselves describe a lack of familiarity with such careers and feel that they cannot be expected to be careers advisors. The consequence is that honest career conversations are not always happening.

What you can do

The most important thing you can do as a manager/supervisor is to encourage ECRs to discuss their career aspirations and concerns openly. Emphasise that you are keen to hear about their ideas and plans. Your researchers may not be aware that they can talk about careers with you. Share your own career story with them and don’t assume that ECRs will understand academic career pathways in the UK – in fact, we know that these are often unclear to them.
ECRs frequently say that they fear leaving academia will be viewed as a sign of failure, so it is helpful to state explicitly that you do not see it this way. Where possible, highlight former students or colleagues who have moved on to other careers, and if appropriate, you might consider facilitating a conversation between them.
Don’t worry about not having expert knowledge of other career sectors. Imperial researchers can book one-to-one career consultations and access comprehensive careers support via the Careers Service and the PFDC. The PFDC also has a series of ‘Pathways’ tip sheets with information on the most common destinations for researchers leaving academia, how to find jobs, present yourself to non-academic employers, and so on. Cambridge University Careers Service has also produced a series of publicly accessible videos and podcasts to support PhDs and postdocs in their career planning.
The Change Project is a series of coaching tools to help early career researchers expand their career thinking beyond the academic context, nudging them to consider and experiment with different career ideas. As a PI you might find this toolkit toolkit particularly useful during the annual review conversation (ARC), as ECRs approach the end of their contract and/or within the context of a mentoring relationship

Internal resources and guidance

External resources and guidance

Cambridge University Careers Service has also produced a series of publicly accessible videos and podcasts to support PhDs and postdocs in their career planning
The Researcher Development Concordat (2019)
Career planning toolkit for researchers (University of Bristol)

Go back to the previous section: Running effective meetings

Go to the next section: Understanding and managing communication and work style differences

Supporting the skills and career development of your team

Expectations

Resources

Internal resources and guidance

External resources and guidance

Previous and next