A very important premise for your career planning is 'know yourself'. This might be a challenging reflection exercise but it will be essential for any career move.

What do you offer and what do you actually want? What are your priorities and values? What would make you feel fulfilled in a future career? What are the things you most enjoy doing?

What do you value?

Try going back to first principles – instead of looking at what you do now and thinking what you should do next, start with what you want to be doing, by articulating and prioritising what you most value or what motivates you in your career. Then you can start to look at types of jobs and organisations that would fulfil those values or motivations.

Watch the ECRI Career Goals Video and complete the Career Review exercise to help you reflect on your career to date and consider how you’ve made decisions and what you value.

What’s your motivation?

After a significant investment of your time in a research career, it can be hard to make the decision to leave.

Moving to a different career does not mean you have failed. It means that you have made a positive decision to take control of your career and have found a different way to use your skills and experience, where they can have a big impact on the world (possibly a bigger or further-reaching impact than staying in research).

The most common reasons researchers state for making a career change are:

  • It's a better use of their skills
  • Wanting to move to a different organisation or employment sector
  • Salary
  • Wanting a new/different challenge
  • Change of circumstance e.g. location, caring responsibility, marriage
  • A personal dream or aspiration
  • It was never the plan to stay in research
  • Wanting a better work-life balance

Proactive versus reactive motivation for change

Make your own list of reasons for a career change.

How many are reactive? Reactive reasons are things that you want to move away from or avoid in your current research career: the things you don’t like (e.g. fixed-term contracts, uncertainty, lack of flexible working, lack of progression).

How many are proactive? Proactive reasons are things that you want to have, that ‘pull’ you towards a new career; things that would tempt or excite you (e.g. clear career progression and feedback, flexible working, living in a specific location, having an impact on a particular industry or problem, making a difference to society or the environment).

The more proactive reasons you have, the more motivated you will be to:

  • make a positive choice;
  • overcome or dismiss the myths and barriers;
  • look for evidence or ways to counteract or remove the barriers;
  • take positive steps and have an action plan to make a change.

What do you like and dislike in your current role? Use this What's important in your role? template to map out or to log what aspects of your role you like, don’t like and don’t mind. You can then use this information to help you consider what’s important to you in future roles.

Review your lists – can you turn the reactive reasons into proactive ones? If you want to get away from a negative aspect, what is the positive thing you actually want? For example, if you are unhappy that you get little recognition for your work, then what you want to have is a career or employer that has a transparent progression or promotion process, or has a rewards/awards programme for its staff.

What are the barriers and some myth busting!

There are many varied reasons why postdocs might avoid making a career change. We have collated some of the common ones below and are providing advice to help you overcome these barriers.

FAQs