(S4E1): Facilitating Researcher Careers - A Look Behind the Scenes at the University of Leeds

Welcome to season 4, which is dedicated to research careers. My name is Ruth Winden, and I am the Careers with Research Consultant at the University of Leeds, based in the Researcher Development & Culture team led by Emma Spary.

Throughout this season I will introduce researchers who are managing their careers so well, so proactively and so wisely, that I wanted their stories to be heard more widely. These researchers have made what must have felt courageous career decisions at times, moving into different roles and sectors, or maneuvering their careers in academia with clarity and gusto. I am so glad they gave up their time for some pretty open and honest conversations and I can’t wait to introduce them to you.

But before I bring in colleagues from our researcher and alumni community, I thought it would make sense to give some context for our researcher career development work at Leeds.

In this first episode, I’ll explain our approach to career development and also share the rationale for choosing the type of careers support we offer.

n I started my role in autumn: 2020

It turns out that my boss, Emma Spary, created the title deliberately in line with the Researcher Development Concordat. The Concordat states clearly that a research career is a strong foundation for many different career directions, with academia being one of many, and by no means the only one. My job title acknowledges that researchers’ careers are broad, diverse and a launchpad for many future career choices, whatever that choice may be. My title also validates that Leeds values and supports all career paths equally, whatever direction our researchers choose.

If you are new to the researcher development space, you might wonder why this emphasis on career choice is such a big deal? For decades, there has been an implicit and explicit bias towards academic research. An academic career being the gold standard, regarding every other career choice as second rate.

Over time there has been a shift of perception, and much broader acceptance that researchers can fulfill their potential and aspirations in a multitude of roles, sectors and employment contexts.

Looking at the most pressing problems the world faces, it is easy to see how much scope there is for our researchers to use their expertise and help resolve issues that affect our lives and threaten the existence of our planet.

I believe it’s our responsibility as researcher developers, in partnership with our researchers, research leaders and managers, to help researchers recognise the breadth of opportunities open to them. The central question is: how we can help researchers make sound choices that are right for them? How can we help them maneuver the fast-moving employment landscape and the rapid technological changes that impact so many professions? All of this is easier said than done. You just have to look at the explosion of AI tools such as ChatGPT and their profound impact on our careers. I believe that researchers are ideally placed to prepare for, master, shape and take advantage of these developments.

So there is never a dull moment in supporting researchers’ career development as the world changes at such a ferocious speed – one of the real challenges is to stay ahead of the game.

h the University signed up in: 2019

When it comes to our approach to career development for researchers, I want to highlight five areas:

1. Working in partnership

2. Need over role or grade

3. Finding the balance of support & challenge

4. A broad and inclusive offering

5. Creating opportunities for deep transformation – peer to peer development

Let me explain what I mean by these

1. Working in partnership

Working in partnership with researchers, research leaders and research enablers is crucial for us. To continually develop our offering; to ensure the content, timing and delivery mode meet our researcher community’s needs and to facilitate their career development.

We appreciate that researchers are a diverse group and that their needs vary widely. We need to be flexible in what we offer, when we offer it and how we offer it.

For instance, we will never go back to facilitating career development exclusively on campus again, since the engagement with our online programmes has been so much greater across the board since the pandemic: from those who live far away from campus or do field research abroad, those with caring responsibilities, or those who find it easier to engage in an online forum than participating in an in-person workshop.

Equally, we also hear loud and clear that many researchers miss the in-person events – and so do I!! So it’s all about striking the right balance.

We will continue to experiment, try new ways of engaging, and learn together with our community. There is just not one solution that fits all.

2. Need over role or grade

For years, we have offered career development to specific cohorts, separately, depending on their role or grades, whether they are postgraduate researchers, or postdocs, or research fellows.

These days, we still offer group specific support in line with specific roles, where it makes sense, but we are also much more open to bringing different groups of our researcher community together for shared learning about their career development. These joined activities help people in different research roles learn from each other, recognize where they are on their career path, and foster collaboration.

For instance, on my imposter mindset workshops, it is a real eye opener for PGRs or postdocs new in their jobs to hear that lecturers also struggle with feeling inadequate at times, just like them. These shared experiences break down barriers, create a greater sense of understanding, and also foster a better research culture.

As long as I, as the facilitator, ensure that the most experienced participants also walk away with useful insights, the mixed format can work really well. That’s why we embrace “need” over job role, whenever appropriate.

3. Finding the balance of support & challenge

Throughout my professional life, I have worked WITH the researcher community, as an external supplier, but never as part of the researcher community until I joined Leeds.

But most of my experience as a career management coach has been with organisational and individual clients in other sectors and across levels of seniority up to CEO - clients in the private sector, international clients Europe, the middle East and the US, and also with NGOs, not-for profit and start-ups.

As a result, I bring a different perspective to working with researchers. And I also come with different expectations about what I regard as essential career management skills these days.

I absolutely love working with researchers, they are amazing people with amazing talents, highly motivated, quick learners, value driven, and often in complex life situations that impact their careers.

And as much as I support them, to the extent that someone recently asked whether I had been a cheer leader in my earlier life, I also need to challenge them. Challenge them to focus on what they can do, rather than focus on what they haven’t achieved yet (often in unfair comparison to much more experienced colleagues); challenge them to consider career alternatives when they get stuck in the system; challenge them to recognise their immense talents, expertise and attributes that ARE sought after by employers; challenge them to explore possibilities they can’t see; and challenge them to connect with professionals to explore these opportunities. I don’t accept that in academia, we just struggle with these and it’s part of the experience of working in research.

Most importantly, I benchmark researchers with other professionals at the same career stage. They need to be able to network, share the value they add in the workplace, have a compelling LinkedIn profile, and be pro-active in managing their careers. And especially, they need to learn to negotiate – which is an essential life and career skill, and I do not tolerate their idea that they are lucky to get a job offer in academia and therefore should not negotiate. The first offer is never the best, and they are expected to negotiate, more and more so, as their careers develop.

Thankfully, our research community responds well to my challenges, and we have seen some wonderful breakthroughs – also when it comes to negotiating their next job offer.

4. A broad and inclusive careers offering

We are lucky to live in an age where we can access so many ways to learn and grow professionally – online, at any time that suits us, in bitesize portions or longer intensive programmes.

We want to ensure there is something for everyone’s needs, and everyone’s learning preferences.

For online learning, we offer a growing library of independent learning materials that we create, but we also use LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning extensively.

We have had tremendous success with using LinkedIn as a career development tool. For researchers, it is an excellent platform to engage with stakeholders, raise their visibility and position themselves for career opportunities. LinkedIn Learning, with its vast offer of courses and our own learning paths, plus the new career development pathways, are a great addition.

Then we have Career BOOST, our pick-and-mix offering of individual workshops, on a broad range of careers topics, from how to get a lectureship to career planning, mastering virtual interviews or negotiating a job offer. Everything what I would call the basics in sound career management competences for researchers.

And then we offer several cohort-based career development programmes that are based on group coaching principles. They offer a much more extensive experience and often, huge transformations.

Which takes me to point 5 of our offering.

5. Creating opportunities for deep transformation

With a specialism in group career coaching, I have worked with Emma Spary, and our colleague Patricia Gray in the early days, to create the first cohort-based group career coaching programme, called Career Architect. Over the years it has become our flagship programme and we now have almost 175 researchers who have gone through the programme. It’s a real deep-dive into making well-informed career transitions, it’s for a group of twelve, and it lasts 6 months. It is the safe space of being with researchers in the same situation, i.e. their research contracts coming to an end and wanting to explore and secure career alternatives, being part of a modular development programme, and embarking on this journey together, helping, motivating and supporting each other. It makes all the difference.

Career Accelerator is another group-based careers programme, a three-month programme for those who know exactly what next job they want, but who welcome support. Unsurprisingly, the majority of participants want to secure another postdoc or a lectureship. Again, the group setting, the holistic support and encouragement have made all the difference. Often it’s just about helping them recognise their achievements, helping them showcase their outstanding expertise on their CVs, application forms and online portals and then at interview. It seems to make all the difference as we had so many participants suddenly get lectureships. Happy days!

The last group based programme I want to mention is Career Catalyst, focused on digital career development via LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning. We recently piloted it with 60 researchers – PGRs, research technicians postdocs, lecturers – and again, what stood out was not only how quickly they just “get” these tools when you show them how to maximise them; but the difference it made to them to go through the process as part of a group, for encouragement, motivation and support, and have the curse leaders provide additional guidance.

Going through the same development with your peers, over time, in a safe and supportive environment, often results in deep transformations. For a researcher developer, they are a joy to facilitate, and the University has benefitted from highly motivated staff, retaining excellent colleagues, and building an engaged alumni group.

And you will meet some of these alumni during the rest of my podcast season, as they were eager to come back and share their stories.

I hope I have given you a flavour of what we do in the researcher career development space at the University of Leeds. It is a real joy to work with our community of researchers, and I invite you to come back over the next 8 weeks to learn from our researchers and their stories.

Until next time! Bye.