We are now in the last few days of June – Careers Month is almost over! It has been a busy, varied and interesting 4 weeks, for the IAD Research Staff Careers Support Team, with lots of great discussion. A highlight of the month’s activities is below:
We started off the month with a briefing session on Career Decision Making, which explored common causes of in-decision as well as looking at strategies and techniques for successful decision making. If you missed the session and want to learn more see the blog post here.
Next came a webinar aimed at giving insights into using Recruitment Consultants. This prompted interesting and varied questions on the Q&A chat box. An emerging area of interest for many researchers it would seem. Keep up to date with the IAD4Researchers blog for more on this topic coming soon! Next followed another briefing session on Narrative CVs. Within the session we explored the rationale for using a Narrative CV as well as examining the 4 key modules and considering what examples could be used to demonstrate these skills and experiences. Lastly, further sources of help and support were highlighted for those trying to craft a Narrative CV.
Both Darcey and Eleanor attended PI Researcher Realities: Effective Careers Conversations, which was a panel event, where both researchers and PI’s gave insights into the realities of having effective and meaningful career conversations. The event concluded with a networking session over coffee & tea. It was fabulous to hear such positive experiences of having open career conversations and there was a great networking buzz after the panel had concluded.
Later in the month on the 19th June the IAD had a stand at the PhD Horizons Career Conference organised by the University of Edinburgh Careers Service. Both Eleanor & Darcey manned the stand during the course of the afternoon along with other IAD staff. If you didn’t get chance to attend the event in person then do have a look at the conference programme https://sway.cloud.microsoft/EuqadR9qXgqn1SAm to identify sessions and speakers of interest (the majority are open to connecting on Linked In). Read Darcey’s previous blog for hints and tips on using Linked Effectively.
Finally, alongside all of the above activities Darcey & Eleanor have been running their usual 1:1 career consultations as well as running extra “Quick Query” short 20 minute appointments in order to address key concerns or queries that may have arisen from the programme of events over the last month. We also ran some short Quick Query sessions for the Bioquarter Postdoc society so if you belong to a society and would like us to offer some dedicated 1:1’s do get in touch. Overall, it’s been a successful month with plenty of engagement on all issues careers-related. We look forward to running the programme again next year. For now, have a restful summer and if you have any feedback or suggestions on what you’d like to see included in next year’s programme email iad.researchers@ed.ac.uk and let us know.
