It’s nearly a wrap! 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 and insights. A highlight of the month’s activities is below:
We started off the month with a blog post on 3 Quick Ways to Start Your Career Planning on 2nd June, followed on the 3rd June with a careers briefing session on Dealing with Career Anxiety, which explored what is, when it’s helpful and how to use it, when it’s not and ways to seek support. If you missed the session and want to learn more see the blog post here.
On the 11th June the IAD had a stand at the PhD Horizons Career Conference organised by the University of Edinburgh Careers Service. Eleanor was on hand along with other IAD staff to talk to research staff. If you didn’t get chance to attend the event in person then do have a look at the conference programme to identify sessions and speakers of interest (the majority are open to connecting on LinkedIn also read a previous post of Darcey’s for hints and tips on using LinkedIn Effectively.)
On the 12th of June, Eleanor facilitated a briefing session on the ever-popular topic of 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
Twenty-nine research staff joined us for our Careers Online Panel Session: Meet People Working in Life Sciences on 19th June. Our panellists, Dr Helen Cambrook, Dr Alice Guazelli, and Dr Vivek Senthivel gave vivid, insightful accounts of their career stories. You can read more on our Linkedin page and access further resources, and especially in Eleanor’s follow up blog post on Making Successful Career Transitions.
To further support research staff in Life Sciences, we were excited to publish guest blog post from Emma Laurenson, Business Manager Scotland for SRGTalent, a specialist STEM recruitment Agency. You can read Emma’s expert advice on preparing for a move from life sciences in academia to life sciences in industry here.
(When Darcey first came to Edinburgh as a Careers Consultant for Research Staff with a special remit for diverse career options, she conducted a survey of sectors research staff were most interested in hearing about and 4 sector emerged as the most popular. To date we’ve covered Life Sciences, Academic Adjacent careers, Data Science/IT Consultancy – looking forward to tackling Policy in the coming year.)
To round off our workshop programme for Careers Month, we were joined by Kerry McElroy for a careers briefing session on 25th June for a whistlestop tour of the fantastic postdoc career support resources that is the Prosper Portal.
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 George Square to meet the needs of researchers located near the city centre. 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.
