The IAD Careers Team were delighted to welcome Kerry McElroy, Stakeholder Development Manager at Prosper Portal, to deliver a session on the portal and how best to use it (on 25 June 2025). What a super informative session it was! Kerry covered some key tips in order to navigate the portal effectively, the first being sign up to create an account (it’s free) as this gives you enhanced features when using the portal. Sign up with your University of Edinburgh email address (although this can be changed at a later date if you move on from the University).
Highlights from the session included the ability to add resources to your own “Development Plan” allowing you to set goals and track your progress.
The “Career Development Navigator” tool walks you through key resources on the portal (especially useful if you are not sure where to start).
The “Learning & Development” section covers key skills researchers have and covers useful activities to further explore these skills in more depth.
Finally, Kerry suggested some tasks to attempt following on from this session, which included, digging into the Career Clusters (within the Explore section) to find out more about alternative career paths, looking into the Learning & Development section and picking 2 resources to read and/or come back to and finally looking at the Career Conversations and case studies of postdocs on the portal.
We’d strongly encourage you to browse Prosper Portal and make use of the many many resources! Don’t forget to sign up to get the best user experience.
