Become your own careers advisor with ‘career entrepreneurialism’

This is a Pathfinder Expert Voices post, by guest blogger Dr Billy Bryan, an Evaluation and Research Leader in the Science and Emerging Technologies (SET) team at RAND Europe – a not-for-profit policy research institute based in Cambridge, UK.

The word ‘Entrepreneur’ brings to mind images of someone setting up their own plumbing business or pitching a revolutionary new product to a dour ‘Dragons’ Den’ panel of investors. We think of the end goal (i.e. a business) rather than how an entrepreneurial approach to careers as a whole might work for others, particularly researchers.

Career entrepreneurialism, I propose, describes a reflexive process in which a researcher actively invests in their own human capital, regularly explores career development opportunities, and takes advantage of the resources available to them. This blog will outline why this concept is relevant for researcher careers, how researchers can become their own careers advisor, and how managers of researchers can support the researchers they manage to do the same.

Doctoral and postdoctoral researchers (hereon, researchers) face many choices, opportunities and challenges in planning their careers. Both are working hard on their cutting edge research, leaving little time and resource to even think about career development, with many on short-term precarious contracts, uncertain about their immediate futures.

There persists a ‘cruel optimism’, an emotional attachment to attaining a permanent academic career despite its low likelihood and inevitable difficulties, and a lack of support in accessing a broader range of careers, with notable exceptions, such as Glasgow’s Pathfinder initiative. The incentive system in academia (papers, teaching, theses, grants) makes little room for researchers, their managers and researcher developers to support their researchers in career planning beyond university structures. A model of career entrepreneurship, involving all three parties, may provide a solution.

An entrepreneurial approach to career development is not a new idea, dating back to at least 2010, but it has not yet been applied to researcher careers, inside or beyond academia. In this context, the researcher takes responsibility for their career trajectory by approaching it like an entrepreneur building a business. It moves from a traditional grid style approach to career planning, which focuses on putting yourself into one of nine boxes that are a combination of two dimensions (capability and potential), to a model that gives you more agency over your own development.

It does this by focusing less on what researchers can do for their current organisation and more on what development opportunities they can get out of their jobs for the future. This requires some job crafting where, starting with your current job description as a basis, you begin to tailor the flexible edges of it, by looking at what you do (task crafting), who you do it with (relational crafting), and why you do it (cognitive crafting) to meet your development goals and your envisioned future role.

To be clear, this is not about becoming a lone ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ type salesperson, ruthlessly defying convention and taking unreasonable risks to win the career of your dreams at all costs. It’s a gradual development model, that is much more about examining what your development goals are, working on them in collaboration with others, then being able to pitch yourself to future employers.

Career entrepreneurialism supports other important concepts in researcher development. Entrepreneurialism both requires and improves self-regulation and research independence by planning, managing and reflecting on activities within and beyond your research, which a broad range of employers recognise as valuable. Being entrepreneurial by participating in activities outside of but aligned to your immediate role (e.g. running a series of writing retreats) allows you to access the ‘hidden curriculum’ – all the unofficial mechanisms of learning that take place within and outwith academia.  Ultimately, thinking and acting like your own careers advisor is the goal, but how will you do that in practice?

I propose three key actions to support researchers in their career entrepreneurship journey:

• ‘Extracurricular’ ideas – The first thing to accept when embarking on this journey is that not every conversation, event, volunteer/paid opportunity or training will be the silver bullet in getting that dream job. It is an accumulation of those experiences, reflecting on those experiences and mental training to be ready to take up that role whenever it comes, likely ‘out-of-the-blue’. The ‘extra’ in extracurricular does not have to mean ‘burdensome’ or ‘surplus to requirement’, development will likely be a key part of your role. I suggest exploring extracurriculars that help researchers to develop a broad base of skills to better suit a wider range of sectors.

• Systematically access support – There is an army of researcher developers within universities with programmes of events, support packages and friendly ears to support researchers in their career development. It is my opinion that they are underutilised. They should be the first port of call in helping researchers sketch out their vision and plan, revisiting periodically and getting the inside line on upcoming training and their contact lists. Supervisors and PIs are essential brokers in introducing their researchers to these colleagues.

• Look further and build networks – You may not know what your career vision is yet and that is okay. Many of the jobs researchers want will not have typical titles and may not openly hire for them. Speaking personally, reaching out to people via company websites, LinkedIn and based on blogs they wrote gave me access to some very senior people who were willing to take time to talk to me about what their job was like. See here for a series on such narratives. Not every interaction will lead to a job interview, but it is about exploring what it is really like out there, building up contacts and practicing having these initial conversations.

There are ways in which institutions and national policymakers can support and encourage this kind of entrepreneurship in researcher careers, vital to our ever-growing knowledge economies. Research funders, university research leaders and employers must rethink their approach to researcher careers by using a supply-chain-style mechanism by better preparing those entering research careers, supporting researchers in accessing more varied career development opportunities, and better linking career development opportunities to the demand side i.e. what skills and experiences do employers actually hire for?

The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers makes a strong case for career development within academia, and the 2019 update has done more to promote support for a wider range of research careers. Initiatives under the Pathfinder initiative at the University of Glasgow is a good example of providing career development opportunities for researchers.

Career entrepreneurialism is an ongoing process of self-assessment, adjustment and reflection, bolstered by making the best use of the resources and networks available. Researchers can start now, taking a look at advice around the wider world of work and researcher development and practical tips on finding a new career, all found on UoG’s excellent Auditorium Blog. It is never too late to start acting as your own careers advisor.

Competing interests

The author declares the following competing interests: Dr Billy Bryan is currently serving as an Evaluation and Research Leader at RAND Europe; however, the views, opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations contained herein are the author’s alone and not those of RAND Europe or its research sponsors, clients, or grantors. He is also a trustee at the University of Sussex Students’ Union, a member of the UK Government’s Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel (ETAP), and an advisor at the Cardiovascular Research Trust.