Pathfinder Career Narratives is an ongoing series tracking the career choices and experiences of doctoral graduates. You can see all of the posts in the series here. You can find all the Pathfinder resources and opportunities here. Today’s blog is written by Dr Madeleine Beveridge, Research Development Manager at University of Glasgow. You can find Dr Beveridge on LinkedIn here.
Name: Dr Madeleine Beveridge
Doctorate subject area, and year of completion: Psycholinguistics, 2014
Role and employer: Research Development Manager, University of Glasgow
Approximate salary bracket of this type of role: £35k – £55k
When I was first approached to write the blog, my immediate was response was that I never had a post-PhD plan. Do you really want me to tell people about how I succeeded through not planning?
The truth is I’ve never really had any kind of plan for my career, at any stage. I still remember looking on in astonished admiration as teenage friends and siblings identified what they wanted to do, and then chose their A-levels accordingly. For me, it’s always felt like a series of happy (or not so happy) accidents, sliding from one thing to the next with apparently little purpose or cohesion. This uncertainty has sometimes been difficult to manage, especially when coupled with a feeling (accurate or not) that everyone else around you has got their ducks in a row. The sense that to be successful in hyper-competitive academia requires rigorous and long-term planning can be an isolating experience for those of us who prefer to go where the wind takes us.
And yet, with some internal reflection, I have found my niche: a career I like, am good at, with opportunities for further development. A few years ago, I even managed to make a strategic decision based on future career prospects! So, I am here to reassure you, the non-planners, the drifters, the people who found themselves doing a PhD and are no closer to a sense of purpose at the end of your three years than at the beginning: there is hope for us too; niches we can find and excel at. In many cases, our lack of planning can be an advantage, if it means we bring an open-minded approach to different career options.
The first important step that I took was to spend some time thinking honestly about what I actually enjoyed (not just expected to enjoy) from the PhD process. This is something I wish I had done earlier. For several years post-PhD, I simply went along with the idea that I liked research, without interrogating further – which bits, and why? When I eventually asked myself those questions, it was something of a revelation to accept the fact that what I actually loved was the literature review – getting the bigger picture, exploring syntheses or unexpected connections – as well as feeling part of a research community. But I disliked (it took a fair bit of courage to admit this to myself, never mind other people) the actual doing of research – the experiment design and analysis; the focus on a single thing at the expense of others. In many ways I did and still do love research. Just not being the one to do it, it turns out.
My first job post-PhD was a purely financial decision in which I ended up as an undergraduate teaching coordinator. At that time I was still putting in post-doctoral applications, because that was the sort of thing you did after finishing a PhD. But my heart wasn’t in it, and my finances wouldn’t allow for moving round the country chasing short-term positions (or even the unpaid “opportunities” so laudably offered by certain esteemed institutions south of the border). In the end I lost all confidence, and instead applied for a new role as a research centre coordinator in the same university. I’m still a little ashamed to say I decided to go for that job primarily on the basis that I thought there would be less marking than the teaching-based role, but it turned out to be a great career move.
No one was more surprised than me to find that I actually enjoyed taking processes that sort of worked, or didn’t yet exist, and making them better. People told me how efficient I was. I was even promoted in post (sadly I was later to realise how rarely that happens in professional services!). Importantly, I learned that colleagues viewed me as someone who was good at Getting Things Done. This prompted some further reflection on my part, and helped me realise that having the autonomy to Get Things Done was indeed really important to me, and I should look for jobs where that was possible. So, I would urge you to try and find out what other people (not just your supervisors) think you are good at. A lot of the things we take for granted as common sense – because we’re good at them – are actually valuable skills, and other people’s perceptions can be incredibly helpful in identifying them.
After that role, I started paying more attention to what I liked and was good at, and what I didn’t and wasn’t. I moved sideways to a School level role focussing on Knowledge Exchange and Impact, where I benefitted from access to various professional development opportunities. Some of these, such as “introduction to line management”, felt like a waste of time on the day, but have actually stayed with me ever since, as they helped me understand my own preferred way of working, and reflect on why certain things at work were causing me frustration. I still draw on the idea of different ‘thinking caps’ on a regular basis when bringing groups of people together. I also first read ‘Quiet‘ (Susan Cain) and ‘Quiet Impact‘ (Sylvia Loehken) at this point, exploring the role of introverts in a world set up for extroverts. These books were big turning points for me in terms of becoming more comfortable with and forgiving of some of my (sometimes quite extreme, especially when stressed) introvert traits (for anyone who has found themself hiding in a toilet at a conference to avoid having to talk to people just for ten blessed minutes: rest assured, it’s a more common experience than you might think).
So, my third piece of advice is to take some time to think about how some personality traits might have affected your PhD experience to date. And my fourth is to tap into any opportunities for broader personal development, and (perhaps controversially?) go to at least one ‘wildcard’ session where you can’t see a direct link to your current work or future plans (what plans?!). Sometimes it’s the topics that seem furthest away from what you’re doing which provide the most space to reflect on your own tendencies and natural ways of working.
So, there I was five years post-PhD, having very slowly built up my confidence in what I liked, was good at, and how I worked. (I’m hoping that this blog post might help some people build that confidence a little more quickly). Finally, for the first time in my life I took a strategic career decision. I moved (sideways, again – if you are considering moving to professional services role, you had better get used to the sideways move) to my first ever college-wide role, overseeing University of Edinburgh’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account. I didn’t know exactly what sort of job I wanted at the end of it (I had never heard of a Research Development Manager at that point) but I reasoned that a college job would give me exposure to a wider range of disciplines, and a better understanding of central processes.
The post was fixed term, but at four years I thought I could live with that. The gamble paid off; in 2021 I joined University of Glasgow as a Research Development Manager in College of Social Sciences, facilitating interdisciplinary and collaborative research. In this role I was lucky enough to work with a mentor (next piece of advice: explore any opportunities you have for formal or informal mentoring), where we explored my aversion to planning, and identified together that having moved from PhD to Research Centre to School to College, the next natural step might be to explore opportunities for a University-wide role. I began thinking about where I already had examples of working with other colleges, and took on some projects involving a wider range of disciplines so that I would be ready when an opportunity came up. I believe this is what some people may refer to as ‘planning’. Spoiler: I started my University-wide secondment a few months ago, part-time alongside my existing College role.
Research Development (at College or University level) really plays to my strengths, as well as my values (autonomy, self-direction, creativity, getting stuff done – my final piece of advice is to have a play with the free online Values tool of your choice and, healthy degree of scepticism non-with-standing, do some reflection on your values and how these may or may not align with various career options). In the end the Research Development niche fits me so well because it goes back to why I liked the literature review best: I get to hear about amazing new ideas and watch them as they develop; I get to make links with other ideas, and see connections and overlaps where others who are closer to the details of the research may not; I get to think about gaps in the landscape and where we might expect funders to prioritise next. I build relationships with our research community, providing feedback and constructive criticism for potential bids (what would a reviewer say?); championing people’s work to other institutions, funders and stakeholders; talking a first time PI through a crisis of confidence; commiserating with a senior prof when their excellent idea and its excellent feedback still does not get funded. I am absolutely involved in research on a daily basis, in a deep and I hope meaningful way. Just not being the one doing it.
The Auditorium: a research culture and researcher development blog 