Career Conversations – supporting Research Leaders and Researchers with career planning

by Dr Rachel Chin (Researcher Development Project Officer, University of Glasgow), Dr Rachel Herries (Research Culture Manager, University of Glasgow), and Dr Rhoda Stefanatos (Researcher Development Specialist for Research Staff, University of Glasgow)  

As a Research Leader you have a huge amount of influence over researchers who may not have considered career planning, or are nervous to approach the topic, especially where their career ambitions aren’t directly related to their PhD or current research project.  

This blogpost aims to be a starting point for Research Leaders [Managers of Researchers and PGR Supervisors] who are supporting their researchers with career development and planning. It draws on our experiences as researchers and researcher developers and reflections from the pilot of our Talent Lab programme for Research Staff, Flourish. We use the development of an expanded Career Conversations Toolkit for the 2024 Flourish Cohort as a framework for this.  

Career planning from the get-go – not at the end of a contract 

Often career planning (aka career panic) becomes an emergent priority towards the end of a researcher’s contract. Often career decisions can feel like they are happening to a researcher rather than being the result of an informed and considered reflection. While great career moves will have happened in this more passive setting, from our experience, the pressure and stress that a lack of planning can cause, doesn’t foster a good space for a researcher to thrive in. Plus, we know it leads to missed opportunities for gaining valuable insight and direction from a conversation and the process of making [or attempting to make] a plan. 

There is uncertainty and requests for support to make these conversations, activities and experiences as effective as possible. And as research culture/development practitioners we are still working to vaporise the ‘failure narrative’.  

Career planning can act as a catalyst. Connecting to more than just the next role – the reflections gained and decisions made as part of career planning will feed directly into personal development reviews, APRs, project milestones (e.g. publications), promotions, job applications, job interviews – to name a few! For Research Leaders the incentive to engage with career planning with their researchers comes from the motivation to be collegial and the knowledge that it can inject clarity in an often-precarious space for researchers. And so, we believe that time spent on career planning is time well spent for researcher and research leader alike.  

FYI – plans can and will change, the learning, insights and lightbulb moments from making the plan are forever.  

Having Good Career Conversations  

How can you create and contribute to a culture that empowers open and honest conversations about career development and planning? Removing concern that it could impact future opportunities, be seen as time wasting or a loss of focus or commitment to their research. We know from our conversations with researchers, these are genuine worries they have about approaching their line manager or supervisor for career support.  

Opening up this topic can also be a daunting prospect for Research Leaders who sense an expectation that they will somehow be the oracle of all information, a source of knowledge, advice, guidance and direction.  

With all that said where can you start as a research leader? To make the space for the conversation and give ‘permission’ for the time to be allocated to career planning and development – both for yourself and your researchers.  

We have been thinking about this question for some time and the remainder of this blog shares our developing framework of support for career conversations from our Flourish Talent Lab with key starting points for Research Leaders who want to support their researchers. 

The UofG People Make Research Campaign  evidences the impact of career conversations, where  UofG staff are making a positive difference in a colleague’s career journeys. 

Developing a Career Conversations Toolkit 

As part of the pilot round of the Flourish programme we asked researchers to engage in a 60-minute career conversation with their PI or line manager. This was designed to foster positive and open conversations about careers and career trajectories. However, in practice, we realised that having researchers schedule these conversations without any guiding reflection tools did not allow the researcher and research leader to meet the full benefit of a great career conversation. Both Research Leaders and Researchers wanted more targeted resources to break down the conversations and to facilitate a clear and direct approach.  From our perspective, integrating them more visibly into Flourish and giving researchers the flexibility to schedule and undertake these conversations on their own time was important, as was a place to reflect on these conversations.  

To meet this need, we are developing a structured suite of guidance and resources that will walk researchers and research leaders through three career conversations. Each conversation will centre around an interconnected topic, encouraging supported conversations where researchers begin with career reflection (the past), progress to career analysis (the present) and graduate to making an informed career plan (the future). To support peer to peer learning and provide an opportunity for cocreation and improvement of this emerging resource, our 2024 Flourish cohort will have the opportunity to come together and reflect on their experiences of these conversations and these new resources.  

Career Planning Prompts for Research Leaders 

Inspired by our developing Career Conversations Toolkit (which we plan to launch in Autumn 2024), below we share insights and prompts under the focus of three conversations.  

Career Reflection – but what to reflect on?  

Supporting a researcher to reflect on their career path to date is a great place to start. What have they have enjoyed or valued? What have they achieved and are proud of? Where were the challenges and how did they overcome those barriers and obstacles? They may have considered the answers to these questions before, they might not have. Framing them as part of a conversation allows them to be taken together and for you as a research leader to share your own experience, achievements and failures, bringing a sense of realism and credibility to the conversation.  

Career Analysis – but what to analyse?  

Supporting researchers to collate a comprehensive picture of their skills, experiences and contributions. Using Narrative CVs or potential job descriptions as development tools, encouraging researchers prioritise areas for development. Creating a database of evidence that can support them to articulate their skills and experience, identify areas, sectors that they want to access opportunities in.  

Career Planning – but what goes into a plan?   

Supporting a researcher to bring together their career reflection and analysis in the context of their career ambitions. How can they use this to plan next steps? That is pragmatic, with realistic timescales and understanding flexibility in the plan is encouraged and needed. 

Things connected to career planning and important to be aware of are:  

• The language that Research Leaders use in career conversations can have a significant impact.  

• There are significant assumptions that we are working with/against to open up career conversations and planning.   

• The wide range of varying factors that our researchers have to contend with and factor into their planning and decision making such as being an international researcher.     

A lot of what we have detailed here is not new. By laying it out in the context of a process of sequential supported dialogues we aim to make career development planning accessible and embedded for researchers and research leaders.  

When finalised, our Career Conversations Toolkit will be openly available via our website.