A toolkit to foster great career conversations

By Dr Rachel Chin, Researcher Development Specialist for Writing and Communications, and Dr Rachel Herries, Research Culture Manager

Research Leaders (PIs, Supervisors, Managers of Researchers) have a huge amount of influence over the career direction and successes of their researchers. Often career planning becomes ‘career panic’ – an emergent priority towards the end of a researcher’s contract. But PIs and Supervisors can support and empower researchers to plan their career in a more systematic and reflective manner. A good conversation can open minds, offer validation, build confidence and even build a better relationship between you.

To support you with this important role, we have now piloted and launched an open access Career Conversations Toolkit.

In this blog post we share our approach to designing the resource and we unpack how we piloted the toolkit with researchers and their PIs, using our Talent Lab programme for Research Staff – Flourish – as our test cohort. We share some of the user feedback, noting how testers put it to work, and what they gained.

How can a structured toolkit reduce worries?

A good career conversation is an intentional discussion, which supports researchers to critically reflect on their career experiences to date and identify areas for further development in line with their intended future trajectory(s) of their career. Career conversations are not new but evidence from the UofG community suggests that there is still a lot of uncertainty around how to structure, or even just start a career conversation. Add to this a concern from Supervisors and PIs that they will need to have all the answers to be a good source of guidance and direction.

Feeling underprepared or reluctant when it comes to career conversations can also have a basis in the emotional work involved for both parties. Navigating elements that are outwith our sphere of control when it comes to the job application process, and the career landscape for researchers necessarily involves elements of excitement, uncertainty, hope, frustration, determination, joy, resilience, and disappointment. Working together through a structured resource, can help normalise emotion within career work, and reduce feelings of embarrassment and shame.

We set out to create a resource that would reduce some of the ambiguity about what a good conversation looks and feels like, and provide a framework to facilitate positive, open and productive career conversations.   

Designing for all users

Our aim was to design a toolkit that would be adaptable to different scenarios, career histories and destinations, different energy levels, relationship dynamics and different stages of career discovery and planning.

We framed the toolkit so that users are guided through a three-stage process: Career Reflection (the past), Career Analysis (the present) and Career Planning (the future), each building on the one before. Importantly, we wanted to surface these three elements as equally important parts of the process, so that conversations give each element the time it deserves.

Each section comprises:

• Exercises that encourage self-evaluation, that researchers can complete at their own pace, individually or together. Or that managers can introduce to support researchers to reflect more deeply. 
• Conversation Starters that are centred around a single word and offer additional questions and prompts that can be used to keep the discussion rolling. They support managers to broaden the parameters of their career conversations with their researchers. 
• Food for Thought and Resource List sections that encourage further exploration and next steps, useful for both the researcher and their supervisor or manager. This helps to maintain a continuous conversation.
• A community Padlet board is included in the final section, as we recognise the value of a safe space to share, ask questions, and lurk – as a means of discovery and reassurance that (for example) others have similar thoughts and experiences.

Piloting with our research community

We piloted the toolkit with a cohort of 33 Postdoctoral Researchers and their Line Managers. We asked them to have three 30-minute career conversations, aligned to the three sections of the toolkit, which they used to plan, carry out and evaluate their conversations.

The career conversations took place in three consecutive sessions scheduled into the overall 3-month Flourish programme. This approach created a structure for the conversations to take place, as part of other expert-led career development activities. Between each of the three conversations we hosted a community session where the Postdoctoral Researchers could come together to reflect on and share their experiences. These sessions were lightly structured around a series of reflective discussion questions, which encouraged researchers to critically evaluate their planning, experience and takeaways from each session. The sessions were also a space where researchers could ask for advice and feed back to us about the toolkit.

Impact: regular and better career conversations

We learned that researchers and their manages were using and benefiting from the toolkit. Some were systematically working through each of the reflective exercises and using them as a foundation for their conversations. Others were using the framing of each Section (career reflection, career analysis, career planning) to set a loose topic for their conversation. Others were extracting the core concept of the toolkit (that regular career conversations are important) to legitimise setting aside dedicated time for these discussions. What was important and notable was that the toolkit was always a mechanism that supported researchers and their managers to have regular and better career conversations. 

Researchers who engaged with the toolkit told us that the toolkit made them feel more empowered in their career journey. It helped them to talk about their future aims with their manager and to identify next steps towards their goals. Using the toolkit also, in some instances, fostered a stronger relationship between the researcher and their manager, which had positive effects on work outside the career conversations. Being able to talk openly about career plans and aims contributed to a more open and transparent relationship.

Over to you

We invite you to test the toolkit, reflect on it and help us improve it. We have given a Creative Commons License to the toolkit so that Researcher Developers can copy it and make it your own. We have also included a link so you can provide us with feedback on your experience using the toolkit in the concluding chapter.

Although we originally designed this toolkit for postdoctoral researchers and their line managers, we believe it has a much wider applicability. Anyone interested in taking time to reflect on their career journey and future goals can engage with it meaningfully.