Take control of your own career by doing some self-reflection and going to informational interviews.

At the end of 2014, we set our Naturejobs podcast listeners, especially the PhD students, a challenge: Take control of your own careers.

Earlier this month I attended a one day careers conference in Edinburgh called Beyond the Ivory Towers, where 7 speakers took to the stage to share their transitions from academia into “other”. The “other” included law, entrepreneurship, research in industry, tech transfer, public engagement, clinical science, publishing, and more. What struck me about each of these speakers is that from the outside, it looked as though their careers had been perfectly planned from the day they started at a university. This was definitely not the case. Each speaker had their own challenges to face, from the expected (no more funding) to the unexpected (becoming allergic to rubber gloves).

Transitions are never easy, but there are things you can do to make them smoother. In this podcast I’m joined by two of the speakers, each one taking a different approach to tackling their transitions from academia into “other”

Elizabeth Fairley from EFB Services took an outward approach: find out what she needed to do to become successful in her chosen career in industry. This included going out and speaking to industry professionals who could give her insight into what her future career might look like and what she would need to do to make it.

Phill Jones from Digital Science took the inward approach: determine what skills I learned by self-reflection so that I can market them and sell them to industry. This included analysing what he had done whilst in academia, not just the technical stuff, and learning to convey it in an appropriate way.

Listen to the podcast to find out more!