Career options (transcription)
What are your career options as a Higher Degee Research Student?
Many students take on a PhD, or Masters By Research because of their passion for their specialist subject. Or, perhaps they want to accelerate their career progression in their field. Often, in order to continue their research, a PhD's career will be aimed in the academic arena - usually in higher education, as a teacher or research associate - perhaps seeking grant funding, or in a fellowship position.
Many students will also realise that there are not enough of those jobs to meet the demand and that they need to consider career options outside of academia.
The unique and highly sought after skills that you are developing as a researcher, such as analytical skills, problem solving skills, high-level reporting and document writing, could be applied to many other areas including roles in industry and in commerce. And it goes back to understanding yourself, your key strengths and achievements and then looking at job options that allow you to use those unique skills.
Some good options for reviewing job opportunities outside of the usual job websites for people with research skills are places like Times Higher Education uni jobs, ResearchGate, ResearchCareer, and EthicalJobs.
In addition, you could explore the research centres, and professional associations that are focused on your field of research. This is just a starting point, but we can help you with the next steps if you come and see us in Careers.
Through a one-to-one consultation we can go into detail about your specific situation, your research area, and the options that you can explore.