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EURAXESS researcher careers beyond academia hub toolkit

Moving forward intersectoral mobility

Introduction to Researcher Careers Beyond Academia toolkit

Visit our toolkit if you are a:

Researcher wanting to explore careers beyond academia
Research organization willing to assist researchers in making an informed career decision
Euraxess members who eant to join efforts to promote intersectoral mobility

for researchers

Why using this toolkit

Changing career interests is a regular aspect of professional development growth. Many factors can trigger this change: the ongoing life, experiences challenging our career beliefs and expectations, or even a sense of unreachable goals. This is also true for researchers. Researchers can experience very diverse and complex academic careers, and throughout their career, these experiences sometimes may not convey their evolving interests anymore.

Where to start

To understand where you are in your career and what you want for your next steps, you should check

Career exploration and planning tools

These tools will help you understand better your current interests and plan your next career steps.

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Labour market information

Open up your possibilities and discover what researchers can do in different sectors.

You can use this information:

To know the trends of the market within your selected destinations, and gathered useful information about companies
To understand the daily activities of a job position and the working conditions and reflect on your career interests.
To identify gap on skills and in expertise, and plan your next steps in your career

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for research organizations

Business woman climbing on red graph arrow concept on background

Why to facilitate research career transition

There is a wide consensus that, for PhD graduates, jobs outside academia are not “alternative” careers anymore but are probably the norm; most the PhDs will not have an academic career throughout their professional career. However, most doctoral training programmes are not acknowledging this fact and covering the issue during their training. The lack of broader perspectives for early-stage researcher professional development not only impoverishes both the academic and the non-academic world, but also hampers the desired inter-sectoral mobility of highly skilled professionals and researchers, knowledge transfer, and employability of researchers.

Where to start

As a research organization, there are two type of actions that you could implement to introduce professional development programmes and activities for early-stage researchers that include the careers beyond academia topic.

Connect with other non-academic stakeholders

To create good quality activities dedicated to intersectoral mobility is necessary to engage with other sectors, particularly the private sector. Here we suggest some actions to engage with individuals, organizations and enterprises from other sectors:

Mapping your potential network

Specifically, to connect with private sectors, it is important to map what bridges your organization has with this sector.

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Alumni community engagement

The alumni of your alumni are probably working in many sectors outside academia. Connecting with them will be an efficient way to keep connected to the outside world of academia.

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Tracking systems

This powerful tool will keep records of your alumni and will facilitate the designing of career development programmes.

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Other engaging activities

Learn more about other activities you can implement at your institution to engage with non-academic sector.

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Support to researchers

There are several activities your research organization can implement to facilitate researcher’s career transitions. Several activities can be implemented within research organizations to facilitate the decision making and, if decided, the career transition of researchers. They are a set of activities that can be implemented as isolated activities or in combination within a programme. This will depend on the capacity of the research organization. They cover different dimensions of career development advice. Here there is a list of different types:

Training

There are different type of training depending on their learning and/or changing behaviour outcomes that your career development programmes want to pursue regarding careers beyond academia.

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Labour market information

When dealing with career transitions it is important to provide researchers with information about other careers (LMI).

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Career testimonials

These contextual stories of individuals can inspire and empower researchers in their career transition.

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Career Fairs with Research 2 Business matchmaking events

This is an excellent activity to provide your researcher with an overview of other careers, with networking opportunities and/or possible collaborations.

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Intersectoral mentoring programme

This high impact activity provides information, connection and support to researchers willing to broaden their knowledge on careers beyond academia and to improve their career management skills.

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Peer mentoring

Also know as community of practices or circles. They are very useful to address career awareness and practice career exploration as they promote mutual learning and psychosocial support.

Internships and non-academic sector placements

Providing real experience opportunities is a powerful tool to facilitate career reflection and move forward research careers

Real work-based experiences

Researcher’s time and resources do not always allow individuals to experience a job through an internship. Mini-case practices is an alternative where researchers can perform an activity of an specific job profile to in a flexible way.

More information

You can search form more activities for researcher through the REFLEX app.

for euraxess members

EURAXESS Research Careers Beyond Academia Hub

The EURAXESS Research Careers Beyond Academia (REBECA) Hub is a network of EURAXESS members connected to offer services for early career researchers to facilitate their career transition to non-academic careers. In this way, it contributes to the permeability of research talent among non-academic research jobs and employers, including industry and businesses.

Why to organize in a Hub?

The extension of EURAXESS services can pose an asymmetry of different types and levels of services provided by EURAXESS members. Depending on the capacity of EURAXESS members, some will restrict their services to welcoming and informational services, while other can engage with other non-academic services to provide career development opportunities and activities.

By clustering EURAXESS services in cross-border hubs, it strengths the services, creates a one-stop shops for researchers, and provides the possibility to engage other external stakeholders. This last point is of special relevance to engage non-academic actors when providing services dedicated to increase the employability of early stage researchers.

Activities of REBECA Hub

During the piloting of the Hubs, REBECA Hub has conducted three activities.

How to join and participate

Within the local arms, EURAXESS REBECA Hub members will:

Network to engage other multiplier and enabler organizations
Engage non-academic researcher employers
Deliver career development support
Disseminate of results and promote activities
Engage researchers including non-academic researchers
Deliver career development support.

Measuring your capacity will help you to decide the level of participation. In terms of your local network with non-academic stakeholders, this section will help you to map your key agents.

There are two levels of participation:

Implementation of an activity

Activities related to increase the transition of early-stage research form the academic sector to other careers have space in this Hub. You can check these lists of activities to support researchers in this endeavour to start with.

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Collaboration in an activity

From the three activities so far implemented in this Hub, we have elaborated a guide on how to collaborate in such activities. It is worth highlighting that through some of these actions, you will engage with non-academic stakeholder providing you with a good basis for developing further activities and services helping researchers to explore careers beyond academia; in other words, expanding your network.

Find the ways on:

News and Events

Coming soon

Meantime you can follow us at REBECA by EURAXESS LinkedIN page

EURAXESS Researcher Careers Beyond Academia Digital Toolkit

EURAXESS researcher careers beyond academia hub toolkit

Introduction to Researcher Careers Beyond Academia toolkit

Why using this toolkit

Where to start

Why to facilitate research career transition

Where to start

EURAXESS Research Careers Beyond Academia Hub

News and Events