Support to researchers

for research organizations

Support to researchers

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 factors of career management:

Career information
Career awareness and motivation
Career exploration
Career management skills
Career adaptability
Career planning and implementation

Transferable skills
Job hunting and application process
Commercial and business accumbent
Networking

In this section, you will find information on activities such as:

Training
Labour market information
Career testimonials
Research 2 Business matchmaking events/Career Fairs
Intersectoral mentoring programme

This page is a section of information for research organizations in the EURAXESS Researcher Careers Beyond Academia Hub toolkit. Go back to the homepage to browse through other information and resources.

Support to researchers

Training

In terms of career transition to careers beyond academia, there are several skills on which facilitating learning will be an asset:

Career management skills. Training focused on upskilling career management skills will facilitate to the early-stage researchers learning how to self-explore, LMI literacy, and tools to continue these processes by themselves. This type of training also aims to increase awareness of participants' career decisions and make them more open to opportunities to advance in their learning and career.
Commercial and business accumbent. This training focus on aspects of business and IP. They exposed participants to the world of exploiting results and how the business function.
Transferable skills. Many transferable skills learning can be training-facilitated from soft skills such as effective communication or active listening to tech skills such as data management and programming. It is advisable to have a list of offers; however, the ideal trainee should already have a minimum level of career management skills.

There are many different types of training depending on the transfer of knowledge and learning facilitation method. You can learn more about effective training here.

As a research organization is advisable that you set up a quality assurance process for the offered training and a certification or acknowledgment process. You can find here recommendations from EU Council.

It is also recommended to centralize your offer within your institution, at least at the level of advertisement, and create calendars. In this way, early-stage researchers at your institution can plan their training activities in relation with their career goals.

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Support to researchers

Labour market information

The purpose of providing LMI to early stage researchers is to facilitate:

Their market knowledge and expand their career perspectives
Their reflection on their interest and extrapolation into world beyond academia
Their planning to fill the gaps of skills and expertise

Labour national or regional administration provides LMI; however, this information is very broad for researchers, and it is advisable to gather reliable and relevant information, curate it and present it in a meaningful way to researchers. Here there are some examples.

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors

https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/career-development/researchers/discover-c…

https://www.imaginephd.com/job-families

If you want to know more about how to present LMI, please check this toolkit of CEDEFOP.

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Support to researchers

Career testimonials

Career testimonial and carer stories are examples of career trajectories from ex-academic researchers currently working in occupations different from academic research. They are in a sense LMI, because they can provide information about job profiles, in terms of working conditions, needed skills or entry requirements, but they also provide contextual and emotional information. This information is sometimes more meaningful to the audience, being more engaging, and efficiently inspire them and motivate them to explore careers beyond academia.

These career stories can be provided as:

individual stories in podcasts, blog entries, video, animated cartoons, etc.
shared stories where narrators are exchanging experiences, and impression in career panels or roundtables set ups.

These stories can be facilitated with guided questions and interviews, or non-facilitated producing self-narratives.

You can use different methods to deliver these career testimonials, from round table settings, reading material of career stories or podcast. Please find examples here:

EURAXESS Smart Talks on Beyond Academia Topic. Part 1

EURAXESS Smart Talks on Beyond Academia. Part 2

EURAXESS Career Stories for beyond academia topic.

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Support to researchers

Research 2 Business matchmaking events and Career Fairs

Career Fairs is a format meant to provide researchers with a possibility to explore employment and collaboration opportunities beyond academia and get insight into what is it like to work for a non-academic employer. At the same time, it should provide employers with a possibility to present their activities within the researchers’ community and gain access to research talent pool. The format combines panel discussion, and companies’ presentations and one-to-one meetings if the R2B matchmaking component wants to be added.

Here it is an example of Career Fair with R2B matchmaking events run within Research Careers Beyond Academia EURAXESS Hub.

Why to organize a career fair with or without R2B matchmaking event?

It is a type of activity which is asked for and appreciated by researchers

Researchers are increasingly aware that they need to think about the career alternatives beyond academia but often lack the opportunities to get into a direct contact with non-academic employers. Thanks to similar events researchers can discover variety of existing career paths outside academia, meet multiple employers and other stakeholders and discuss the existing possibilities with them directly.

Mobile researchers are the ones who can benefit the most

International researchers are usually not that well networked within and familiar with the local labour markets in their host countries and similar events provide them with an access to knowledge and opportunities they need if they wish to stay in their host country after finishing their PhD or postdoc. On the other hand, if organised in cross-border collaboration, matchmaking event might provide access to opportunities across Europe (which is very much in line with the idea of creating a single labour market for researchers).

It is a type of activity that brings academic institutions closer to non-academic employers

Through organising such event, EURAXESS provides employers with an access to the talent pool available in the researchers’ community and helps them understand the added value of employing PhDs. From the EURAXESS point of view, the event provides an opportunity to build network of contacts that can be approached also for other activities and increase the visibility of EURAXESS network among non-academic employers. Last but not least, communication towards and with the employers in other sectors enables EURAXESS to experience different organisational cultures and how to work with them which can be then shared with researchers.

It provides a platform for developing collaboration with other actors servicing researchers

Unless you already have the network of contacts outside academia you will probably need to reach out to actors that help you gain access to these target groups. They will help you to spread the news about the events within their networks or provide you with their experience. These might be different units at your institutions (e. g. technology transfer offices, career development centres for students, etc.) or external networks (e. g. Enterprise Europe Network) and actors (such as e. g. innovation agencies, business chambers etc.). As in previous case this can be a good basis for developing further, sustainable collaborations with those actors.

Through similar activities, EURAXESS can contribute to developing better environment for scientific entrepreneurship

Small companies, especially those newly established usually do not have such a broad portfolio of recruitment tools as large companies and might struggle to get the talents they need to grow. Possibility provided by EURAXESS can therefore help them increase their visibility in the researcher’s community and recruit the talents they need.

Benefit of adding the matchmaking component to the career fair

Level of engagement possible in one-to-one meetings is much higher than in case of short, more random conversations that happen during the career fairs. The possibility to schedule the meetings in advance provides researchers with a possibility to think about the strategy they want to use and prepare which in the end might lead to more fruitful conversations and creating the contacts that will sustain. It also provides researchers with an opportunity to develop the skills researchers will need in communication with actors beyond academia.

How to organize a career fair with an R2B matchmaking event?

If you want to learn how to organize a Career Fair with and R2B matchmaking event, please read this toolkit.

Toolkit

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SUPPORT TO RESEARCHERS

Intersectoral mentoring programme

In and intersectoral mentoring programme early-stage researchers are paired with researchers (or professionals close to research) that are currently not working in academic research activities.

Why to run an intersectoral mentoring programme?

Apart from connecting people and providing LMI to early-stage researchers, mentoring programmes work best in the areas of career awareness and career management skills. Mentors are role models that provide information and professional development, growth, support, and readiness for opportunities.

REBECA by EURAXESS runs an intersectoral mentoring programme; you can check the results here. The organizing team has also published a toolkit to implement this activity.

How to organize a career fair with an intersecoral mentoring programme?

If you want to learn how to organize an intersectoral mentoring programme, please read this toolkit.

Toolkit

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