Former HaSS PhD student Lorna Dargan shares with us her experience and transition from student to researcher to Careers Adviser for PGRs and postdocs. Here are some real-life based tips and useful advice on career planning and management!
After her undergraduate degree, Lorna decided to start a research degree because she “just wasn’t ready to stop learning.” She enjoyed sharing her work with others and feeling independent. “I really loved doing my PhD”, she says, “your work comes from within yourself, it’s like and expression of who you are and all the things you are interested in.” But Academia is not just hard work, it is perhaps “a vocation”.
After some years as a postdoc, Lorna decided to leave Academia. “I ran out of things that I was interested in”, she explains, “I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new. It took me a really long time to get to the point where I realised this was not for me because it was technically a good fit on paper, but I knew it wasn’t the right fit.”
Lesson #1 – Don’t be scared of changing direction and transitioning
“It is not a failure to say: ‘I don’t like this.’”
Lorna recalls that the idea of leaving Academia scared her at first. “The process of leaving was a bit difficult”, she explains, “and inwardly I think I did feel a little bit of a failure, but eventually realised I just didn’t want to do it. It is not a failure to say I don’t like this. It’s not like you are not capable: you don’t like it.”
Lesson #2 – Look outside of your bucket
“I didn’t spend a lot of time making my academic career happen because I was in the bucket, so I was just thinking about the research project I was working on”
Lorna acknowledges that PhDs often “drift” in their careers and don’t think about them until quite late. “I never spent any time thinking about my career”, she says, “and I didn’t really see my career as a thing slightly separate to myself that needed thinking about and planning and a little bit of management. When you are a PhD student it’s kind of like your research is in a bucket and you’ve always got your head in the bucket. You need to take the bucket off your head and look up every now and then”. Every career needs planning and management, you need to understand what you want to achieve and how to make that happen.
Lesson #3 – It’s not either or
“All the qualities that make a good research student are all the qualities that make someone employable”
One of the biggest misconception about life after the PhD is that you either become an academic or you wasted your PhD years. This is of course not true and people with a doctorate have a huge set of skills which employers highly value. “Probably the biggest problem PhDs encounter moving into a non-academic job is just that transition and how to market yourself because if you are very used to speak the language of Academia that doesn’t always translate well into the job application”. Lorna herself admits that when she first thought of leaving Academia she had no idea of what she could offer to the outside world. She indeed found her first non-academic interviews quite hard: “an academic interview focuses on your knowledge and a non-academic interview focuses a lot more on your skills. I wasn’t really sure what skills I had and I didn’t really know how to talk about them.”
This is too often the case with PhD students, who tend to associate research skills with Academia only. But Lorna, for instance, uses different skills in her job at the Careers Service, especially those she gained through her research degree. She manages projects, plans and delivers workshops and training sessions, teaches, stages events, does consultancy and mentoring work, and a lot more. In particular, Lorna uses analytical skills: “when I am talking to a client, I am always analysing data, it’s just that the data is the spoken word. I am looking for patterns and meanings.” Her own experience shaped her definition of employability, which is clear and simple, but extremely powerful. “When I started looking at what employability meant”, she states, “I realised that the things that make a student employable are the things that make him or her a good student […]. All the qualities that make a good research student are all the qualities that make someone employable”, that is working independently, managing your time, your own learning and professional development, leadership, etc.
Lesson #4 – Explore and try out before committing
Once she had decided she was going to leave Academia, Lorna turned to a Careers Adviser. “When you don’t like your job and you haven’t liked it for a while you can start to complain about it a lot and you are always focusing on the things you don’t like. I wasn’t figuring out by myself what I wanted to do. So I went to a Careers Adviser who challenged me to stop complaining and think about the things that I did like. It’s the same with academic paradigms: one paradigm doesn’t end and a complete new paradigm starts, there are little bits of crossover.” Thus, she was asked what she wanted to take forward in her new job, and that was teaching. But, although Lorna had found out what she was passionate about, it was not yet clear to her what career path to take. In fact, it was only after shadowing a school teacher that she would confidently opt for HE.
The message here is to take advantage of all the possibilities the Careers Service offer, to make sure you are making the right choice. Students have the possibility to apply for various work experiences, volunteer work, shadowing, trainings, all worth a try. And why not attending events and fairs? “I think, even if you want an academic career it’s worth coming to recruitment fairs”, suggests Lorna, “because it’s a good way to practice your networking skills. Come to a recruitment fair and practice talking to people you don’t know” – and find out whether you actually enjoy it or not.
Lesson #5 – Get there (and get there early)
“It’s not just going to happen”
Here are Lorna’s top tips to plan your career.
1) Think about it early.
Explore all the options, network, research.
2) Make sure you know what it really means.
Have a clear picture of what is required in a specific career, and ponder on whether that fits your expectations. Lorna acknowledges that many students have an idealised picture of life in Academia, for instance. “For a career in Academia you need to be really clear about what that actually involves […], whether you are prepared to make the sacrifices to make an academic career happen, because you have to give up a lot to make that happen.”
3) Put some effort into it. Your career “is not just going to happen”. Plan carefully and take action.
4) Once you have a plan, talk about your plan.
Lorna’s best piece of advice is to come and talk to the Careers Service. “It’s good to talk about your plan with somebody who is not your supervisor because we are not invested in the outcome of your plan, so we are a bit more objective.”
What if you don’t have a plan?
The Careers Service can help you, even if you do not have a plan. “I think one of the misconception is that you can only come and see us if you got something in your mind”, says Lorna. “If you do not know what to do, come and talk to someone. I think there’s a limit to how much you can figure out by yourself. We are not here to tell you what to do because we don’t know you as well as you do but we can help you think about your problems from different angles and perspectives.”
Lorna joined the Careers Service in 2007. She had previously worked as a Research Associate in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, where she researched government policy discourses government around social and urban policy; as well as teaching on several undergraduate and Masters modules.
In 2007, she moved into the Careers Service as a module leader on the Careers Service’s “Career Development” module. She now works as a Careers Adviser. Lorna is the Careers Service lead member of staff for working with researchers. She is also the link Careers Adviser for the university’s postdoctoral research staff, postgraduate students in the faculty of Medical Sciences (FMS), and students in the Schools of Dental Sciences, Psychology and Medicine (MBBS).