Researcher Career Development Tools & Supports
This section contains tools and supports to help you to plan your professional & personal development.
Why self-directed career development?
1. No framework exists that would encompass every type of research career so our approach to career development is self-directed by necessity.
2. Self-directed career and professional development is the most effective in producing the results that we want, i.e. researchers making informed decisions regarding their own future.
3. Self-assessment exercises promote self-awareness and a better understanding of yourself, assisting you to identify what you want professionally.
Take a look at Jobs.ac.uk ’s guide Career Development Toolkit for Researchers.pdf
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The Career Development Toolkit for Researchers is your interactive guide to help you formulate an ongoing career development strategy. Whether you are reviewing your academic career progress or considering a change, you will need to consider your current situation before moving forward.
These tools produce an output that is unique and specific to you based on your input. They are free to use but require an email address to register/log-in. Self-assessment is important in career choice because in helps you select a career path based on your unique values, interests, personality and skills. It assists you to make your own informed career decisions.
1. Values
Values are the beliefs, principles and standards that are important to you and what you are looking for in your working life.
Do the Values assessment now!
2. Interests
Interests are a predictor of job satisfaction. Research has confirmed a strong relationship between values and interests and the importance of confirming your interests when choosing careers.
Do the Interests assessment now!
3. Personality
The Big 5 Model of personality is the culmination of work done by researchers over many years but crystallised with the publication of the NEO PI-R five factor personality inventory by Costa & McCrae. 80% of personality variance can be expressed in these five broad dimensions. How do I like to work? How do I work with others? What kind of work do I enjoy? What do I dislike? Why? What working environments suit me?
Do the Personality assessment now!
4. Skills
An ongoing inventory of your skills is an important aspect of professional development. When discussing skills it is important to remember:
- Every role requires skills and every researcher has skills
- Every researcher has strengths in certain skill areas and indeed certain roles suit people with these skill strengths
- Researchers will have specific technical skills as well as skills that are transferrable to other roles.
Do the Skills assessment now!
The EURAXESSIntercultural Assistant for Researchers aims to raise awareness of the possible intercultural experiences you are likely to have as a working researcher.
1. What is Culture? Some basic thoughts about culture.
2. Boost your Intercultural Competence. Methods of intercultural communication and competence.
3. Compare Cultures. Explores one of the many approaches to describing cultural differences and allows you to compare your own culture with others.
4. Socialising. Practical tips for finding support while adapting to a new cultural environment.
Resources
Seven Dimensions of Culture: Helps to explain national cultural differences in organisations and shows how managing these differences can be a major challenge.
Cultural Intelligence Center:Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a globally recognised way of assessing and improving effectiveness in culturally diverse situations. It is rooted in rigorous academic research conducted across more than 100 countries.
Our network of career development professionals across the higher education sector are here to help you. Below is a selection of useful tools which you can use to get you where you want to be.
- Online Career Development Sessions: Where possible I have included the presentations. Recently these sessions are being recorded and links to the recordings are uploaded where possible also https://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/research/onlinesessionsresearch/ (PhD’s and Research Staff)
- The Odyssey Programme has been successfully transitioned to an online live 2 day programme since June 2020: See link here: https://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/research/theodysseyprogrammeucc/(PhD’s and Research Staff)
- CV Clinics: CV clinics (one to one) are provided to all research staff in UCC by appointment. These are advertised to all research staff regularly with a big uptake since COVID
- HR Excellence in Research: Since April 2020 UCC HR has provided 6 HRS4R Online Workshops for Third Level Institutions all over Europe. https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/euraxess/events/hrs4r-online-workshop-institutions
- Also UCC provides a host of wellbeing programmes to all staff including research staff all on line see link here https://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/wellbeingdevelopment/training/
- UCC has been advertising our Employee Assistance Programme which is very important particularly for researchers who may be far from home and need assistance during COVID 19.
Network Contacts
IUA Research Career Framework
The Irish Universities Association (IUA) has taken the initiative to bring forward a national framework to support the achievement of the national policy objective to optimise the impact of the human capital developed in our research system, and is the basis for the Innovation 2020 Action (No. 3.10), to “Develop a coherent national policy on structured progression for researchers”.
What effect will the Researcher Careers Framework have when implemented?
- It will enhance the mobility of researchers for a variety of careers in the public and private sector in research and non-research roles.
- It will provide consistent terms and conditions for research across the system independent of source of funding.
- It will enable the achievement of Innovation 2020 and European Research Area (ERA) goals for researchers in Ireland.
University Research Salary Scales/Guidelines
The IUA Researcher Salary Guidelines provide guidance to universities when hiring researchers. It is important to stress that they are not compulsory and have no legal basis.
The categories were developed in conjunction with universities’ policy on researcher careers. They have been adopted as guidelines by most national agencies in their funding programmes. They take cognisance of national wage and pension developments in the context of the public sector.
Download the Salary Scales here.