Thing 19: Setting your career compass
- shijiayu
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
This Thing is written in collaboration by Rana Marrington, Researcher Careers & Employability Consultant, University of Surrey, and Yvonne Gaut, Graduate Career Coach, University of Otago
“Kaua e mate wheke mate ururoa”
Strive for your goals by being strong and resilient like a hammerhead shark.
Times are tough in many quarters of higher education, with financial constraints, precarious contracts, and more competition than ever for research funding. The advance of AI, climate change, economic and political events ensure nothing stands still. VUCA is an acronym, coined in the 1990s by the US Army War College, used by business to describe unpredictability - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Faced with day to day commitments and a changing environment, it does not always feel easy to make career plans. However, whether feeling overwhelmed or inspired by change, or possibly both, researchers are uniquely positioned to effectively navigate these challenges. Resilience, and skills such as creative thinking, for example, essential to solve challenging research problems, are key to effective career management and navigating a competitive and rapidly changing labour market.
Navigating personal growth and career development requires a thoughtful approach to understanding yourself and shaping your future. Hope-Action Theory identifies 7 competences useful to support this. It begins with hopefulness, the belief in a positive and fulfilling future, which drives self-reflection - examining your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors to gain deeper insights. Through self-clarity, you develop a strong understanding of your interests, values, and motivations, enabling informed decision-making. Visioning helps you to explore future possibilities, imagining where you want to go and the outcomes you desire. To turn dreams into reality, goal setting and planning provide a structured path by outlining specific steps toward achievement. However, success is not just about planning—it’s about implementing, taking decisive action to move forward. As new information and experiences shape your journey, the ability to adapt ensures continuous growth and alignment with evolving circumstances. Together, these elements create a dynamic process for personal and professional fulfillment.
We discussed some of the career management strategies we share with researchers.
You may like to compare your own approach to career management in your pods if you're in one.
Know yourself and your guiding principles
Your interests are the topics, activities and experiences which naturally attract your attention and bring you enjoyment. What topics do you find yourself researching for fun? What activities make time fly by? When did you last explore different hobbies, courses, or creative outlets to see what sparks curiosity. Do your interests connect in any way?
Motivation is the force behind your actions, underlying reasons for pursuing goals and making decisions. Consider moments when you were highly productive or engaged. What fueled your determination? When do you feel the most driven - solving problems, leading, learning, or supporting others? Values are your guiding principles underlying motivation, the things which deeply matter and influence decisions, for example, creativity, altruism, family, status, or material wealth. Recall times when you felt fulfilled.
Once you have clarity on your interests, values, and motivations, look for connections. Do they align with your current lifestyle or career? If not, what steps can you take to integrate them more fully?
Explore your values, the assessment on this platform, although targeted at social sciences and humanities researchers, can provide useful insights to researchers from other disciplines too: Welcome | ImaginePhD.
Understand and be able to articulate your offer to employers
Your personal goals can guide you to potential employers where your values may align but to successfully engage with them you need to be able to show that you understand their needs. They want to know what problems you can solve for them. What is the practical value of your skills to them? How can you make a difference? What problems can you solve?
The good news is that the transferable skills researchers develop from completing a doctorate and pushing the boundaries of knowledge are highly sought after by employers. The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 (p.37) suggests that creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, curiosity and lifelong learning, and analytical thinking, for example, will be in the top ten skills demanded by employers in 2030. It is not just about technical knowledge and sector experience as the ability to adapt to change will be central to progress.
If you are focussed on academic careers, Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework, is a useful tool to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Approach your supervisors’ for insights into what success looks like for someone in your discipline.
If you are looking beyond academia you may like to browse Lightcast’s Skill Categories to see where your skills may be a good fit. (You do not need access, to get started just click on the red box related to your interests).
Horizon scanning and building connections
Horizon scanning is about understanding the sector you are targeting for work. It can involve reading round the sector, attending events and networking with an aim to gaining deeper and broader insights and positioning yourself effectively for applications. If you are immersed in your research in a particular discipline, you will be doing this automatically. It helps you to understand sector challenges and the value of your skills and experience, and which skills and knowledge you may need to develop. It is great preparation for strong applications and interviews.
Who you meet at conferences, the informal conversations you have about trends / developments, and the labour market offer important insights that can help unlock opportunities to collaborate, innovate, and position you to have informed discussions with recruiters, potentially uncovering roles to apply for in advance of them being publicised.
Beyond academia, attending professional association and sector specific events can be an effective way to network and gather insights.
Depending on your background, not everyone finds it easy to access networks and opportunities. Ask your careers adviser about opportunities if you identify as being from a minority group or disadvantaged background. Does your university run mentoring schemes and / or run events, such as career fairs, to help to connect you with employers? Professional associations often also run mentoring schemes.
Build a team of likeminded people around you to support your progression. Join groups related to your research, take advantage of support offered through your faculty and doctoral school, and do not forget to take time out for social activities and your interests.
Be flexible
Opportunities for researchers are global. It is not practical for everyone to be flexible on the location where they want to work, but if you can be, you expand the range of accessible opportunities. Depending on circumstances, if you are reluctant but need particular experience to build your profile, perhaps it could be something you could consider for a limited period. Hybrid working means distance does not always have to be an obstacle.
Looking beyond our own area of expertise is important as interdisciplinary connections provide broader perspectives and opportunities for collaboration which lead to innovation and development. This tool, which explores connections between different sectors and issues driving change in the world, may spark ideas for where your skills and knowledge may be applicable beyond the obvious: Strategic Intelligence (weforum.org).
Be agile
Plan long term if you can but be prepared to swerve to take advantage of chance opportunities. Long term planning is important if targeting competitive opportunities such as research fellowships or consultancy, for example, but we have worked with many researchers intent on following one career path only to find satisfaction in something completely different.
Oh yes, and have backup plans!
"Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawaroa"
Be strong, be brave, be compassionate.
This whakatauki encourages fortitude, courage, and empathy when facing challenges, all key components of resilience.
Below is a sample of career tools. Contact a careers coach at your university if you would like to discuss professional development in more depth and for more tailored resources.
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