The SULSA Post-Academic Career Fair: A Reflection

Caitlin Duncan is a final year PhD student in The Institute of Infection, Immunity and inflammation studying novel biomarkers for treatment stratification in rheumatoid arthritis. In this post, she shares her experience of the Scottish Universities Life Science Alliance (SULSA) Career Fair.

I am currently in the final year of my PhD, which means starting to really consider the scary prospect of what to do next! Over the last 3 years, I’ve realised a PhD is not simply the first step in a career in academia but a form of training. Whether you want to use that training to pursue an academic career, or choose a different path, this time is an excellent opportunity to develop skills for your desired area and to discover what your desired area even is. At some point, I acknowledged I would be unlikely to go down the academic route, so what would I do?

We are often told we have great transferable skills for many jobs, but it can be hard to know what options are out there. I find this to be the case with many of my friends and other peers in a similar positon. You may be struggling for options, too.

This is where SULSA came along to help! SULSA launched a successful post-academic careers case study series which gave an insight into the various careers people leaving PhDs and post-doc positions in the life sciences have transitioned into. Based on its success, SULSA decided to plan a career fair highlighting the array of careers open to us.

This first career fair took place on 19 November 2019 at the Technology and Innovation Centre at Strathclyde University. This was open to around 150 people and there was a considerable waiting list. This is evidence that we may not be exposed to enough of the opportunities out there and how we can successfully transition from academia (although UofG Careers’ PhD Transitions project is working to bring some of this knowledge to PGRs).

The day of the fair was filled with a mixture of talks, career panel sessions and workshops, all tailored to show us the range of careers open to us, the skills each of them require, and how we can effectively get there.

We had the choice of two ‘my job’ sessions which included industry, policy, entrepreneurship and university administration. These sessions involved an introduction from speakers in a range of jobs within that industry, followed by an interactive Q&A session. I chose to attend the industry and policy sessions.

Questions ranged from work-life balance and tailoring our CVs, to concerns about level of entry for industry jobs. Often, many jobs don’t differ in essential criteria between post-docs and people newly graduated from their first degree. This can be disheartening, but the consensus from the panel members was this is just something we must deal with, and often people with a PhD or post-doc experience will progress faster than they otherwise would, due to the experience gained through their academic research career.

We were also encouraged to have confidence in ourselves and apply for jobs that we may not tick all the boxes for.

Another highlight of the day for me was the afternoon workshops. I attended one named “LinkedIn Workshop: Best Practice in Increasing Presence, Making Connections and Building Thought Leadership”. I have had a LinkedIn account for years, which I have dipped in and out of, but I was unaware how much more it could be utilised. We should follow our dream organisations to work for (if there are any: it’s OK if you haven’t identified any yet) and take the opportunity to share content on the page, such as this blog post I’m writing now! There was also the handy tip of downloading the LinkedIn app on your phone which makes use of a QR code that can be scanned easily by someone you wish to link with. This means you no longer must rack your brain after a networking event, you can simply just link there and then.

I left the day feeling positive about my future career and excited about the options available to me. People really aren’t lying when they say we have ‘transferrable skills’ which will be highly valued in many careers outside academia. And, if your plan is to stay in Glasgow or Scotland, there is a thriving biotechnology industry just waiting for you!

The main takeaway message was to make the most of the opportunities available to you within university now. Go on courses, join a committee for an away day, become a rep for your cohort, go to career fairs that tie into your research and interests. This is a great chance to develop skills which you can apply to your chosen career, whatever that may be.

Have you had similar positive experiences of a career fair? What did you learn? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter or Instagram @UofG_PGRblog!

Title image Credit: Pixabay