Navigating Careers Beyond Academia : A Practical Handbook for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers

Navigating Careers Beyond Academia is an evidence-based guide for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers seeking careers outside academia. Combining research, practical exercises, and case studies, it helps readers overcome mental barriers, identify transferable skills, explore options, and communicate their value effectively to employers.

Navigating Careers Beyond Academia offers an evidence-based, step-by-step guide to successful career transition beyond academia. It provides an accessible overview of scholarship in the field of career transition, turning this into strategies for researchers to proactively pivot their careers into other sectors. This book is designed to help readers address barriers to exploring careers beyond academia, to determine their priorities, to generate options, and to navigate some of the most persistent questions about preparing for career transition beyond academia. It guides readers through strategies for identifying relevant opportunities and communicating their skills and value effectively to potential employers, and concludes with a framework for building a career in the longer term. Grounded in case studies of former researchers from a range of backgrounds and disciplines across STEM, social sciences, and humanities, this is a definitive guide for researchers. It also acts as a toolkit to support the work of careers consultants, researcher developers, and all involved in facilitating the professional development of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. The 'Insider Guides to Success in Academia' offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia. These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game -- the things you need to know but usually aren't told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors -- and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia.