Boosting employability skills
In a competitive job market, recognising and developing strong employability skills increases your chances of securing promotions, grants, and making a successful transition between roles.
As applications increasingly require evidence of impact, leadership, and collaboration, boosting the necessary skills can help build research partnerships and secure funding. Should you wish to move on from academic work, enhancing employability skills opens doors to roles in industry, government, policy, consulting, and entrepreneurship.
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The first step in career development is to identify the skills you already have and those you want to develop.
Here are some resources you can look at to do this. You may also want to take a look at the career management webpage.
1. Vitae: Research Development Framework
The framework describes the knowledge, behaviours and attributes of successful researchers, structured into four domains, twelve sub-domains and 63 associated descriptors.
2. Eurodoc: Identifying Transferable Skills and Competences to Enhance Early-Career Researchers’ Employability and Competitiveness
Transferable skills are a core part of any career development, inside or outside of academia. Eurodoc complied a report 
on the transferable skills and competencies relevant for academics to increase their employability in multiple work sectors. It serves as a starting point to help ECRs identify the transferable skills they have already obtained and still need to acquire as well as how to acquire them.
The skills matrix consists of a total of 66 transferable skills as summarised in an infographic
3. Studies in Higher Education: Academic career progression from early career researcher to professor: what can we learn from job ads
Based on the skills in the Eurodoc report, Lilia Mantai and Mauricio Marrone completed a study analysing job advertisements. They identify the key selection attributes required at different stages of an academic career. The framework is based on four stages:
- R1 First Stage Researcher (PhD candidate/Research Assistant)
- R2 Recognised Researcher (or Early Career Researcher)
- R3 Established Researcher
- R4 Leading Researcher
Key findings
- Research activity remains the primary selection criterion across all stages.
- Teaching and supervision gain importance over time, particularly at senior levels.
- International experience becomes increasingly valued from R1 to R4.
- The most significant leap in selection attributes occurs between R2 and R3, shifting focus from communication and interpersonal skills to enterprise, supervision, and leadership.
- Attributes such as communication skills and digital literacy decline in importance at higher stages, while leadership and fundraising become more prominent.
The study highlights that successful academic progression requires not only research excellence but also investment in teaching, supervision, and leadership skills.
4. Profiling for Success
We subscribe to Profiling for Success, an online tool to help you gain a greater understanding of yourself. It features a range of tools to help you develop your self awareness including identifying your:
Use the Type Dynamics Indicator (TDI) within Profiling for Success to discover how your preferences affect how you see the world, how you react and behave and what impact this may have on the world and people around you.
Login to Profiling for Success using your UoN email address
At the university, there are a wide range of opportunities for skills development through the short courses programme and the Leadership and Management Academy
The university offers a huge variety of short courses for staff, covering:
- equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)
- health and safety
- interpersonal and communication skills
- IT skills
- leadership and management
- learning and teaching
- research environment and context
- research methods and approaches
- wellbeing
Our Leadership and Management Academy helps leaders and managers, and those aspiring, to develop their skills and reach their potential.
Two examples of building skills integral to your career
Networking
Networking is a valuable way to grow your academic career. It can also set you up to pivot away from academia, if that’s where you are heading. Growing your network can be intimidating but will have valuable rewards.
An effective way to network is to join research networks and working groups in your discipline. If you aren’t sure where to start, ask senior colleagues for recommendations. Also, conferences you have attended or journals you have published in may well be associated with societies or groups.
Make the most of contacts from all areas of your academic journey, right back to your undergraduate degree. Especially if you have been at multiple institutions, you will already have a wide array for people to reach out to.
Continue to attend conferences, branching out from ones you have attended before. Think particularly about interdisciplinary and international opportunities to attend and present.
Four ways to make the most of networking opportunities, digitally and face-to-face.
- Networking is a key part of the Researcher Development Framework created by Vitae
- In the post-pandemic academic landscape, networking has evolved with the rise of hybrid events. For introverted academics, this shift offers both challenges and opportunities. Mark Carrigan provides strategies to navigate this new environment effectively
- Check out the interpersonal and communication skills courses at the university focusing on networking and academic relationships
Research
Setting a clear research trajectory and demonstrating how you will develop as a researcher are key aspects of progressing your career. Setting (movable) goals for yourself can help guide your decisions. Public engagement and knowledge exchange become increasingly important as your career progresses so make sure to include this in your plan.
A research agenda can help you orient yourself toward both short and long-term goals, guiding your publishing and engagement work. Formal research agendas are often used in applications for jobs and grants, but even if you are not applying for anything it is a useful tool to develop your identity as a researcher.
Three ways to develop your research skills.
- A research agenda can help you orient yourself toward both short- and long-term goals, guiding your publishing and engagement work. Formal research agendas are often used in applications for jobs and grants, but even if you are not applying for anything it is a useful tool to develop your identity as a researcher. Read Pat Thomson's blog post, Developing a research agenda as a postdoc
- Talk to senior colleagues for advice on how to progress your research. They will have insight into the best journals, publishers and conferences to aim for, and could even introduce you to potential collaborators. At UoN, Researcher Academy Faculty Leads (RAFLs) are senior academics who act as a key interface with postgraduates and early career researchers as well as other stakeholders. You can also contact them to discuss any concerns you have or support you are looking for in your career development as a researcher.
- Publish and present strategically. Focus on high-quality journals and conferences in your field, disseminating your work both nationally and internationally. Leverage your network to find opportunities and attend publishing panels hosted by conferences and research networks.