New careers guidance for staff who research

Looking to kickstart your career in 2022? Use our new Researcher Career Guidance to consider your progress to date and plan your next steps.

As part of the Graduate and Researcher College (GRC)’s ongoing work to support the professional and career development of the University’s researchers, introductory guidance has been developed on the following topics:

This information is available on the GRC’s new KentNet pages, which also signpost details of relevant training and development opportunities for staff who research.

These careers pointers should be viewed along with the professional and career development content in our new Central Researcher Induction module, which is recommended for all academic and research staff. This includes information about career planning and training frameworks, especially the Academic Career Map (ACM) and the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF), together with suggestions for activities you can undertake as part of your recommended 10 days of development pro rata per year.

Other related GRC KentNet content includes a repository of current Kent resources housing recordings of previous training sessions, which can be viewed on demand, as well as new information exploring our progress to implement the Concordat principles across Kent, including that of professional and career development.

Professor Paul Allain, Dean of the Graduate and Researcher College, said:

“I hope this short and simple content will encourage you to reflect on your career journey thus far and to refocus on where you would like to go and, crucially, how you are going to get there. Use this and other relevant resources available to researchers to steer your development in the right direction.”

GRC staff will now collate content to be included in forthcoming digital ‘handbooks’ for researchers and research managers to be launched in the summer. We welcome your feedback on our new careers content and encourage you to suggest any specific topics relating to your professional and career development, which you would like us to consider covering in future outputs.

Please email acresdev@kent.ac.uk with your comments – all feedback and suggestions welcome!