1. Welcome from the Careers Service
Lorna Dargan and Jenny Brady

2. Why do PGRs need to think about their careers?
Women make up 11% of professors
(22% at ncl)
(diagram from research by Royal Society into career destinations of PGRs).
Why do they need to think about their careers? Because, regardless of destination, successful and satisfying careers rarely happen on their own. They require some thought and input from the student, and from the people around them. Without this, PGRs have a tendency to drift in their careers, and can end up in jobs, usually in postdocs, without really thinking whether that career is right for them, leading to unhappy staff three years into their postdoc career, who struggle to transition into other choices.
As you can see from the diagram, most PGR graduates do not end up in academia, whether by choice or by circumstance. The job market for PGRs outside academia is sizeable, and they go on to all kinds of interesting roles, and it helps for us to prepare them for that. From a recruitment perspective, we want our potential PhDs to know that a PhD from Newcastle is a valuable asset regardless of where you end up after graduating, and you have not wasted your time by studying here.
For those PGRs who do want an academic career, they need to think about what it takes to make that happen, and where they need to be. About half of Newcastle’s PGRs are employed by us six months after graduating. Sometimes, that’s because they’re already staff, sometimes it’s because Newcastle is the best place for them to be, but sometimes it’s because it’s the ‘easy’ choice for our PGRs to make, particularly for those who haven’t thought about their careers. Everyone in this room knows how important mobility can be for an academic career, and so we want encourage PGRs to think about their careers early, and to make the right, strategic choices to put themselves in the best position.
To prevent this happening, we want to encourage you to put some thought into your career planning, and to make use of the strong support structures in place through the university, starting locally with your supervisor (they can have a huge impact on your approach to career management, and that’s why they are all here), right through to the Union, Careers etc.

3. Academic careers Career returners The wider world
Can be an amazing, multi-faceted job
Need to have an enterprising skillset to be successful
PhD as minimum entry criteria – what else have you got?
PGRs will need to do things beyond their thesis…
Studying a PhD because they want something to be different?
What value will they have added from the PhD experience?
What new skills will they have developed?
PGRs will need to do things beyond their thesis…
Full of amazing, multi-faceted jobs
Need to have an enterprising skillset to be successful
Important to demonstrate skills – can you prove your worth?
PGRs will need to do things beyond their thesis…
So, looking at some example careers in more depth, why do PGRs need to think about their careers?
When we say ‘beyond their thesis’, this can be anything from writing papers, presenting at conferences, organising conferences, teaching and demonstrating, but also engagement, volunteering, work experience, training etc.
Our PGRs tell us that they feel more employable than when they were undergraduates, but they don’t think they can prove it. Doing something outside the immediate boundaries of their research is crucial.

4. What can you do beyond your thesis?
Graduate school workshops
Reading groups and seminars
Conferences and networking
Write for industry publications
Engage in university life
Outreach and engagement
Run own business
Creative and cultural collaborations.

5. How do people make career choices?
What questions should PGRs ask themselves?
Self-awareness
What do I want? What do I want to avoid? What does my career need to give me? How will my career fit into my life (or vice versa)?
What can I offer? What strengths, skills, and experience do I have?
Where am I at in relation to where I want to be? What am I prepared to do in order to move forwards?
Opportunity awareness
What options are out there for me? What kinds of skills and experiences are required for those roles?
Transition skills
How will I get to where I want to be? What steps to I need to take? When?
How can I persuade someone to give me the opportunities that I want?
The Careers Service can support PGRs at all stages

6. What questions should PGRs ask themselves?
Self-awareness
What do I want? What do I want to avoid? What does my career need to give me? How will my career fit into my life (or vice versa)?
What can I offer? What strengths, skills, and experience do I have?
Where am I at in relation to where I want to be? What am I prepared to do in order to move forwards?
Opportunity awareness
What options are out there for me? What kinds of skills and experiences are required?
Transition skills
How will I get to where I want to be? What steps to I need to take? When?
How can I persuade someone to give me the opportunities that I want?

7. Your Careers Service What do you think we do for PGRs and supervisors?
What do you need us to do for PGRs and supervisors?
What do we need you to do as PGRs and supervisors?

8. What do we actually do? 60+ experienced, trained and qualified staff
Individualised and impartial information, advice and guidance
Workshops specifically for PGRs
Plan, manage and make decisions about your career
Help you understand, develop and pitch your skills
Finding opportunities that suit your needs and wants
Transition skills – how to make things happen
Networking opportunities: online and face-to-face
Making effective applications, including application feedback and interview coaching
Support for IP and developing business ideas

9. Rise Up is at the core of Newcastle University’s enterprise and entrepreneurship support provision for all PGRs in each of the faculties.
Rise Up exists to enable PGRs to develop their ability and aptitude to become an enterprising researcher, explore their entrepreneurial curiosity and even successfully commercialise their research

10. enterprise Entrepreneurship vs
Being enterprising is not the same as having an ambition to be self employed.
Rather it is someone who is chararcterised by a particular mix of individuality, creativity, resilience and leadership.
These are key skills which are increasingly being demanded by academic and non academic employers and research organisations.
Enterprise is a behaviour made up of many skills that can be applied in all areas of life.
Entrepreneurship is often related to starting a business venture from scratch, seeing things through and making venture related activities happen.
We actively work with researchers, employers, academics and industry experts to foster a culture of innovation by developing skills, nurturing talents and expanding commercial awareness, to establish innovation advocates across the Newcastle Researcher Community.

11. How can Rise Up help you?
Rise Up exists to help PGR students and recent graduates:
use enterprising skills and experiences to achieve their chosen career
create their own graduate level job by working freelance, self-employed or by starting their own business
Develop work experience and employment opportunities for others by growing their businesses

12. 133 start up companies in operation (62 survived 3+ years)
319 full time positions created
£14.8m generated in turnover
£2.1m in external investment

13. What is Rise Up?
Rise Up is a growing community of students, graduates, societies and staff using enterprise to enhance employability and turn ideas into action
networking events
Rise Up offers:
coaching support
Delivered by expert advisers, peers and professionals
online resources
modules
workshops
Designed to help you turn your curiosity about enterprise into a career
support programmes
workspace
competitions
socials
Becoming a researcher demonstrates the capacity for independent thought and therefore enterprise and that there are a great many contexts that this will be seen as highly valuable. 
The University is all about the impact and translation of research to solve issues in society and that there are a lot of opportunities to develop skills in enterprise and engagement that support that - through the careers service and the Research student development programme.

14. Online Resources
Webpages
COBRA
Find out more about Rise Up:
Business opportunities, information and market research:

15. Graduate school programme
Careers Outside Academia
How to succeed a interview
How to write an effective CV
Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI)
Enterprising Researchers’ Programme
Project ACTION
Biotech YES
…and more

16. What do medical science PGRs think of us?
Allowed me to decide my own next steps without influencing me one way or another. Highly recommend for anyone else in need of careers advice.
They were really helpful in making me see what the employer wanted
RiseUp helped me to logically evaluate my idea and predict potential pitfalls. It has helped develop useful contacts in the industry and explore routes for funding. Most importantly it was a brilliant first step for my idea as it helped organise my idea.
A wealth of information when it comes to careers and provides excellent tailored advice. I always feel like my CV and job search is stronger after meeting with them. On top of that they are nice and a pleasure to meet with!
They were great at listening to what I was saying and drawing out elements about myself, my career and future that I hadn't really thought about. It went beyond my career and helped me think about the person behind the career!

17. Researcher Reality…
Since 2007 the number of researchers has risen but the number of academic positions has not kept pace
The skills needed to be a successful researcher and employee / employer are constant but must be flexible as skills needed in the future aren’t always known
Become used to always thinking about your skills and your career development and keeping it updated. No one can do this for you.
Careers outside of academia are currently considered to be “alternative choices”. Yet academic positions are in the minority so they are actually the alternative! These are in fact the conventional choices rather than second rate or alternative ones.
Vitae International Conference, 2016.

18. Workshops via the Graduate School training programme
How to connect with us
Careers Service
Level 1 of King’s Gate
Drop-in: 11-4:30
Lorna Dargan: Careers Adviser
@LornaDargan
Jenny Brady: Enterprise Adviser
@JennyBiddyBrady
facebook.com/nclcareers
@ncl_careers
Workshops via the Graduate School training programme