CP3 Defence Against The Dark Arts: Career strategies for research students

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Can you defend yourself against the 'Dark Arts' of 'management speak'? These days Governments, funding bodies, and University management, produce a stream of buzzwords and phrases such as ‘Innovation’, ‘Impact’, ‘Knowledge Exchange’, ‘Outreach’ and ‘Employability’. No-one quite knows what all these things mean but there is a sense that failure to grasp this could be career altering. Are researchers being irresistibly pulled towards the ‘Dark Side’? How do these things affect the future careers of young researchers?

This two part interactive session will deconstruct the buzzwords into a logical framework, giving some specific examples and techniques that researchers can use to answer questions like ‘I’ve just done this piece of work, will anyone be interested in it?’ In particular we will discuss,

•the things that make chemical inventions interesting to the outside world,

•the opportunities for chemistry to resolve many current global problems

•ways to talk about your research to non-specialists

•the things that make researchers employable at Universities and major commercial and social enterprises

The second part of the talk will describe the presenter’s personal career journey from a ‘catastrophic’ Ph.D to becoming an FRSC, via work in industrial R&D, commercial sales, technology management, strategic planning, business development consultancy, technics-economic appraisal, knowledge transfer consultancy, training and content development, for the RSC. At each point the talk will list both the science involved and the key transferable skills required.

The talk will finish with a ’What you must know and what you must be able to do’, career skills check list, and a number of specific suggestions on how to develop these skills.

Post-graduate students