Finding a Job For Postgrads – Audio & Slides

At last, I’ve managed to find a way to put not only the slides from my recent talks, but also an audio commentary, on the web and link the blog directly to it.

I’ve split the talks I’ve been doing this week into three parts, but you can also skip forward and backwards in the presentations as you watch and listen, so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing all the way through if you don’t have time.

Part 1 gives you some real data on the state of the job market, what employers think of postgraduates and some ideas of the types of jobs you could target. Part 2 looks at how employers fill jobs, and gives you strategies for finding jobs beyond just looking at adverts, including (the most important careers secret, I think) how to use your contacts to get the lucky breaks. Finally, Part 3 tells you about the further support we can give postgrads, including answers to some of the questions I got this week when I did the Masters and PhD presentations in person.

Feedback

If you watch/listen to these slidecasts (as they’re called), I’d love to have your feedback on whether they’re worth doing in future. They take a bit of time to do, but if they’re useful to you, I can have a go at the other talks (eg. on CVs, Interviews and Assessment Centres). Alternatively, I can just continue to upload the slides on their own. As ever, just drop me a comment (or a tweet) if you’ve got something to say.

So, without further ado, just don your headphones or turn your speakers on to hear all about how to get a job for postgraduates.

Part 1 – Postgrads and the Job Market

Note: If you want to click on the links on the final slide, you’ll notice that you need to click in the centre of the slide, or the little hand changes to skip backwards or forwards to the next slide.

Part 2 – Finding the Job You Want

Part 3 – Careers Support For Postgraduates

Careers Talks For Postgraduates

Finally, we’ve got the dates, times and venues sorted for our careers talks for Postgraduate Masters and PhD Researchers (that includes EngDs and all the other professional doctorates as well).

• The Essential Guide To Getting A Job For Postgraduate Masters:
  • Date:  Monday 5 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Mansfield Cooper G19
• The Essential Guide To Getting A Job For PhD Researchers:
  • Date: Thursday 8 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Chemistry G54
• CVs and Applications For Postgraduate Masters
  • Date: Monday 12 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4
• CVs and Applications For PhD Researchers
  • Date: Thurday 15 October 2009
  • Time:  12:00 – 12:50 (note: earlier time than other talks)
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4
• Interviews For Postgraduate Masters
  • Date:  Monday 2 November 2009
  • Time: 13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue: Kilburn 1.4
• Interviews For PhD Researchers
  • Date: Thursday 5 November 2009
  • Time: 13.00 – 13.50
  • Venue: Kilburn 1.4
• Assessment Centres For Postgraduates (Masters and PhDs)
  • Date:  Monday 9 November 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4

It’s helpful if you can sign up on the website for the ones you’re planning to attend (so we can assess numbers). However, the first people to arrive get the seats, so even if you don’t sign up, you can still attend. See you there!

McKinsey PhD Workshops

I’ve recently spoken to management consulting company, McKinsey, and found out that they are running 1 day PhD workshops in September, in London (17th), Oxford (21st) and Cambridge (18th). The workshops are primarily aimed at PhDs from, well, guess where, but they are prepared to consider excellent applications from wherever they come*. In addition, they pointed out that if they find a fantastic applicant who can’t be accommodated within these September workshops, they may be able to direct you to other opportunities to meet up with McKinsey. The closing date is midnight, Wednesday 9th September and you’ll need to upload a CV as well as an on-line application.

As you’d expect from one of the world’s most high profile management consultancies, their standards are high.  “Just” doing a PhD is only a fraction of what you’ll need to impress them, but if you have academic and non-academic achievements which show that you’re something out of the ordinary, you could be just what they’re after. Just make sure you don’t sell yourself short with your CV – for consultancy, a one page stand-out CV is more impressive than two (or more) pages of waffle.

If you don’t get the chance attend one of these workshops, they expect to run a more detailed three day Insight programme in the New Year, which hopefully I should be able to tell you about in January.

* At the moment, their on-line application system allows you to choose your university from a drop down list which includes “Manchester Business School” and “Manchester Institute of Science and Technology U of” – but not “University of Manchester”. They’ve said they’ll change it, but in the meantime, just use your common sense and use whichever you prefer!

More Recession Talk

Today, the Vitae website starts a week of articles on “Researcher Careers and Recession“. Not sure who’s lined up for the rest of the week (yes, I’ve submitted mine – let’s see if it makes the cut) but it kicks off with Fiona Christie, now Careers Co-ordinator for Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Salford, but late of this parish.

Fiona and I worked together here at the Careers Service for many years, but we still see each other regularly as we collaborate on postgrad work. Unsurprising then that I can heartily agree with her comments – have a look here.

In fact, there’s so much agreement, that we’ve covered some of the same ground in our articles… Ah well, first to publication wins, as all you researchers know!

PT Vacancies – Applications Advisers

We’re now looking to recruit more paid applications advisers to help with the flood of undergrads and postgrads who use our Quick Query service for CV and application feedback – details here. There’s not much time until the official closing date (3rd July) but I’ve negotiated an extension for you – if you get your application in by 7th July, you should still be considered.

If you’ve used the service yourself, you might not have realised it, but our Applications Advisers (as opposed to our Careers Consultants) are generally our current postgrads, mainly PhD researchers working with us part-time. They’ve all got skills and experience which make them ideal for helping other student with job applications, often with prior recruitment, HR or coaching/counselling experience or at least experience of training or teaching so they can empathise with our students and get information across to them (we know what a multi-talented bunch our postgrads are).

It helps if you’ve applied for jobs before, so you understand the application process. It’s also quite pressured – 1-1 discussions with students you’ve never seen before, where you have 15 minutes to establish rapport, understand their issues, read their application(s) and give them feedback to help them improve – and then it’s straight on to the next 15 min appointment. You get to see students from all disciplines and at all levels but most of the basics of applying for jobs are common across the range.

You also get to see all nationalities, which can be a delight and a challenge. You will need excellent written (and spoken) English – you don’t spell or grammar check or re-write CVs, but you do need to be able to point out where a CV needs the student to go away and do some work on the wording or punctuation, as well as the content or layout. However, this certainly doesn’t exclude international postgrads from becoming applications advisers – we’ve had excellent Greek and Canadian applications advisers, who can bring the extra dimension of knowing how tough it can be applying in a language which isn’t your first (OK, Canadian English probably bears some resemblance to UK English but you get the idea).

If you’re interested, I’d strongly recommend coming in and booking a Quick Query session yourself before applying (if you haven’t already used us). The applications advisers and careers consultants running quick query over the summer have been forewarned that you might want to talk about these jobs, so come and talk to us.

You’ll need to be here for the next academic year, so this excludes most current Masters postgrads, though if you’re doing your Masters part-time over a couple of years and can commit to being a student here and available for work at least from August to the Christmas vacation, do contact us. The hours are quite “bitty”, where you might be needed for a couple of hours in the morning, then a couple later on, so it also helps if you’re on campus a lot of the time.

It’s an interesting role, great for your CV, full training is given and you get real appreciation from all the students you help.

If you think you fit the bill, full details are on our website.

Some Of The Slides From Pathways

I’ve uploaded slides from some of the Pathways workshops for those who wanted copies, or those who couldn’t attend. If there are any other sessions you want to see, let me know (just comment on this post) and I’ll see if

a) we’ve still got them, and

b) the author is happy with them being shared on the web.

Bear in mind that these slides are from interactive sessions, so they won’t all make complete sense without the commentary and interaction. For example, with my presentations, the bullet points are really just placeholders for what I want to say – well, what’s the point of doing a presentation if you’re just going to read the text? That said, here they are.

Wired For Work

For this session which Alex Hardman and I ran, I also created a companion website using Netvibes, www.netvibes.com/postgradcareers. I’d strongly recommend looking at it alongside the slides, as it includes

• clickable links to all the websites mentioned
• examples of the types of resources we covered, such as smart starting points for your job search, and examples of some of the vacancy feeds which are out there
• some short videos to illustrate things like “What’s an RSS feed?” and the use of Twitter
• more details of  the “Cautionary Tale” – making sure your on-line presence works for your career, not against it

The tabs relevant to this session are clearly marked “Pathways”, although the other tabs may also be of use (I’ve been using this site as a training aid for other sessions as well).

There’s also a document created by Alex to support the session which more clearly shows you how to use RSS feeds. It’s available here on Google Docs (and linked from the Netvibes site).

Negotiation

Alison Hattersley from Success Factory ran 3 sessions on “Negotiating Your Salary”. The slides you see here are on negotiation in general – the salary bit came from the discussions we had, so if you wanted those specific tips, I’m afraid you had to be there…

Emotional Intelligence

Lyn Bailey, also from Success Factory, ran sessions on Emotional Intelligence. Again, the slides support the session, so may be more useful if you attended and wanted to have access to the slides for backup.

Pathways Day 2 – 10.30am Start

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I’ve found out that it doesn’t look like we have the programme for Monday’s Pathways workshops on the web anywhere – oops!

[EDIT: Monday morning - it was there all along, but under the Resources section of the Pathways website. Double oops! Ah well, read on if you don't want to click there.]

If you have registered, you should have had the programme e-mailed to you, but if you were just planning to turn up (just bring your university swipe card), you won’t be aware that we’re giving you the chance for a lie-in (don’t worry, we won’t tell your supervisor/PI – let them think it starts at 8am sharp).

Programme:

10.00-10.30  Registration

10.30-11.00   Intro (that’s Judy and me again, with more explanatory details of the workshops)

11.00-12.00   Plenary workshop – VOX Coaching (…OK, I’ll admit it, I’ve forgotten the title – but it’ll be good, and funny, and relevant, they always are)

12.00-1.00     Choice of workshops – Evidencing Skills, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Presenting at Job Interviews, Networking to Help Your Career, Interview Confidence, Assessment Centres (by Accenture), Negotiating Your Salary, Emotional Intelligence, Careers in Teaching: School vs University

1.00-2.00       Lunch

2.00-3.00       Choice of workshops – Critical Thinking Skills For Your Career, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Marketing Your PhD To Employers, Evidencing Skills, Strategic Academic Career Planning, Negotiating Your Salary, Interview Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Using The Web To Find Jobs (that’s me’n'Alex), Working With Others: MBTI Personality Questionnaires

3.00-4.00       Choice of workshops – Critical Thinking Skills For Your Career, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Negotiating Your Salary, Interview Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Working With Others: MBTI Personality Questionnaires, Getting & Keeping an Academic Job, Grant Funding Applications, Networking to Help Your Career

Some are running in lecture theatres, but they may still be very popular, so it’s first come first served. The only thing I would warn you about is that the Negotiating Your Salary workshops at 12noon and 2.00 are in smaller rooms (this format works better for an interactive workshop) but recognising it might be popular, the final session at 3.00 is in a lecture theatre, so if you don’t get in to the first two, you should get into the last one.

Think I’ve got that right, though as I’m at home and don’t have all the documentation to hand, apologies if I’ve got anything wrong. Look, just come along for the whole day anyway, you never know what you might learn…

Pathways 2009 FAQs

With the Pathways programme of careers events for PhDs and research staff almost upon us, I thought I’d answer some of the questions we get asked (plus some I’ve made up, but you should probably be asking):

• Where can I find out what this is all about?
  Start here for the overview, and follow the links. Updates will be posted on the main page of this blog.
• Do I have to attend all three days?
  No, you can attend Friday 12th June, Monday 15th, Wednesday 17th or any combination, whatever suits your needs. Have a look at what’s on each day and decide. Last year we expected most people who turned up on Monday to have been on Friday – but that wasn’t the case. There were loads of people who specifically came just to the workshops (but the Monday session does follow on logically from the Friday career options panels).
• Who’s coming and what are the workshops you’re running?
  The latest information on panellists for Friday 12th, workshops for Monday 15th and employers for Wednesday 17th are now available on the weblinks indicated (details of panellists will probably require university login). The proviso is always that there will be last minute changes (cancellations and additions) and some details will still be sketchy eg where panellists haven’t yet had chance to return their CV to us.
• Can’t I just wait for the next lot of careers workshops, they’re always advertising them?
  Of course you can – but you probably won’t get these workshops. Instead of running our standard careers sessions (I’ll run more of those at other times of the year), we’ve arranged for some special one-off sessions from a range of external providers, many of whom you may never get the chance to see again – or if you do, you’ll have to wait until next year’s Pathways event.
• What if there’s no-one coming from the company I want to work for or the career I want to go into – is it worth it attending?
  If you just want information about a specific employer or job, you may not get that here. However, if you want to find out about other jobs you never knew existed, how to convince employers to take you, how real people have found jobs through non-standard methods and a whole load more, this will really help. Also, you may find out that one of the panellists has actually done the job/worked for the employer you want to know about in a previous role – then you can get inside info (and maybe even a contact) to help you.
• Why is there no-one from my discipline coming?
  We’ve found the panellists and other guest speakers and trainers from personal contacts, alumni, employer contacts, friends – frankly, we’d take pretty well anyone we could persuade, the only proviso being that all (or most) of them had to have a PhD.

  We have no way of finding, for example, a source of textiles specialists who did a PhD within the last 10 years who have gone into other careers – but if you know any, we’d love to talk to them for next year.

  Also, don’t assume that just because we don’t, for example, have someone in a job called “Archaeologist” that we don’t have any Archaeology PhDs attending – we’ve got at least three that I know of, including a manager at American Express!

• I haven’t registered – can I still attend?
  Yes (though see eligibility below). For Days 1 and 2, we need to know numbers beforehand to judge room sizes and numbers of lunches, but if you didn’t manage to click here and register (go on, it’s quick, easy, helps us and if you register before 10th June, you get entered into the prize draw) you can still attend. We’ll be registering people on Day 1 and 2 by their swipe card, so remember to bring yours. If you don’t have it with you, we’ll still be able to register you, but it will take a bit longer.

  For Day 3, no registration or swipe cards are required, just turn up (from any university).

• How do I make sure I get to the session/speak to the employer I want?
  This is a tricky one. For Days 1 & 2, with such large numbers of attendees and such a choice of sessions, it’s impossible to book in advance for specific sessions (we know from bitter experience that bookings bear little relation to who turns up on the day). To get the session you want, you’ll need to get there in good time.

  On Friday, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, as rooms for the popular areas are large, and we’ve tried to run most sessions more than once during the day to accommodate clashes. Also, you may be able to have an informal one-to-one chat with a particular panellist when they’re not sitting on a panel.

  On Monday, some of the workshop sessions are only for smaller numbers, so you’ll have to get in early. However, we’ve tried either to run popular sessions in larger rooms, or more than once to give as many people as possible the chance to take part. For example, with “Negotiating Your Salary” (one that brings a glint to the eye of most people when I mention it) we’re running two smaller workshops, plus one larger lecture theatre session at the end of the afternoon so no-one should miss out. We’ll just have to see how it goes, but apologies if you don’t get the sessions you want on the day. Do let us know if there are any you wanted to get into but couldn’t, and that will give us our priorities for organising future training, hopefully before next year’s Pathways.

  On Wednesday, there are no sessions to attend, but if you want to get “quality time” with employers, especially those exhibiting in the main fair, I’d strongly recommend getting there close to the start (10.30am), while their minds are still fresh and their throats are intact (from personal experience of staffing this sort of stand). Please don’t leave it until the last minute as exhibitors are always desperate to pack up and if you turn up at 3.50pm, you are more likely to find that they’re sneakily dismantling their stands than to get extra time to talk to them. Good luck – it’s gonna be busy this year…

• I’m not a PhD or member of research staff at Manchester University – can I still come?
  Yes and no.

  Day 1 and Day 2 of Pathways are open to any University of Manchester PhD or member of research staff, plus “invited members only” from other North West universities (invitations have already been allocated).

  For Day 3 (the PhD Zone at the Graduate Recruitment Fair), anyone can attend from any university, without pre-registering, free of charge.

  If you’re a Masters student, the main Graduate Recruitment Fair is definitely for you. However, I’m afraid the PhD & Researcher events (including the PhD Zone in the Fair) aren’t designed for you – they focus specifically on careers for PhDs. However, if you decide to do a PhD at Manchester, you’ll be able to attend the events once you’re started.

New PhD Recruitment Event – 17th June 2009

I’ve kept this under wraps for a while in case it didn’t come off, but we’re now ready to launch the first

“PhD and Researcher Career Zone“

as part of our annual Graduate Recruitment Fair, and all researchers are invited.

On Wednesday 17th June, at the Armitage Centre (the University of Manchester sports centre in Fallowfield) we will have a small select band of employers who specifically want to promote themselves to PhDs and researchers. The aim is to allow you to talk directly to recruiters to find out:

• how they view PhDs and researchers
• examples of some of the jobs carried out by PhDs and researchers outside academia
• the skills which PhDs and researchers can offer to the workplace
• any current or potential future demand for PhDs and researchers in their organisation.

We’ll also have careers advice and information from “careers consultants with specialist knowledge of the PhD and researcher employment market” (OK, so far that’s me and Fiona Christie from Salford, though I’ve got feelers out for a couple more to join us).

Vitae, the national organisation which supports skills development for researchers will be there, and we’ll have information on how you can further increase your employability to make you even more attractive to potential employers.

This is the third day of our Pathways programme of careers events for researchers. However, whereas the other two days are only open to Manchester University researchers (and invited guests from other universities), this event is open to all.

Who will be there? So far we’ve had confirmations from:

• AMEC Group Ltd
• AREVA T&D
• BG Group
• Cabinet Office
• Doosan Babcock
• National Nuclear Laboratory
• National Physical Laboratory
• Tessella
• EDIT: Astra Zeneca, Invitrogen, Detica added since this blog post originally written

… and now some of you have rolled your eyes, saying “But I’m not interested in any of them”. However, before you click away, here are some reasons to consider attending:

• Recruiters often have experience of more than one employer, and should be able to give you an insight into the recruiter’s mindset and views of PhDs, irrespective of their current employerFor example, one of our careers consultants was a recruiter for PwC, but her knowledge doesn’t stop at finance, as she previously worked in HR in the aerospace/engineering sector – HR is a very transferable occupation, and many of us have worked in a range of sectors
• There are over 70 other recruiters exhibiting in the main area of the Graduate Fair on Wednesday, including Accenture, Bloomberg, Deloitte, Qinetiq, Rolls Royce, Shell and a whole range of Government employers such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, HM Treasury, and lots more – nothing to stop you going and talking to them as well.You might also be interested in the other day of the Graduate Recruitment Fair. On Thursday 18th June, we have a second day of the main fair with different exhibitors, but there won’t be any PhD Zone.

One very important caveat though is that not all employers in the PhD Zone will have immediate PhD vacancies, but then you’re not all looking for a job to start immediately. However, they all have sufficient interest in PhD recruits to come to Manchester and talk to you directly – and why would they do that if they weren’t genuinely keen to recruit PhDs?

To be honest, when we first dreamed this up, we must have been foolhardy/brave/ludicrously optimistic to launch a new recruitment event in the midst of a recession, particularly aimed at a market where it’s notoriously difficult to get employers interested in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile.

However, luckily we decided to laugh in the face of recession, and with the support of the Vitae North West Hub, we’re up and running – come and support us.

If you’re got any questions about the event, just add a comment to this post and I’ll reply.

Sign Up For A Free Lunch

OK, here’s the deal. If all those who want to come to Pathways sign up beforehand, instead of just turning up on the day, we won’t run out of food!

Not enough incentive?

How about being entered into a prize draw for £50 of Amazon vouchers for all those Manchester University PhDs and research staff who sign up for one or other of the Pathways days before 10th June (and who turn up and register on at least one of the days of the event – we’re not daft, you know)?

Alright, you’re on.

Of course the real incentive is that we’re signing up more guests every day to talk about their careers on Day 1 (Friday 12th June), including former researchers who now work in publishing, the health service, the EU, HMRC (and before you turn up your nose at that one, it’s a good job someone’s interested in collecting the taxes which the government uses to fund universities and research…) and more.

For Day 2 (Monday 15th June), we’re adding new workshops which we wouldn’t get the chance to run at any other time of year. One I’m keen to see is on negotiation skills – but just to make it even more relevant to your career, we’ll approach it in terms of “Negotiating Your Salary”. Can you afford to miss that one?

What’s “Pathways”? Well, have a look here.