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Introduction to Researcher Careers Beyond Academia toolkit
Visit our toolkit if you are a:
Researcher wanting to explore careers beyond academia
Research organization willing to assist researchers in making an informed career decision
An enterprise willing to connect and get access to talent
Euraxess members who want to join efforts to promote intersectoral mobility
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For researchers
Why using this toolkit
Adapting to changing career interests is a common facet of professional development. Numerous factors can foment this transformation, including life experiences that challenge our career beliefs and expectations, or a sense of unattainable goals. This holds true for researchers as well. Researchers often embark on diverse and intricate academic careers, and as they progress, their experiences may no longer align with their evolving interests and goals.
Where to start
These tools will help you understand better your current interests and plan better your next career steps
Open up your possibilities and discover what researchers can do in different sectors.
You can use the following tools:
- To understand and experience the daily activities of a job position, check REBECA PRACTICE
- To participate in an intersectoral mentoring programme where a mentor will accompany you to explore, identify gap on skills and in expertise, and plan your next steps in your career. Check REBECA MENTORING PROGRAMME
- To know different positions in different sector and their skills needed. Chech this list of Occupancies by sector.
- To be inspired by stories of others researchers who have already made the transition outside of academia. Check this section of Career Podcasts and Career Stories
These tools will help you to craft a non-academic CV, cover letters tailored for the non-academic sector and prepare better for a possible interview.
Navigating your career
To gain a clear perspective on where you stand in your career and what you aspire to achieve in your next steps, it's crucial to revisit your interests, explore new possibilities, and actively create opportunities. Discover how to get started below.
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For research performing organization
Why to facilitate researchers' career transition
There is a wide consensus that, for PhD graduates, jobs outside academia are not “alternative” careers anymore but are probably the norm; most the PhDs will not have an academic career throughout their professional career. However, most doctoral training programmes are not acknowledging this fact and covering the issue during their training. The lack of broader perspectives for early-stage researcher professional development not only impoverishes both the academic and the non-academic world, but also hampers the desired inter-sectoral mobility of highly skilled professionals and researchers, knowledge transfer, and employability of researchers.
To create good quality activities dedicated to intersectoral mobility is necessary to engage with other sectors, particularly the private sector. Here we suggest some actions to engage with individuals, organizations and enterprises from other sectors. In this section, you will find:
- Mapping your potential network
- Alumni community engagement
- Tracking systems
- Other engaging activities
There are several activities your research organization can implement to facilitate researcher’s career transitions. Several activities can be implemented within research organizations to facilitate the decision making and, if decided, the career transition of researchers. They are a set of activities that can be implemented as isolated activities or in combination within a programme. This will depend on the capacity of the research organization. They cover different dimensions of career development advice. In this section, you will find information on:
- Training
- Labour market information
- Career testimonials
- Career Fairs with Research 2 Business matchmaking events
- Intersectoral mentoring programme
- Peer mentoring
- Internships and non-academic sector placements
- Real work-based experiences
- More information
Where to start
As a research organization, there are two type of actions that you could implement to introduce professional development programmes and activities for early-stage researchers that include the careers beyond academia topic.
Hub resources for RPOs and Universities to implement actions
These are toolkits that have been created by members of the Hubs after implementing pilots of activities aiming to faciltate the transition from researchers to non-academic research careers.
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For EURAXESS Members
EURAXESS Researcher Careers Beyond Academia Hub
The EURAXESS Research Careers Beyond Academia (REBECA) Hub is a network of EURAXESS members connected to offer services for early career researchers to facilitate their career transition to non-academic careers. In this way, it contributes to the permeability of research talent among non-academic research jobs and employers, including industry and businesses.
The extension of EURAXESS services can pose an asymmetry of different types and levels of services provided by EURAXESS members. Depending on the capacity of EURAXESS members, some will restrict their services to welcoming and informational services, while other can engage with other non-academic services to provide career development opportunities and activities.
By clustering EURAXESS services in cross-border hubs, it strengths the services, creates a one-stop shops for researchers, and provides the possibility to engage other external stakeholders. This last point is of special relevance to engage non-academic actors when providing services dedicated to increase the employability of early stage researchers.
To be updated soon
This Hub has been creating toolkits for you, to be able to implement some of the activities we have piloted. Here are some of them:
Within the local arms, EURAXESS REBECA Hub members will:
- Network to engage other multiplier and enabler organizations
- Engage non-academic researcher employers
- Deliver career development support
- Disseminate of results and promote activities
- Engage researchers including non-academic researchers
- Create or join a Community of Practice
You can benefit from the next EURAXESS Cascade Funding and Study Visits to implement your activities related with this Hub.
If you want more information, please contact the REBECA Hub Leader, FECYT, at euraxess-spain@fecyt.es.
There are two levels of participation:
Implementation of an activity
Activities related to increase the transition of early-stage research form the academic sector to other careers have space in this Hub. You can check the activities listed in the section For organization the activities suggested to "Support to researchers" to get inspired, although innovative ideas are more than welcome.
Collaboration in an activity
From the three activities so far implemented in this Hub, we have elaborated a guide on how to collaborate in such activities. It is worth highlighting that through some of these actions, you will engage with non-academic stakeholder providing you with a good basis for developing further activities and services helping researchers to explore careers beyond academia; in other words, expanding your network.
Find the ways on:
- How to collaborate in an intersectoral mentoring programme
- How to collaborate in an R2B matchmaking event
- How to collaborate in an online alumni community platform
