LM: Welcome everyone to this the session: Postdoc skills and how to use them in and beyond academia. Importantly, as Stefania said, we are in this session, we are joined by former postdocs who have now ventured into careers beyond academia and can really share their unique story ,because always unique stories, as you know, into how these journeys, and go from being a postdoc into a career outside of academia.

And basically, this is this is a joint event between Prosper. So Stefania organised it, but Tom and I, we are from an organisation, kind of similar aim as Prosper in promoting careers outside of academia, showing what they’re like. We are both from Research-careers.org, which is a website, where we are profiling postdocs and former students or PhD students who ventured into careers beyond academia and share in written profiles their story. So sorry for the little plug, but feel free to go over to Research-careers.org as well.

So, for this session we will start with just going through outlines of the backgrounds for each speaker. So every speaker will have a few minutes to introduce themselves and how they came from being a postdoc to their current role. And then we have some pre prepared questions that we will ask to the entire panel, but we really try to keep the session as interactive as possible. So yeah, as Stephania said, please pop in your questions into the chat throughout the session and then in the end we’ll try to ask as many as of them as possible to the. So yeah, without further ado, let’s go into the introductions. So yeah, we’ll go in the alphabetical order, so maybe Allison, if you can go ahead. And just in a few minutes give a background on your current role and your journey.

AL: Absolutely. Thanks, Linus. So hi, everyone. I’m Alli Landman. Excuse me, I am currently the deputy editor of The Lancet Oncology, which is the leading clinical oncology journal. We’re part of The Lancet group and The Lancet is the leading General Medical journal. So how did I get here? So I went to, I grew up in the United States, obviously from my accent, and I went to Graduate School at MIT, and I was interested in biology and the cell cycle. And I ended up in a lab working on mouse models of cancer and after getting my PhD I wasn’t sure. So when I started Graduate School, I thought, yes, you go to Graduate School and you become a professor. That’s what you do, but the after six years I thought, well, I’m not quite sure, but I don’t want to rule that out. So I went ahead and did the postdoc, which is what most people do, I think. And I went to UCSF in San Francisco. And again, worked on mouse models of cancer and things were going well.

I enjoyed it, but I think, to be completely honest, I was perhaps a little bit burnt out on bench science. I loved, you know, science in general. Reading about it, talking about it, but not as much doing it, not as much. Putting ice in a bucket and starting another PC. Yeah. So I started looking into, you know, is there something I can do on the side. You know, do I have other interests side science and I was interested in in editing and I spoke to an old friend in Graduate School and she said ‘well, you could do this, this freelance editing.’ So I did a bit of that. And then my life took kind of a funny turn. I met my now husband who’s British and I moved to the UK. And so the easiest thing to do is actually to get another postdoc and not think about changing careers at that time. So I did a short postdoc at University College London. Also mouse models of cancer, and then I decided to do something a bit different and did another postdoc at MRC Harwell, which is near Oxford, and that, and that’s where I met Tom Nicol, on the call. And I did that for a year and that was great, but I was really I was really done at that point.

So like I said, I always loved science communication. I had done this freelance editing of journal papers. And so I applied to a lot of editing jobs at that point, I didn’t have really have any connections. I just applied to a tonne of jobs and I think I really lucked out. I got an interview with the Lance, Oncology. I didn’t even know really what they did. And they took a chance on me. And I’ve been here for 9 years as an editor, then a senior editor, now deputy editor. And actually, I was recently promoted to acting editor in chief of The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. So I think that I’ve made the switch and happy to take any questions.

LM: Thank you, Ali. That’s really interesting to hear. How to go from like several postdocs into a different career after exploring like editing on the side and many of us I guess are just very focused on the benchmark or whatever work we do. So it’s very interesting to hear. Yeah, hopefully we get to hear some more in the end, but let’s go to the to the next introduction from Eamon.

ED: Yeah. Hello everyone. I’m just going to set myself a timer, otherwise I’ll talk too long. So yeah, I am currently a partnership manager at the Medicines Discovery Catapult in Cheshire. This is a non-profit organisation, works with small to medium enterprises to help them in the development of early stage drugs.

And so yeah, I was a postdoc for a long time at the University of Manchester. Did my PhD there. Respiratory disease, I used a frog model of the lung cells that used to look at the tadpole skin. So I did that for 15 years. Someone’s got to and then after moving through the ranks as a postdoc, moving labs a couple of times, applied for some fellowships, internal ones, got close but didn’t get them. I really enjoyed doing the science. Really love the ideas. Like the previous speaker, I got a bit fed up of the lab work, quite exhausting draining, working many weekends, some sometimes just because I wanted to, other times felt like I had to. But towards the end of my postdoc time I got more interested in researcher affairs. I saw that a lot of people were sort of struggling similarly to me to move up or well move along or know what to do next. So at Manchester I set up a Careers Workshop and then I come to know of Prosper. So I already know these guys at Prosper. So I worked there for a couple of years in developing the programme, learnt a lot new skills there which we could go into a bit more detail later.

Then that sort of wrapped up the first phase, I was looking for new opportunities, wanting to get back into science again, but not in a bench role. So what I discovered about myself as well is that for my work, I really needed it to be like driven by something like. And business as usual, kind of doesn’t sit well with me. I wanted to do something with the underlying sort of purpose. So then I came across this role and just put me in touch. I was looking at lots of different things. Didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do some kind of communication role. A lot Prosper is about that. So this position came up at the Medicines Discovery and it’s in this kind of alliance management, strategic alliances. But it’s focused on antimicrobial antibiotic resistant. And which is a major issue alongside kind of climate change that people probably don’t hear about as much. So I thought, yeah, I can get my teeth into that. I’d really enjoy that. The programme was just starting up, could take some of the things I’ve been doing, cause I run kind of a lot of workshop and external relations and networking and that kind of thing. So yeah, I took the opportunity, got the role. After a few interviews elsewhere, and then I’ve been in the position for about 5 months now and it’s all going well.

LM: Yeah, great. Thank you. It’s really interesting that you mentioned the drive there that really finds something that drives us. Especially if we go like with the path of least resistance in several postdocs: just keep working, working, working 24/7. Maybe we can also dig a bit into the work life balance issue of different careers later. So yeah, thank you. Naomi, do you want to go next?

NB: Hi. Yes, sure. Thank you for having me, everyone. Good morning. So I’m the research manager at the Courtald, which is a small specialist university in London. Basically we’re the size of a large academic department. We have about 40 permanent academics in art history conservation. We also have an art gallery at Somerset House. Basically, I am the research office: so I manage everything from research grants to governance training. I’m involved in coordinating preparations for the REF, for my sins. Recently I was joined by an impact manager, so now actually we’re a research office of two.

I’ve been in this role for about nine months and before that I had quite a similar role in a small team at the British Library for 3 1/2 years. My PhD was at the university of Manchester [sic]. Then I had a research post working for the Church of England and although it was part time, it came with a flat, so that made sure that I had a roof over my head and I was able to be a little bit selective about the other paid work that I took on and I used that flexibility to develop a proposal for a book based on my PhD and to apply for postdoc funding.

I was lucky to get a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship back at the University of Manchester, based at the university’s Special Collections Library, the Rylands, and that meant that I was sharing an office with other postdocs who were working on library collections but from different disciplines, working on different time periods. So it was an interesting environment to be in. And having relative freedom within the full-time research fellowship and I think also not being tied to a teaching department, allowed me to try out different things alongside my research. And so I did do some teaching, but I didn’t have my head of department kind of twisting my arm to do as much as they could get out of me because anything I offered to an academic department was a bonus. I also did quite a lot of public engagement activity, both at the library where I was based and the university’s art gallery, the Whitworth. And I took advantage of training opportunities offered by the university on things like grant applications, digital humanities methods.

And then what I think was most productive for me were several collaborative initiatives that I worked on with peers both locally and from other institutions. I’ll just say a bit about one example. I worked with other postdocs from the Rylands to convene a network on methods and best practise for using letters, correspondence in research and we applied for and were awarded a couple of pots of internal funding for this network. It was good experience of small-scale grant application, project management, convening activity and kind of bringing people together, facilitating training. And then we worked with established academics at the University to grow the network into a research centre. So it has a legacy, even though all of us were on postdocs, which have now come to an end.

And I think that experience in particular was helpful when I decided to make the move into research management role. I could probably say a bit more about that later on. I think coming from a library was quite helpful in securing the role in the British Library and then in my latest move my background in art history I think was helpful when moving to the Courtald.

LM:  Yeah. Thank you. Naomi. It’s really interesting that you mentioned you kind of enabled yourself to explore different things, while in your postdoc research positions. Yeah, happy to hear more about that later. Let’s finish with Ryan, are you there?

RK: Yeah, I’m here. Thank you. And then hi, everyone. So I’m currently working as a principal scientist in the biology team at a small-ish biotech in Oxford called Sitryx. And so within my role I get to contribute to pretty much our whole pipeline. So that means helping decide what projects we want to start and what are the targets, what we want to develop drugs against and then helping develop those drugs, working with the chemists to make the right molecules, have the right profile and then designing and running biological assays to test that the drugs are doing what we expect they do and that they don’t have any toxicities. And then at the end, once we have things that are looking promising to take into the clinic deciding what are the diseases we think these drugs are going to have the biggest impact on. And what sort of patient populations might we want to try and treat in those early clinical trials to show that the drugs are as efficacious and safe as we think they are. So it’s been really cool working for a small biotech and learning a lot and expanding upon the skills that I developed early.

So my background is, I’m originally from New Zealand, which is where I met Thomas Nicol and I did a biomedical sciences degree and then followed that up with a PhD in Immunology. And then after finishing that, I did a tour of a number of different labs across United States because that’s where I decided I wanted to go and do a postdoc. But I decided that I wanted to work with a particular lab and they were happy to take me on, but they were just in the process of moving to Freiburg in Germany. So instead of going to the States, my wife and I ended up in Germany. And I did a couple of years, postdoc-ing there, really building up my biology knowledge and my understanding of how metabolism and immunology interact. And so it was really a great time. I was working with a new lab with quite a lot of fresh postdocs and it was very exciting. We had good funding. We did a lot of work and I was involved in quite a number of different projects with different people, which were really successful. But unfortunately my particular projects weren’t as successful as I would have liked and weren’t really taking off the way that I wanted.

And so it was about 2 1/2 years in and I was at a bit of a crossroads deciding whether or not I should double down on these projects and try and get something useful out of them, or perhaps start a project completely from scratch at that point, which was pretty daunting. Or think about something different. And my wife’s a nurse and she hadn’t been nursing in Germany. So we’re interested in if there are opportunities in an English speaking country. So I started looking at job opportunities and reaching out to a bit of my academic network. But I also saw a job at GSK in Stevenage just north of London and it was looking for someone who had pretty much exactly the profile I had: an immunologist who had experienced metabolism and worked on a number of different cell types. And so I applied for that. And was successful and then started at GSK as a senior scientist working in the labs and worked there for two years and that was a really great introduction to industrial science and how to work in a pharma company and using your skills you’ve honed, but in an industry setting.

And two years being there, I saw a another job in Sitryx and I had a friend who was already working here and that was a nice move for me to bring together my experience in metabolism and immunology, but again, with what I’ve been learning to how to work in pharmaceuticals. So I’ve been here for about 3 1/2 years and learned a lot and keen to try and talk about some of the skills that have helped me progress here.

LM: Thanks, Ryan. It’s really interesting you mentioned this this turning point there, whether to think, ‘oh, should I dig in deeper into the project I have or change projects or go into the completely new route.’ I think that leads nicely into our next questions that we have. So Tom, if you want to take over.

TN: Yeah. Thank you, Linus, and thank you, everyone who’s just introduced themselves. So we’ve got some pre-prepared questions that I’m just going to go through. And then if you have any further questions, like we said before, please pop them in the chat or wait till the end and we’ll go through them fairly quickly then.

So the first question I’d like to ask is it’s fairly clear to me that none of us have linear career paths. We’ve all had opportunities where the road in front of us has forks and branches. I’d just like to touch on that with all of you and say, you know, how do you navigate these folks? How did you make a decision to stay with the tried and tested, the path you were already on or to take this other branch and what were the considerations, both monetary, emotionally, family-wise, everything else that came with that. I think we’ll keep the same order if that’s OK. So Ali, would you like to go first?

AL: I think yeah, this is an interesting point to talk about, turning points, because I think I’ve really only just had the one, but it was a long a long time coming that I knew after Graduate School that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And then I went ahead and did another four postdocs, and I think there were sort of two things. I think the 1st is that: You have to take the time to think about what you really want. I think it was Eamon who mentioned or maybe Linus that you’re on this path after Graduate School after getting your PhD that you just go with the flow. So you have to kind of step back and say ‘am I really doing something that that fulfils me? I want to do that’s going to, perhaps you know, lead to another job that that I’ll enjoy.’ So taking time to be really honest with yourself. I think the other side and you mentioned this about the emotional aspect, which is that you can’t be afraid to let go.

So my entire identity was founded on being a biological researcher at the bench. My whole, that was my whole thing. And moving into something new is really scary for that reason. And there’s always that fear that you’re going to leave something behind. And who are you going to be? But I think everything about life is that you have to kind of embrace change a little bit, and if you’re unhappy and you want to do something else and you just have to take that leap. And now I have a totally new identity and I can’t even remember who I was before. So I think those are sort of the two lessons I learned at when you come to that point, when you realise you’ve come to that point, you have to be ready to take a leap, I guess.

TN: Thank you, Ali. Yeah, I think as researchers, we’re really good at seeing everything as it’s laid out in front of us and we’re not good at letting go of the sunk cost fallacy of just we’ve invested so much time and effort into this. We should stick with it, but it’s just not true. Eamon, we’ve got you up next, if you wouldn’t mind.

ED: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I was the same 10 years of post after my PhD. I was literally like ‘do I really want to do this?’ But I carried on. The early periods, I liked it. I applied for grants. I got grants. That was quite rewarding, even though I didn’t like much the writing of the grants, which was a big reason for me to leave in the end because it’s a big part of the job as a Pi and but yeah, I after several years of my fellowships, I didn’t listen to myself enough. And if something does come down to feeling as well, if you feel uncomfortable and it’s quite easy to feel uncomfortable as a researcher when you’re on short term contracts, there’s another big thing for me: I was like, or thought I was, kind of on a linear pathway. But is anyone really in academia? Cause you have all of these big chasms that you have to leap across in order to make it to where you think you want to be, but then you do. You really know what it takes to be a PI. I had an insight having written the grants and it’s a different role to being a researcher, so it’s about you.

Working with Prosper it was kind of amazing to me how little people actually knew about the academic career trajectory, never mind other ones. But anyway, my own personal point of view in terms of emotions, as I’ve getting 10 years as a postdoc, I wasn’t quite at the end of the grant, but I was getting into kind of researcher affairs and another thing happened about to have my first child. And I was like the way I worked isn’t great, and the balance I got was not good in academia. So I was thinking: ‘am I, are you even going to see my little boy which is a big thing for me’ Because people manage it better than I did, I know that, but it’s quite an intense career being in academia.

So the Prosper opportunity came and it’s definitely an opportunistic because that I was getting involved in that thing, I was putting myself in the right places. But the fact that this came along and had nothing really had been out there before for postdocs, was kind of kind of a good thing for me because it was an obvious step to make and made it easier to make that transition. And because it has, as Ali said before me, research was my identity as well, I loved it and I still love it and I still miss elements of which I think is a question later. But then yeah, working through, possibly learning loads about myself, it couldn’t help it because we’re getting other people to reflect on it.

So my next move was definitely less opportunistic and more proactive. And if I could tell myself something that is ‘really, really think about that, what drives you, what, what elements of your current role, because you have to be kind of good at lots of different things in academia. And what do you like most about it and try and match those things that you’re doing to a career, find out about different careers.

TN: Definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Eamon. Yeah. I think it’s interesting you mentioned that we’ve got lots of different things and I think those researchers were really bad at recognising what we’re good at. So I want to come back to that in a minute.

Naomi, have you got anything to add for us?

NB: Yeah, I mean, I would echo the kind of insecurity of short term contracts being a push, one of the pushes away. And the particular set of pressures that come with an academic career path. I decided that neither of those things were for me. One thing that I think helped me was I had a couple of really great research related professional services colleagues at Manchester, who are very generous with talking through their experiences doing things like sharing job applications and advice. I think that was helpful in kind of thinking through my decision as well as practically kind of then actually applying for jobs.

TN: Thank you, Naomi. Ryan, I think we’ll carry on to you and then I’ve got some questions I want to come back to for everyone.

RK: Sounds good. Yeah. And for me, I think it was just daunting changing countries and changing sort of feel like working in industrial setting, which I’ve never done before. I didn’t really have any context of what that would be like. So it was, it is a bit of a frightening move, moving away from academia for that reason, but I sort of trusted the process a little bit that obviously that had been offered the job for a reason, that I had some skills that were as attractive and I knew what I was good at in terms of the bench science and other few things like presenting and stuff. So I sort of went on those in those first few months after the move and got involved in what I could said yes to as much things as I could. And tried to pick up what was different compared to what I’d worked in before and lean on the things that I was pretty comfortable with. So I think like you said, thinking about what your skills, what are things you enjoy, what are you good at and leaning into those can help sort of make that transition a little bit easier.

TN: I think it’s interesting you say you say yes to as many things as you can. I find myself doing that in academia and I just find myself overwhelmed, like everyone wants me to say yes to things and I can’t say no so. Yeah, that’s interesting. Did it work well for you in that setting?

RK: It did, I think, especially when you’re new, it gives you an opportunity to quickly learn more and be involved more and understand how things work in this place. But yeah, at some point you do need to learn to say, actually, I’ve got enough on my plate right now, but early days, I’d say being enthusiastic, involved, definitely helps.

TN: Excellent. Thanks, Ryan. OK, I think what’s really interesting is that all of our guests today have come from a fairly varied background and have gone to do varied current jobs. So I want to touch on what transferable skills they find that they brought over from their PhDs and postdocs that they find most useful in their current role, and which skills perhaps you weren’t aware that you really had a good grasp of. So we’ll keep the same order. Ali, if you wouldn’t mind.

AL: So I’ve written down 3 here. I don’t know if they’re the most important, but the 1st is that something that you do every day when you are at the bench is troubleshooting: troubleshooting machines that don’t work, experiments that don’t work, everything. And actually I do the same thing in my job here. It’s just I’m not using like equipment and I’m not working with. But it is tonnes of little problems that you have to. It’s like figuring out a puzzle and so actually being able to use your brain in that way, you know. And it’s not just bench science, but any type of, you know, when you’re trying to write a thesis. Have a research question. There’s always something that you have to troubleshoot, so that’s a big one.

Also, for me personally is the job of an editor is to critically appraise research, so obviously that was a great one. That was a direct useful skill and then also talking to scientists. So that’s something that I did as part of my job as a postdoc. Obviously, every day you’re talking to scientist, but as an editor you have to sort of have that language and that facility, you can’t be intimidated by these scientists. And so after working with working in science for God, I don’t even know how many years like 15 years or whatever, that came really naturally. And so those were three really obvious transferable skills, but I think there’s probably a tonne more I just didn’t think of them.

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TN: It’s interesting you say the troubleshooting. I find that so much of my day is taken up with putting out little fires and I that I never really stopped and thinking all about it until yesterday. I had meetings on the book and then my fridge failed and my water machine started leaking and I spent half the day just fixing things in the lab. It was crazy how many skills we actually have as postdocs. Eamon over to you.

ED: Yeah, I’d say I’d agree with all that too. What else would I say? This is a really broad, what research skills, as in being able to really look into things, not everyone can do that. Are you doing it all the time without maybe even realising it, taking a wide variety of sources and bringing them together. And coming up with your solution and proposing it to others, it’s a big thing and going to in my case as a biologist, like lab meetings, defending your position, it’s important when you got a group of, in a team or, somebody is really asking a lot of you to be able to do that sort of preparation. I think you learned that a lot as a researcher, in different, in different ways. Yeah, being able to critically analyse. Take something apart for me now and in my previous role at Prosper, presenting and doing it all the time and informally and formally at conferences. So it’s important, you see when you move as well, that not everybody who’s been through a research background in the same way is confident enough to do that. Leadership, as I’m not in a senior leadership position, but being able to lead your own role, lead your own element of a bigger programme and take responsibility for things you have to do that all the time as a researcher. And the last one I say think something I feared when being a sort of researcher, you do tap into your creativity a lot having. To think where does things fit in? What potential next thing could you do? How do you put a grant together? And I was worried it wouldn’t be the same and it’s not the same as in the science wasn’t involved. Even now, the science is not involved with day-to-day coming up with experiments, for example, but say for Prosper, we had to come up with loads of ideas for novel kind of workshops. That’s creative. And now I’ve got to think of being strategic and thinking, how do we bring the right partners on board.

So these kind of things that you think you won’t get elsewhere, you do, but just in a different way. So yeah, there’s tonnes more and I think transferable skills tend to be looked down upon a bit in academia because people just say, oh, what? What does that even mean when you’ve got the harder skills, I guess harder technical skills, but it’s what goes with you. And so wherever you go and if you’re the API, for instance, if you follow the academic route, you also need all these skills, they’re just not on attention to and so, yeah, that’s what I’d say really think about those, think about what you’re using, think about areas you particularly excel in, listen to what all the people are saying. I didn’t really, I just dismissed all that because I always thought, what does it matter if I don’t get a paper or a grant. But people did say to me: you are really good at presenting and it wasn’t something that I ever look back and go ‘oh, right, and maybe they got a point there’, because I was thinking about all the rest of the elements that make up a good academic.

TN: Yeah, I think academics were always so obsessed with the hard skills because those are things you put on your CV. How many papers you got, how many presentations, how many awards have you got? Not the soft skills that we’re actually evidencing all the time. Yeah. Naomi, over to you.

NB: Yeah, I would agree with everything that’s been said so far, but just to add 1 that’s, I mentioned in my introduction that I did quite a lot of convening activity during my postdoc. So just to sort of flesh out a bit, how that’s useful now. So if I’m working on a grant application, that’s going to involve multiple stakeholders across the organisation and even for something relatively simple, like a fellowship for a member of academic staff, we have to liaise with the person in their department responsible for coordinating teaching, because that has an implication on the curriculum offer and bringing in a new member of staff to cover their teaching means they need office space. And then other bids might involve partnership working, so liaising with external partners and who depending on the type of organisation, have different pressures and frameworks that they’re operating. And so I did quite a lot of managing across and managing up and I think the experience that I mentioned during my postdoc of convening a network and then working with established academics to grow into a research centre was a good introduction to this aspect of my work now.

TN: So you mentioned how many different sort of groups of people you’ve got a liaise with there. Do you find that you use different sets of language that you weren’t really aware that you? Like maybe you’re dealing with the general public and it’s lay and the scientists and or researchers in different contexts.

NB: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think so, yeah. For example, during my postdoc, I also did kind of public engagement activity about my own research, but that’s now quite helpful both when I’m speaking to partners from, say, like local museums, you know, I know that they’re not going to be familiar with the details of an AHRC grant application and the whole language that surrounds that. And I also know how to speak to academics and now working in university, but working with independent research organisations, having worked in an independent research organisation, is useful for doing that dialogue in the other direction.

TN: Thank you, Naomi. Ryan, I’m afraid you’ve got the most difficult position because all the obvious skills have been taken already, so it’s over to you.

RK: Yeah, I have to agree with everything that’s been said. I’d say one of the things that we all do is a level of project management and that’s been really useful in taking forward. So you know, in the scientific realm, you’re planning out what are the agents I need, what are the things I need in place to do my experiments? When will those experiments come off and what are the decisions or the data I need from that to be able to make the next decisions and plan the next things. And so. It might not be formal project management training, but we all have some experience with that. It’s pretty helpful as you take that into many, many different types of roles.

So that’s key. But then echoing a few of the other things, I think being able to communicate and present well has really benefited me. It was drilled into me by my PhD supervisor about giving good presentations and he even sent me on some terrifying courses with really theatrical people, which wasn’t really suited for my introvert taste. But I took away a lot of skills on those and it has suited me well to be able to present complex ideas and complex science to a broad range of audiences, from people who know the field and the science better than I probably ever will to, to people who have never engaged with this sort of stuff before and trying to explain it to them and get them on board. So that’s been really helpful.

And the other thing that again I don’t think is necessarily universal but, throughout my PhD and postdoc, I worked really collaboratively with a lot of people and worked in a lot of sort of team projects and that’s been really helpful transitioning into industry because everything we do is in a team. You know, you work with different people with different skill sets. And so that’s been really helpful, being able to know how to communicate across the team and engage with lots of people who have different skills and decide on what’s going to be done, who’s doing what, when can we work together to do these things and managing that, the team environment. So for instance, in the labs that we run here, it’s not uncommon that one experiment will have many people working on it and the person who set up the cells, for instance, won’t be the person who does the flow cytometry or the other side of kind of readouts at the end. So, it’s working together and being able to communicate within that team. It is a really useful skill if you get the opportunity to build it.

TN: Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, I love the teamwork and I really like working in that team environment. I did it a lot in, in my research assistant days before I did my PhD. We worked really collaboratively. And yeah, such a useful skill. OK, moving on quickly, because I appreciate that I’m running a little bit late here. So since moving beyond academia, are there skills that you found you didn’t have? Something was completely new to you that you have since developed? And would you recommend people go out and try and learn these skills and events? I’m going to flip the order if that’s OK. I’m going to start with Ryan.

RK: This one’s a tricky one because yeah, I guess the soft skills I’ve more than the ones that I’ve had that. I think, yeah, working on the communication side especially and with different stakeholders and stakeholder management, probably somebody did a list of when I was in academia and have to do more now thinking about who are the key decision makers that I need to influence for a particular project and get them on site early. So that’s why a piece. But more hard skills learning around drug development and how the pharmaceutical industry works has been really taking a lot of my development piece for the last couple of years.

RK: Interesting. OK, thanks Ryan. Naomi.

NB: Yeah. So I think, yeah, I would echo to some extent, yeah, kind of moving into different kinds of organisations. So my first move was to the British Library, which although I was in a library before the British Library, is the arm’s length body of the government. So it’s operating in very different frameworks to university library. And then I guess more our responsibility maybe than a skill, line management. So certainly in the arts and humanities that is pretty rare for a postdoc. And actually many academics to, like, manage staff, which I’ve done in my previous role. And now I would say there are some aspects of teaching related responsibilities that are transferable, so things like supporting pastoral needs and personal development, though obviously it’s very different kind of relationship and set of responsibilities, being someone’s line manager to being their lecturer or personal tutor but not yeah not completely.

TN: Thank you, Naomi. Eamon, anything to add on to all of that?

ED: Yeah, I’ll try and be quick. There’s a few things I thought of interesting. What Ryan said for me, project management, something I was doing, but really in a haphazard way, fighting fires, moving my project forward is a lot more structured than that in the teams I’ve been in since then. Something, a thing I would recommend that people learn the basics of in terms of the terminology. It’s not that you understand the concepts behind project management, it’s just the terminology. So you enter a team and people are talking about work packages and milestones, everything like that and the Gantt charts and you’re like hey, I might have come across these things, but it’s useful to know that terminology. And certainly when it comes to job application, you see the brief and it says project management that if you can speak in those terms and related to what you’ve done as a researcher, it’ll be, it’ll help you a lot.

And the other one really is teamwork. For me, it depends on your post doc, for me, I was quite on my own, maybe with a few students. I wasn’t really working as part of the team. Sometimes two or three people come in on parts of it. Since then, much bigger teams, as well as multifunctional teams, whereas before it was scientists only scientists pretty much. Working with different people with different skill sets coming into things at a different angle, and that’s an important thing to that I’ve learned and how you change your way of talking and looking at people’s different expected missions. Yeah, that’s the two of the bigger, bigger things I’ve learned since leaving.

TN: Excellent. Thank you, Eamon. Uh, last but not least, Ali.

AL:

And so I’m. I’m going to agree with what everyone has said and I think Naomi’s point about line management. Yeah, I did a lot of informal managing of like, you know, university students, graduate students, but formal line management is something that you just have to kind of jump into. You can’t really practise that. And also I think, Eamon and Ryan said this as well, and you talked about earlier about learning the language of your new field. There’s a lot of, like, jargon. I I work for, you know, in corporate. It’s the corporate world. There’s like, PNL, which is profit and loss. Yeah, it’s the opposite jar. You know, you’re coming from the lab and it’s the opposite jargon. But I also want to point out that, yeah, there are definitely things that you can do to sort of anticipate, you know, what you might need to do in your new job, but. But the truth is that the main transferable skill that you have from research is being able to do something new is to figure out what you need to know. Find out the information and then put it into practise so there’s a lot of on the job learning all of this. All of you know everything that I’ve done here has all been on the job. I’m really lucky that that’s been supported, but yeah, I think sometimes you just have to say, ‘OK, I’ll be honest, I I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how to do it, but I’m really good at learning new things and implementing new stuff.’ That you know, that’s the skill that you’ve got.

TN:

Well, thank you all very much for those insights. I think it’s been, it’s echoed what I’ve experienced, already in my career and as part of research careers, the things I’ve learned about what people find as they move outside of academia it’s amazing how many skills we have and how we have the abilities we have to learn new skills. And I think that is our strength as postdocs. I want to move on now to the questions from the audience, so I’m going to hand back to Stefania to lead that section and thank you all for your input.

SS: Thank you. Thank you everyone. It was really nice to hear all of your experiences and your pathways and really enjoyed. So we have a couple of questions in the chat. The first one is from Christoff, who asked in hindsight, is there anything you would change or do differently looking back. So for example, one important lesson learnt. Can we go with Ali?

AL: Yes, please. I think I’ve given myself a lot of leeway, I think you know I’ve forgiven myself for mistakes. So it’s hard to say, I would necessarily do anything differently, but I think one thing is that I had a very bad postdoc experience. My first one in the UK and I think I should have left sooner and I think that’s all about really learning about yourself and being honest with yourselves. You know you don’t. There’s a big thing in in research that if you’re having a rough time of it, that means it’s going well, right? That like, you’re working all the time and your advisor is really tough and ‘oh you’re going to learn a lot.’ I mean, the truth is if you’re not loving it, if you’re, if you’re dreading it, then get out. Get out as soon as you can and lean on your network, your support network, graduate students, friends, other postdoc friends to try to find something else. That would be my recommendation. Know yourself.

SS: Thanks, Ali. Yes, this really resonates because there is a lot of talk about resilience in academia and that sometimes resilience has a dark side which prevents you from making those decisions for yourself about your own well-being. So thank you. Eamon, would you like to jump in?

ED: Yeah, I’m one of those too. I was over resilient for sure. Kept on going, trudging away. I stayed one, definitely one  grant too long. I should have left earlier. I should have listened to myself. But you don’t know when you’re in it. It’s also a balance. It was interesting, right? It’s very interesting to doing research. It’s hard to, It’s hard to leave. Leave behind something that’s important to you, but also something that gives you that individual intellectual challenge. What else? Yeah, I kind of wish I’d spent a bit more time actively thinking about and what all the careers I could do and what skills I like doing. It’s a lot of work. You know, it’s like, it’s that’s probably why people put up, put it off and don’t do it. Writing down a list of things you’ve done and those things you’ve done. What? What deals with them because in the end looking for a job as isn’t easy. Getting good in preparation in advance or knowing what to do. So I’d like to leave you guys to say check out the Prosper resources cause we spent a lot of time putting those together and they’re really great for getting you to reflect on what you do as a research.

SS: Thanks Eamon. Thank you for plugging Prosper as usual. Now Noami, would you like to go and say something about what would you would do different?

NB: Yeah, I think mostly I would echo actually what both Ali and Eamon said. I think it’s never too early to start thinking about your next move and go to things like this, engage with your careers service if you have access to that and invite people around you whether from your own organisation, people that you meet at conferences and things, for a coffee to talk about their journey.

SS: Thanks, Naomi. Ryan, do you have anything to add?

RK: Not too much. I I think the only thing is to think about your networks as well. People you’ve worked with in the past and see where they’re going, where they’ve ended up, and whether or not PIs you’ve worked with and you still have good relationship with, whether they know people in fields that you might want to move into and see if you can use those sort of weak links to get entrances to places that you might be interested in exploring.

RK: Thanks. Thank you so much. So just leading on to some of the things that you all mentioned about your contacts and you know asking for a suggestion. We have one question in the chat that is exactly that. So for example, when did you decide to move beyond academia or when did you start applying to your jobs and did you use contacts within your own settings? And did you keep your former contacts? And Ali, would you start?

AL: Yeah, yeah. It’s all about context, isn’t it? And I, and I only mentioned, you know, going for a coffee with somebody and asking them, you know, about what they do. That’s some of the best things that you can do. It just opens your eyes to what’s out there. I’ve been really lucky. I got into editing because of a friend in Graduate School who mentioned that she had a friend that did editing and I looked into it and then when I was in the UK, actually when I was at the MRC with Tom, I met Louise Tinsley and she was a managing editor for a journal. And I spoke with her. I probably spent like 2 hours speaking with her and that kind of gave me the confidence to start applying for jobs and she’s actually advised other people, the MRC, someone who now works at The Lancet as well. So it is, it’s about it’s all about people in relationships talking to people and being a bit, being brave and asking and doing things. Like in the United States, they call it informal interviews, finding out that there’s a position open and not applying for it, but actually just talking to somebody about it and finding out more. It can’t hurt and you might make an important friend that might be useful later.

SS: Thank you. Would anyone like to add anything? I’m just opening up to our speakers in case any of you would like to add. I won’t go round.

ED: Yeah, I guess I didn’t for my first move to Prosper. It just was an opportunity. The second one, I obviously being part of Prosper, we hammered home that LinkedIn is used, so I didn’t really even have a profile. I made it and then I reached out to people, and I targeted my engagement. I was interested in certain things, either through the science side or through the skills side. Some people didn’t reply to me. Other people I did speak to and that helped me understand the role. So I could shape where I was going in the end, I ended up applying for a job with the route of ‘here’s a job I had, I’ll apply for it.’ But you learn things that with each interaction you have. So yeah, don’t be afraid to reach out to people you don’t know as well as those you do. But with LinkedIn as well in your post ‘I’m looking for a job. Can anyone help me?’ You’d be amazed how many people come out of the woodwork and go ‘oh, yeah, I’ve heard of this or something.’ So it’s worth thinking about that.

SS: Thank you, Eamon. Thank you. Perfect. I’ll go to another question in the chat, which is specifically about professional development. So I would like to know in addition to the question which is about what would you recommend for current postdocs in academia in terms of professional development, that I would like to know if you are actually working on your professional development within your role and what does that look like? Ali, would you like to start?

AL: I think things like, for professional development to get from a postdoc to your next stage, things like Prosper and I don’t even, I’m only just learnt about Prosper, are really, really good. I actually, when I was at UCSF, I took advantage of some Academic Development Department to talk to somebody about career development. That’s great. There’s more and more of that for postdocs. Space people are realising that not everybody wants to stay in academia, it’s all, it’s cracked up to be, and there are other things you can do. At work, yeah, there’s a lot of professional development opportunities where I am, which is, which is great and development doesn’t have to, it’s a big word, does, but doesn’t have to be like ‘oh I’m going to develop into a CEO.’ Like it can be really small, like ‘I’m going to gain this experience.’ That can be a development goal.

SS: Thank you. Thank you so much, Ali. Eamon, would you like to go?

ED: Yeah, I’ll just say, again through Prosper, I’m all about professional development. Currently, I’m not doing much because I’ve only been enrolled a few months. So you have to take on a lot of stuff. There’s no real time to think picking everything up, but obviously now as an alliance management, partnership management, there’s specific things in those areas I’ve already got to go ahead to do that kind of stuff. It’s just a matter of now trying to do it. The subject, specific stuff around antimicrobial resistance. They’re somewhat of a microbiology background, but not so much in this area, so there’s other smaller things that I can pick up. There’s that’s useful, but in general as a researcher, I did always have an eye on those things, so I did management courses, which included a bit of project management. I didn’t end up taking the things specifically out of that to incorporate into my research, which I probably should have done. It would have made things a bit easier, but I’d also say don’t do too much because you haven’t got time, which is again thinking about yourself and what you think you’re good at. It’s much easier to do some if you’re good at and spend all your time to do things that maybe don’t actually, come to you. So don’t do everything. Choose carefully, what type of things you do as your professional development.

SS: Thanks. Thanks so much Eamon. Now Naomi.

NB: Yeah, I would. I will put this in the context if I absolutely agree with you when you can’t do everything and yeah. Keep being kind to yourself, don’t over commit your time, but I think it was Ali who mentioned doing things on the side. I think that can be useful as well. Engaging with external opportunities. So while I was a postdoc, I was on the project board for my subject associations, doctoral and early career networks. And then more recently, since moving out of academia, I’m a trustee of a small museum, which is really interesting experience. It has one full time member of staff, so it’s a completely different scale of organisation even to the Courtald, which is already quite small. And I’m member of the peer Review College for AHRC, Arts and Humanities Research Council. Which all those things are useful in different ways for my professional development, and particularly now I’m at a smaller institution, there’s less of that institutional-offered opportunities. There would be a big one.

SS: Thank you, Naomi. This is really interesting to hear that there are opportunities both as postdocs but also beyond academia to actually you can choose a bit what you actually are interested in and making sure that you pursue those avenues as well. Ryan, would you like to add anything?

RK: Yeah, not a heck of a lot. I think you’ve all covered it pretty well. Again, if you can talk to people who are in roles that you’re interested in, that can help highlight what are the skill gaps you feel you might have and then be a bit more selective about things you are going to do. And I haven’t engaged with it much, but I have had friends who have done a number of courses through LinkedIn for general things like Project Management and other skills that they might not be getting in in their current academic roles. So there is another resource you can tap into and see if there’s things that might help you develop something you don’t have.

SS: Thank you. Thank you so much and thank you everyone. We just, we have another 5 minutes, so if anyone has a question, please feel free to put it in the chat. I have a question if you don’t mind, which is where do you picture yourself in the future? So what are your current career aspiration and have you already made say a 5 or 10 year plan? You don’t have to have it, it’s an open question. Should we start with Ryan this time?

RK: Sure thing. I think I’m keen to keep continuing in pharmaceutical industry, so work my way up to approach it later and then eventually in time to towards a more senior leadership position would go. And more aspirational goal would be able to work in that industry back closer to New Zealand or within New Zealand and so currently working on reestablishing and building that network back home within scientists and people are interested in pharmaceutical development and seeing if I can get an idea of what I might need to bring this sort of industry, and establish something there.

SS: It’s really nice to hear that you have an aim that is very personal in mind, because I think one thing that a lot of academics forget is that, you know, life has a play in all of your decisions and it’s not all about finding the next job. It’s also about what is important in your life in this moment in your life. It might change in time, and it’s fine. It’s certainly fine. So thank you. Naomi.

NB: I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. I only moved jobs about nine months ago, so I haven’t yet decided what might be, yeah, beyond the next few years. But, yeah, I would echo kind of taking personal situations and preferences into account. I have heard people say ‘oh this job looks interesting’ and I it would involve relocating and I don’t want to do that at the moment.

SS: Thanks. Tell me, that’s great, Eamon. I know you’re new at the job so.

ED: Yeah, I’m also new, say the personal things, Iput a lot of effort into my academic career. I also feel like I’ve worked five years extra than I’ve actually worked, so I don’t know. I’ve got a different perspective now on work. I enjoy my job. I would like to move up a bit. I don’t have any ambitions to like lead an organisation or anything. I like to do things on the side and things with this kind of stuff like skills development. Interestingly, the my current role, the cause problem of antibiotic resistance is a bigger problem than there’s a skills shortage. So some of my work may move in that direction. So it’s funny how things kind of piece together. So it would be interesting to pursue that. And I haven’t really got this idea in mind when it comes to senior, whatever, all senior, senior, senior. If it happens, I mean I think it’s right for me then yeah, I would go for those positions. But right now I’m kind of relaxed a lot.

SS: Thank you. Thank you, Eamon. And finally, Ali.

AL: Yeah, it’s really interesting hearing other people’s plans or lack of plans? I have a one year plan, so I have this acting editor in chief position. It’s a maternity cover, so my plan is to stay in this role and figure out what I want to do next because it’s a cliff. It’s a cliff edge and I haven’t had that since being a postdoc. It’s like, I think yeah, you have to take your values into consideration. You have to take your preferences, your life, all of that. I have two very young children and that’s important as well to consider and also. But oh this is what I want to say which is that I feel like I found a home in editing and it’s much more satisfying than research. And that’s I feel like that’s what you’re looking for, right? A jump I’ve heard. And I’ve heard clinicians say this, and I’m fascinated cause they must work 24/7, but they say ‘oh well it doesn’t feel like work to me.’ That’s what you want. That’s what you’re looking for. Good luck.

SS: Thank you so much, Ali. It’s really nice what you said and I think it’s a great way to end the session. So I would like to thank again all our speakers and Thomas and Linus for organising together with me this session. Thanks again for sharing your personal stories, your pathways and I hope I’ll meet you again. Thank you. Thank you everyone.