Managing your research career can be exciting, challenging, rewarding and frustrating all at the same time and at any stage!
Professional success calls for self-awareness, passion/enthusiasm, resilience, creativity and a bit of ‘luck’ - but we can make our own opportunities and improve our chances of luck! Fortune favours the well-prepared.
You can add to your ‘luck’ by:
- Having a clear plan of where you want to be and what you need to get there, including research dissemination and impact strategies
- Understanding the real requirements of your next likely role/promotion or even two positions ahead – and preparing yourself well in advance (you get promoted for what you did and have evidence for doing)
- Knowing when and how to draw on the support you need – mentors are vital for career success everywhere
- and by having contingency plans for everything!
“At some point, everyone is an expert in the subject…so it is not what you know that counts, but what you do with it that matters…” Professor of Politics, interviewed for ‘what makes a successful researcher or academic’.
