Lots of students have asked about slides for the talk I did on “Academic Careers – Getting Started”. As I included lots of embedded video and slide transitions, unfortunately I can’t put them on Slideshare, but the good news is that I just happen to have a very useful resource where most of the content is available all year round – An Academic Career.
If you’re an aspiring academic, or just wondering whether it might be for you, this website is designed to help you understand what being an academic really involves, and how to become one. It includes lots of video clips of academics, from early career research fellows to experienced professors, talking frankly about their life as an academic, the highs and lows, what they wished they’d known at the start, and how they got into their jobs.
It’s also designed to help you progress in an academic career, if that’s what you’re looking for. However, rather than telling you “do this”, it encourages you to consider the questions you should be asking yourself – the questions a good mentor would ask you, which only you can answer, for example:
- What do you want out of a career?
- Where do you see your research going?
- How strong is your publication record and what could you do to improve it?
There’s also lots of information on finding jobs in academia, writing CVs and getting through interviews.
Handing over the baton…
We launched this in April last year, and were lucky enough to win a big national award for it, this time last year. Since then it’s had over 150,000 page views. As this is our last day as the current holder of the THE Award for Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers, I just want to wish all the nominees for this year’s THE Award the best of luck, and win or lose, have a really fabulous time at the award ceremony tonight.
University of Manchester Careers Blog 
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