PhD Horizons: Career Insights for PhD Students
PhD Horizons provides career insight and inspiration through sharing personal stories of PhD graduates.
What is PhD Horizons?
PhD Horizons is our annual focus on career insights for PhD students to help you explore different career options. All students are welcome to get involved but what is covered will mostly be of interested to current PhD students or those considering a PhD.
We’ll be focussing on PhD Horizons throughout June 2022 and you will be able to:
This is a bespoke online course developed by specialist researcher careers consultants at the universities of Sheffield, Edinburgh and Glasgow. It has been designed for PhD students and research staff who are exploring their career options and preparing for the next stage in their career, whether in academia or beyond. We are encouraging you to use the 4 week free access to this course during June, when we will be on hand to support you to work through the course as a cohort.
You’ll work through the 4 parts of the course in your own time but the course is structured around a 4 week plan for completion:
- Week 1 - Making career plans and identifying what you want
- Week 2 - Exploring career options beyond academia
- Week 3 - Careers in Higher Education - research, teaching and professional roles
- Week 4 - Job search, CVs, applications and interviews within and beyond HE.
You can join experienced careers consultants and fellow University of Edinburgh research students in facilitated online discussion sessions to support you through the course. These are taking place:
- Thursday 9th June, 12.00-1.15pm
- Monday 20th June, 1.00-2.15pm
These group discussions are entirely optional but are a great way to share ideas, ask questions and get support from fellow PhD students and careers professionals.
Register for the course, which is hosted on FutureLearn
Register for access to the facilitated discussions on MyCareerHub by 5pm on 6th June
Tuesday 21 June 12:30 – 13:45pm: Getting your first job in academia
In this session we will be joined by speakers from a variety of PhD backgrounds who will share how they moved from the PhD into early career researcher roles and beyond. They will talk about what they enjoy about their work and provide insight into what life as an academic is like, discuss challenges they faced and how they overcame them, and share some top tips to help you stay on course if a career in academia is the path you would like to take.
Find out more and book your place on MyCareerHub (MyCareerHub login Required)
Wednesday 22 June 12:30 – 13:45pm: Moving beyond your subject area
In this session we will be joined by speakers from a variety of PhD backgrounds who have chosen to move away from their area of disciplinary expertise and use the skills and experience their PhD has provided in a different way. They will share the pros and cons of this approach and discuss what they found useful when they started to take a wider view of what might come next for them after their PhD.
Find out more and book your place on MyCareerHub (MyCareerHub login Required)
Thursday 23 June 16:30 – 17:30: What next?
This session will be run by Careers Consultants who will support you to reflect on what you have learned from our guest speakers and help you consider how to continue to explore career options and approach career planning.
Find out more and book your place on MyCareerHub (MyCareerHub login Required)
These sessions will be open for booking on MyCareerHub from the end of May. Current students, recent graduates and staff can all book via MyCareerHub. If you graduated more than 2 years ago and are keen to attend please just email us on employers@ed.ac.uk
We will be publishing a series of posts with a focus on post-PhD career stories throughout June on Inform.ed - the Careers Service Blog. You can sign up to receive updates when blog posts are published, or you can find them here once they are live.
As PhD Horizons is an annual focus, we have a really varied bank of recordings from previous years available to you to browse and watch when it suits you.
Dip in to these recordings to hear from PhD graduates working in policy, business, commercial science, charities, government, creative sector, and many more career areas. Choose to watch what interests you and hear PhD graduate share what motivated them to choose that career path and what it is like.
Why should I engage with PhD Horizons?
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PhD Horizons provides insight and inspiration through personal stories. This gives you a chance to reflect; hearing the stories of how other PhD graduates made career decisions can help you to Understand Yourself
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PhD Horizons provides exposure to different career options and aims to demonstrate that PhD graduates can have challenging and satisfying careers inside, alongside or outwith academia - helping you to Discover What’s Out There
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We really hope you find it helpful!