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How do you see your career? Maybe it is time to discuss your next career move, or there are challenges and opportunities in your current job. Or perhaps you have encountered work-related problems, for example with establishing a healthy work-life balance, or balancing stressors and energizers?
For these dilemmas you can consult a Radboudumc career coach, a service that is offered to anyone employed by the Radboudumc, and therefore available to all researchers. We would like to bring the career coaches to attention in light of the Recognition and Reward file of the Radboudumc.
Recognition and Reward is part of a new institution-wide approach to recognize and reward the work of academics, focusing on quality over quantity and enabling more diverse career paths and skill sets.
Claire Engels is one of the Radboudumc career coaches who can help you get the most out of your career: “I think it is important that every researcher knows that the opportunity to talk with a career coach exists.”
What does a career coach do?
With an objective point of view in mind, the employee and I discuss their career and how things are going. Sometimes we consider their future career path, what aspects they would like to change in their current job, or conflicts that they might have. The nice thing is that the advice is always tailored to the employee, they can determine the focus and what they want to get out of the conversation. Sometimes we are done in one meeting. For example, if we help people with their motivation letter or CV. Sometimes a longer trajectory is necessary, where we make a sort of assessment of where people are in their career, what drives them, or where their strengths lie.
How can a career coach help PhD candidates specifically?
In my experience, a lot of PhD candidates at the end of their contract have difficulties making the step from early career researcher, to the senior researcher that is seen as a proper professional. In addition, we can help PhD candidates with defining how a doctorate contributes to fulfill their next career goal. For example, what are the skills that you developed during your PhD that help you achieve this goal? The earlier in their PhD-track people come to us with these kinds of questions, the better. For example, if you want to teach after your PhD, you can already focus on this during your PhD, which gives you an advantage when applying to jobs.
Do you have tips for researchers to better define what drives them in their career?
You can find a lot of questionnaires online that can be used as a guide. However, it is more interesting to engage in a conversation to find out what drives you. If you really want to feel what drives you, it is best to express it in words. Everyone is welcome to come in to talk to us and (re)define what drives them in their career.
Can you also help researchers that have work-related problems?
As long as it is work related. For example, we help people that have conflicts, whether it is with a supervisor or a colleague, or when their work pressure is too high. The career coach is really the first step for an independent conversation. For some people it is already enough to know if the things that they experienced are justified. For example, is it normal that they just took me off the list of co-authors? Is it normal that my boss gets so angry? When these problems are getting too serious, when people are at the brink of burning out, we refer them to other professionals like the occupational psychologist. Also, we know the ins and outs of the Radboudumc, and if we can’t help you with a specific problem, we can always refer you to someone who can.
A lot of people experience corona-related stress at work, how can you help?
What I noticed is that some people love working from home and are their most productive self, while others are the complete opposite. I’ve talked to a few people who are completely working from home since March, and feel very isolated. Some people are struggling with finding motivation at home. Research itself can be very lonely, but if you are working from home this loneliness becomes amplified. People start reflecting on their own situation, on their own job. So how to become more motivated during working from home? Together we can look for the small steps that can help bring back motivation. But sometimes it is also necessary to really deepen the conversation: maybe these reflections showed you that this job is not the right fit for you. More info about working energetically at home can be found here: https://www.radboudumc.nl/en/intranet/projects/vitaal-aan-het-werk/working-energetically-from-home
As a researcher or PhD candidates you become an expert in a specific area, including very specific skills. Do you have tips to define skills that could be transferable to other fields?
The term transferable skills actually came from the research field, as a term to describe the transferability of knowledge and skills that you gained during your PhD. We have a list of transferable skills that we can discuss, and we can help you get insight in which skills you possess, which skills you are good at, or which skills you would like to improve.
How do you help researchers define their next career step, whether it is the standard academic track, an alternative path in academia or in the industry?
Together with Dagmar Eleveld we set up a course called ‘the next step’, https://radboudumc.capp12.nl/CatalogDetail.aspx?CourseTemplate=211 which can be followed in English. This is a training of 1,5 days that is tailor-made for young researchers. From our network we invite speakers that followed alternative career paths. Because everyone knows the assumed path ending with professorship, but there are so many other alternatives! You can find jobs in policy, NGOs, teaching or industry. In this course we included a piece of self-orientation, to clearly visualize what drives you and what you want in your career. In addition, we invited people who will present their career path and which steps they took to get there. You’ll be encouraged to do a networking conversation, and people following the course will help each other with networking, as they all bring in their own networks. We’ll talk about and define transferable skills and we look for a vacancy based on your LinkedIn profile. In this way you get an idea how people see your LinkedIn profile. It is a really interesting course for anyone to define the next step in their career. Another course that is offered is the life phase course, which is similar to ‘the next step’, but is specifically designed for people in their 30s. This course is in Dutch.
For more information or to make an appointment you can email loopbaanadvies@Radboudumc.nl. Advice from career coaches at the Radboudumc can be in English or in Dutch.
