Writing skills

Did a session on writing skills this week. Never sure if its something I should be doing as a Careers Adviser. But my experience of doing the session over a couple of years has enabled me to develop some materials which are specific to PhD’s. i was happy with the session even though it was difficult to say what real progress students made during this 3 hour session. Had an observer from the language centre in and I got her to talk about what they offered, and also got Jenny Potter in to talk about her work.

Sample interview questions – Big Pharma

Give an example of a research project that required you to use your analytical skills and demonstrated your technical expertise in a scientific area. Explain your work

 

Describe a project where it was important for you to collaborate or consult with another group or organisation with whom you did not usually interface. What steps did you take to facilitate co-operation or resolve a conflict? What was the outcome?

 

Even though we all try to be expert in our study, it is impossible to know and understand everything. What aspects of your technical field are you still working to master? What steps have you taken to further your learning

Music PhD’s

Meeting with 2 current PhDs to plan a New Year session on Careers after the PhD.

Management Consultancy Insight Day

This was a day that Dave Carter organised on behalf of C2 for the London Hub. PhD students from all around London and a programme of talks activities and discussions. We had an inspirational talk for Fiona Czernawska – a PhD in Art History doing a really brilliant session. The panel we had featured 3 young consultants just finished with their PhD’s and  -a master stroke – a newly started PhD who had been a consultant for 5 years. Then we had Accenture running a case study. We had about 40+ students and in the main they seemed happy – no mean feat given the wide range of Universities and Disciplines form which they had come.

My contribution was a session originally titled ‘Skills Audit’ but which I changed (too boring) to ‘The Consultant in You’. Used my Star/Agent technique which worked well.

Dave did all the work on designing the programme and grtting the speakers and felt the time commitment was very large. Anyyay it paid off.

Hand-out below

The Consultant in You

( A Skills Audit Exercise)

 

Create 8 teams

 

8 Teams of 8

 

Divide into Pairs

 

In each pair one person is

Star     

In each pair one person is

Agent

 

4 key skill areas for Consulting

 

• People and Teams
• Problems
• Self
• Business

 

Each team of pairs will be allocated a  key skill to work on

 

The agent asks the star about how they could demonstrate that they have the allocated skill

 

The star needs

Strong positive claim

Strong supportive evidence

Convince an interview panel

 

 Key Skills Areas

 

People and Teams

•         Build a key relationship (supervisor? Postdoc? Peer)

•         Repair a damaged relationship

•         Persuade a person

•         Collaborate

•         Bargain

 

Problems

•         Solve the apparently insoluble

•         Exhaustively test options

•         Learn from failure

•         Breakthrough Insight

 

Self

•         Balanced

•         Down to Earth

•         Passion ( Beyond the academic)

•         Personable

•         Make things happen

•         Learning curve

 

 

Business

•         Winning funding bid

•         Improve a process ( cheaper. quicker)

•         Industry collaboration

•         Business planning

•         Work Experience

 

 

Researcher Development Programme

The programme well under way. Inotice I am seeing fewer than in previous years – partly because the planning is a little bit more rigid and the dissemination and booking processes seem more ineffective. Yesterday was the presentations session and I was pleased with the way it went.

Unfortunately last weeks Time Management clashed with the IOP induction so I was unable to get down there -  alost opportunity. Problem was I was asked to do an extra Time Management course and I had had no specific invitation to attend the IOP event – though my guess was that it would be an efternoon thing – turned out it was a morning session. Jon Cooper very cross I could not make it.