Unsure where your career is going, whether you should stay in academia or move on, what your options are, how to secure funding, struggling to write effectively or get published? These are among some of the most common questions posed by the BB community.
These questions are potentially life altering, challenging and complex issues that need addressing, so it’s helpful to get support and advise from others.
It can often be difficult to obtain unbiased support within your own network, if colleagues don’t have the expertise, inclination or time to help you out. If you’ve got a pressing career question and don’t have a good support network to help out, it can feel daunting where you’ve just got to figure it out for yourself.
I’ve been in that situation myself. When I decided the time was right for me to move on from academia, I didn’t have a clue what else I might enjoy doing and there were very few people within my network at the time (mostly consisting of academics), who could advise me about options outside of academia.
After a bit of research, I soon discovered there were a number of resources I could tap into, offering information about alternative academic (alt-academic) careers. In fact, there are numerous resources out there now to help with your career challenges, and the great news is that much of the content is freely accessible.
I’ve collated a handy list of online resources where you can find support with:
- Building a successful academic career
- Identifying and securing alt-academic careers
- Job searches
- Finding postgraduate studentships
- Building a network and/or asking career-related questions on secure platforms
Whilst some of the tools and services offered are pay-for-access, a lot of content is freely available and you’ll just need to browse the different sites to find the relevant information you need.
Some sites are geared towards certain geographical audiences, but most of the content has a global reach and should be helpful, no matter where you are located in the world.
Why not print out the list and pin on your institutes job board or send to your careers service, so others can benefit from these valuable resources?
Although this doesn’t aim to be a fully comprehensive list of all the resources out there, it is a collection of those providing the broadest viewpoints for researchers. It would be great to have your feedback if you’ve found other sites helpful and leave your comments about which sites you’ve found most helpful…
In Summary
- Use the list of websites to help with your career planning
- Sites include those that can help you:
- Build a successful academic career or alt-academic career
- Search for jobs or studentships
- Network with others and ask career-directed questions in secure sites
- Feedforward by providing others with the list who could benefit from these resources and/or feedback on other useful sites to include
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