As a research-trained scientist, you’ll have developed a host of transferable skills that can be leveraged in job applications. The great news is that most of these skills are in high demand by employers.
Focusing on these in-demand for your CV/resume will increase your competitiveness for job applications.
If you start thinking about developing these early enough in your current contract, you can prioritise them for future applications. It’s wise to identify those skills you ought to be developing for your career plan.
Interesting, the transferable skills learnt from scientific research, include the top 10 in-demand skills for 2020, listed in a recent analysis by the on-line learning platform, Udemy.
Udemy analysed its business services (used by >4000 companies as an employee training platform), to identify the most in-demand skills sought by employers. The top 10 are highlighted* in the list below.
Here I briefly highlight 30 in-demand skills that you can ‘cherry pick’ to enhance your applications:
30 In-Demand Skills for 2020
- Creativity:* Coming up with ideas to test or applying novel solutions to address existing problems
- Innovation:* Improving existing ideas and concepts to achieve a desired outcome
- Execution of ideas: Successfully executing your ideas and/or those of your supervisor/advisors
- Persuasion: The ability to get your ideas and findings heard
- Adaptability: Taking a flexible approach at work (e.g. changing fields, or moving to live and work in a different culture)
- Collaboration: Working with other scientists to achieve common goals for your research
- Big data handling: The ability to solve problems using large datasets
- Time management: Planning and managing your work day to achieve optimal productivity
- Event management: This can include organising events, including conferences, workshops, seminar series, and outreach activities
- Communicating* [public speaking and writing skills]: Including presentations to both small (e.g. lab meetings) and large audiences (e.g. plenary sessions). Written communications and editorial skills
- Critical thinking:* An essential component of academic success that can be learnt from senior researchers
- Learning fast: Picking up new techniques and complex information quickly
- Budgeting: For lab supplies or grant proposals
- Supply chain logistics: Sharing sample materials and resources in your research community
- Corporate expertise: Buying reagents and equipment from suppliers. Also industrial collaboration if applicable
- Public relations: Press releases for new grants or publications
- Trouble shooting and problem solving: A daily requirement in the lab!
- Team management: Effective working within your research group and wider collaborators
- Analytical reasoning: Making decisions based on sound data
- Growth mindset:* An ability to learn continuously and adapt
- Storytelling:* Organising ideas and data into a comprehensive narrative
- Cultural awareness:* An ability to develop meaningful working relationships with various cultural backgrounds. Research labs often provide culturally diverse work environments
- Leadership:* Providing guidance, mentoring and coaching support to students
- Emotional intelligence:* Developing fair and empathetic interpersonal relationships with others
- Focus mastery:* Defining your priorities and taking relevant action in alignment with these
- Project management: Taking responsibility for coordination of your research project
- Obtaining funding: Experience of successfully applying for financial support
- Scientific knowledge: Goes with the territory! But this is important to emphasise for jobs where your specialist knowledge is required or provides an advantage
- Technical skills: Optimisation of techniques/technology
- Language translation: Helpful for certain roles if you’re multilingual
*10 most in-demand soft skills for the 2020 job market.
If you’re looking for a job this year, showcase the in-demand skills you possess that are relevant to the role you’re applying for.
For example, a scientific writing career would require strong communication skills along with storytelling and time management. Whilst a management consultant role might demand excellent project management and persuasion skills.
When presenting these transferable skills in your job applications, don’t just mention the skill, but also provide examples of how you’ve used these skills in your work and the results you have generated (e.g. innovating a new line of research, or beating a submission deadline to demonstrate time management etc). This is particularly crucial when applying for jobs in the commercial sector.
Good luck with your applications this year!
In Summary
- As a research-trained scientist, you possess a lot of transferable skills that are highly valued by employers
- These include the top 10 in-demand skills for 2020:
- Creativity
- Innovation
- Communicating
- Critical thinking
- Growth mindset
- Storytelling
- Cultural awareness
- Leadership
- Emotional intelligence
- Focus mastery
- Tailor your job applications to include the transferable skills required by the roles you’re applying for
- Provide examples that demonstrate how you’ve used these skills to generate positive outcomes
For weekly updates and free career progression tools, join our community at: https://www.biomedbadass.com/subscribe/