Careers Beyond Academia for Social Sciences and Humanities

Aims

This workshop is designed to help participants go through the process of understanding who they are: their professional selves. This clarification is an essential step to take before we begin to ask what we want to do, where we want to do it, and building a roadmap to see how we get there. The goal is to build participants’ long-term autonomy in making decisions relative to career development: making more proactive, conscious and confident choices for personal goals and professional growth.

By the end of this workshop a participant will:
• Understand and be able to use the “portfolio” approach to career development: identifying the skills, knowledge, motivations and interests that describe their experience and competencies, and describing them in standard recruitment formats.
• Extend their research skills to explore and build their personal roadmap, plotting their professional development in terms of the type and environment of work they would like to develop towards and within.
• Better understand employers’ expectations and needs, and how to express their existing experience in terms employers beyond academia will understand.

Content

Day 1:
• Analyzing the PhD experience to uncover the skills, interests and motivations that will build their individual profile.
• Reviewing and discussing case studies of PhDs from the Social Sciences and Humanities with careers beyond academia: how do people re-conceptualise and re-utilise their knowledge and experience in new environments?
• Developing the content to create profile presentation material: CVs, cover letters, online profiles

Transfer Work:
• Between the two days of the workshop, participants work individually and in small groups in order to continue their work in understanding and building their individual professional profile: their skills, interests, motivations and personality traits (approximately 12 hours in total).
• Put together their choice of presentation media: a CV, a cover letter, an online profile that responds to their ideal engagement beyond academia. This work will then be reviewed in the second day.
• Support material will be provided to guide participants in how to construct their presentation media.

Day 2:
• Reviewing individual presentation media in small groups and in plenum.
• Reflecting on the personal portfolio, identifying individual goals and how to get there through training and experience, developing networks, and deepening their knowledge base through conversation and experience.

Methods

• Theoretical introduction, open discussion and questions
• Reviewing and discussing case studies
• Practical exercises (individual & small groups)
• Feedback from the trainer/the group

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Theology

About the Trainer

Director of her own company, Portfolio Formation Sàrl since 2014, Verity Elston is co-director of the University of Lausanne’s Graduate Campus, dedicated to the support of PhDs and postdocs. Verity’s previous experience includes leading the CUSO Transversal Program in transferable skills, and as deputy to the dean of the EPFL Doctoral School. This experience combines with a broader professional background in the private and public sectors in several countries, including in middle- and high-level recruitment. She has acted as chair of the OECD expert group on career options for doctorate holders and currently serves on the board of the PRIDE Network of university professionals in doctoral education and as career advice expert for the COST project on career development for researchers.
Verity holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, a CAS in Leadership, the FSEA Certificate in Adult Training, the ACC Certificate in Integral Coaching. She conducts ongoing qualitative and quantitative research and analysis on careers for doctorate holders in Switzerland and in Europe more generally.

Workload

Total of approx. 30h (course attendance 2 x 8h, preparation & transfer work 12-14h)

Feature

This course is reserved for doctoral candidates of the Faculy of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Theology.

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.