These career masterclasses are designed to tackle the challenges we know postdocs face in making career decisions. Full of practical tips, advice and signposting, they will provide insight into strategies that you can adopt to be efficient and effective in working out what you need from your next career move, and how you can get there.

Writing narrative CVs for funding applications

Narrative CVs have become an increasingly popular request from funders, particularly in Fellowship applications. Rather than submitting a traditional CV that simply lists your publications, grants and research roles, a narrative CV gives you the opportunity to fully showcase your experience, strengths and achievements in a more descriptive format.

While we see many benefits for applicants with this new format of CV, especially as a way to offer a broader insight into your merits, we know that it can be daunting to compile the first one, particularly if your first language isn’t English or you feel uncomfortable with selling yourself.

The aim of this interactive workshop is to provide you with useful and practical support, as well as valuable tips and expert advice, to create an engaging narrative CV. In our masterclass, you will learn about the background and purpose of this CV format, discover how to fully evidence your skills and experience and also find out some common pitfalls to avoid.

Our 90-minute workshops will get you started with writing the CV and give you a takeaway plan for completion.

Networking for career development

Many jobs are filled through personal connections and contacts, meaning those employment opportunities never even get to advert. While this part of the potential job market might seem out of reach to many people, there are a host of useful strategies and tools that can be utilised to help you to be in the right place or part of the right network, at the right time, to speak or connect with the right people.

Our masterclass will:

• Outline different opportunities for networking in your field, including face-to-face events, conferences and social media.
• Provide you with useful tips for expanding your professional network
• Give you the confidence to explore both existing and new networking opportunities
• Show you who how to recognise a useful connection – and when to make contact
• Inspire you to be a positive contributor to research and career-developing networks.

Linkedin at Lunchtime

LinkedIn is an increasingly important tool for finding research collaborators, searching for career possibilities and being found by people who might want to offer you work-related opportunities. That’s why we believe you should have a professional and authentic LinkedIn profile.

Our practical workshop will:

• Show you how to set up a LinkedIn profile that showcases your personal research and career highlights
• Provide you with expert tips and ideas to make your profile stand out from others
• Give you insight into how your profile can be best created so you can be easily found by the right people
• Help you to use LinkedIn’s powerful functionality so that you can research what job roles and sectors might work for you

Building confidence and overcoming imposter-feelings

Are you looking for a new job or thinking about moving sectors or roles? Are you concerned that you fall short of what you believe is expected from your next career step? That you don’t have the right experience or qualifications? You should know that you are not alone and imposter-type feelings are common for many people when job searching.

Our workshop will give you the support, tips and advice you need to move forward – and find your next role – with much improved confidence.

Our masterclass will:

• Provide an understanding of the process and theory of career transitions
• Show you how to promote your skills and experience to potential employers
• Help you to overcome both practical and emotional challenges in your job search
• Give you skills to overcome limiting self-beliefs and your inner critic
• Provide you with an environment where you can share you experiences and concerns with people who understand

Applying for jobs outside of academia

Many people fail to fully recognise their skills and experience already gained in their career and, as such, do not know how to sell these effectively when applying for a new job. We know that this is especially true of postdoc researchers, who may not hold a formal leadership or management role, but often step forward to motivate, train or supervise other people, or to manage projects and collaborations.

Our masterclass will help you to:

• Identify the unique skills you’ve built up during your research career
• Show you how to effectively communicate your leadership strengths clearly and confidently
• Map your skills and strengths to what employers are looking for
• Reveal how to showcase your skills in a variety of formats, including interviews, CVs and cover letters
• Give you the opportunity to discuss your strengths with experts in job seeking

Applying for jobs inside of academia

This workshop will guide you through potential academic roles and how you might prepare an application for each of these, as well as the typical interview formats.

Our masterclass will:

• Different types of academic contract and what the roles involve
• Academic CVs
• Cover letters
• Teaching statements
• Academic job interviews.

Successful Interviews

There are many different formats for job interviews. This workshop will help you get to grips with what you might expect from a range of different employers, how to prepare for these formats and showcase your strengths, skills and experience in a confident manner.

Our masterclass will help you to:

• Gain experience of answering different types of interview questions (including competency based and strengths based).
• Identify questions to ask at the end of the interview.
• Consider strategies to deal with interview nerves.

All workshops are 90 minutes and take place online.

This series of masterclasses have been made possible thanks to the Research England Enhancing Research Culture funding.