Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>>AIMEE this question came up from so many people, and it’s a question that I hear
all the time anyway in lots of different industries, but actually comes from Marwa, who’s a PhD
student from Southern England, and its ‘How to identify the skills I learnt during my
PhD that would appeal to employers’ now this is always a tricky one, because we’re
not always great at looking at ourselves as a product, and we have to because recruitment
is a sales process, both people are buying, both people are selling, we’re buying into
each other and it’s a real task for people to sit down and think what am I good at, what
is my value especially if you’ve been rejected in the past, your value doesn’t decrease
just because someone failed to see it, but I think that sometimes we can feel like that,
certainly jobseekers and graduates that I work with, what tips would you give to people
to think ‘ what have I got, what transferable skills, what can I offer to an employer? Chris
I’m going to come to you with this because I know this is a huge passion for you and
Chris I now you speak to lots of people about this so what would you say to marwa?
>>CHRIS Yeah as you say this is something I’m really interested in especially as I
find that people haven’t always got the awareness of the skills that they’ve got,
but one of the exercises I do when I go to campus and talk to students is do a little
skills audit with them, actually take them through a process of identifying about 20
skills that a typical PhD has, so you can look into the area of project related skills,
so PhD’s have managed a project, which is their thesis, they’ve delivered that, or
you could look at ICT skills that they’ve got, research skills, networking, organising
events, so I’d work through a list of about 20 skills and you can really see a light bulb
going off in their head as they think oh yeah I have got that and I have got that, and people
are really sort of energised by thinking – I didn’t realise I can actually do all those
things! But that’s a great list to go to an employer with and say look at all these
things I can do for you.
>>AIMEE Yeah I also think as well – I really agree with that so much I think it’s really
important that you look outside, so sort of the networking stuff and events, that type
of thing, but if there’s anyone struggling with that ask your best friend, ask someone
that you’ve worked with, ask for references, ask for testimonials from people, and if you
are going to ask for references and testimonials or you are going to seek advice from people
that you’ve worked with before, don’t just say ‘what are my best bits?’ Because
that’s a very open ended question, go to people and say ‘what problem did I solve
for you? What would you say is my key (strength) if there was a situation that I needed to
help you with what would that situation be? That’s a great way for you to then gather
information that you can also use on your LinkedIn, you know you can whack in a fabulous
testimonial on your CV, rather than just put references available on request; you could
put a reference there. But I think it’s important that ultimately, employers are hiring
why you get out of bed in the morning, they’re hiring ‘If you have a really bad day on
a Monday are going to rock in on Tuesday? If you’ve got a deadline or a report that
I need you to do, and you’re late, are you going to sit there and deal with it or are
you going to go and have a cigarette and get in a strop’ you know there are so many things,
I’ve recruited for nearly 5000 positions in so many different companies and the person
with the most experience doesn’t always get the job, it’s the person that believes
what the employer believes. So think about what your motivators are, think about what
your values are, honesty, integrity, passion, hard work, helping others be the best they
can be, think about yourself in terms of those things rather than ‘well I’ve done this
I’ve done that… ‘ think about your ‘why’ - why you do what you do not just what, because
the best people don’t buy into somebody just because of what you do, it’s why you
do it too, and Clare I know you’ve done a lot of stuff like this haven’t you, behaviours
and qualities, can you add on that?
>>CLARE Yeah sure Aimee, I think for me it’s about really getting people to value the breadth
of things that they do, the how they work, who they work with how they interact with
them so I actually talk to PhDs about thinking about not the end product of their work, which
in academia that is usually what we focus on and almost define our success by here,
and the articles, like we talked about in the previous question, for many employers
outside that they want to know the process, how you got there, (Aimee – how you dealt
with a difficult situation) yeah, I was working with some PhDs yesterday at a skills conference
here at Nottingham and they said ‘we communicate’, how do you communicate? What situations? What
types of communications do you use? When you’re working with your supervisor you’re trying
to influence and negotiate with them, and they all laughed, but that’s true, they
might not always win that argument, but those are the sort of skills and qualities and behaviours
that you need - well actually you need as an academic as well - but a very much more
obvious presentation of that for those people that are thinking of carers outside, and it
also gives clues to the individual about what they really like doing, exactly what you said,
what drives you, what motivates you, what do you like, what do you want to do in most
of your working day? Because you spend a lot of time there.