Focus – Supervisors and careers professionals are tasked with helping their HDR candidates take the next steps in their career. But, the dearth of academic jobs in many disciplines makes this task complicated. The ‘adjacent possible’ job market for people with research talents remains largely hidden because most employers do not use ‘PhD’ as a keyword. Motivation problems are rife amongst PhD candidates, who are disheartened about the academic job market and are not sure what is available outside academia.

Professor Inger Mewburn will show you data on the opportunities available for your candidates and what skills are in demand inside and outside academia. She will then share some of her favourite strategies for working with candidates, including disrupting some of the unhelpful thinking patterns candidates have about their future career.

In this session, you will:

Learn about the size and extent of the non-academic job market for researchers: how many jobs are there and what sort of jobs can our graduates do?
Understand what Covid has done to the academic and non-academic job market.
Learn some tools and strategies you can use with your candidates to help them start thinking more strategically about their careers.

Lead – Professor Inger Mewburn is the Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University where she oversees professional development workshops and programs for all ANU researchers. Aside from creating new posts on the Thesis Whisperer blog, she writes scholarly papers and books about research education, with a special interest in post PhD employability, research communications and neurodivergence. Find out more about Inger here.

Note: This workshop will be delivered via Zoom (Zoom information). To join this Zoom Meeting:

Meeting URL: https://anu.zoom.us/j/81250363093?pwd=L281TWE5cUdUdHZIdzVNMGlFUEVndz09
Meeting ID: 812 5036 3093
Password: 071651
One tap mobile:
- +61731853730,,81250363093#,,,,0#,,071651# Australia
- +61861193900,,81250363093#,,,,0#,,071651# Australia
Dial by your location:
- +61 2 8015 6011 Australia
- +61 3 7018 2005 Australia
- +61 7 3185 3730 Australia
- +61 8 6119 3900 Australia
- +61 8 7150 1149 Australia

If you have any problems joining this Zoom meeting please email: hdr.supervision@anu.edu.au

Note: A recording of this workshop (which will include audio) will be made available (after the workshop has finished) on the HDR Supervision Portal (https://wattlecourses.anu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=27437).