Planning and managing your career
Develop self-awareness and career management strategies to plan and manage your career.
To plan and manage your career as a researcher, it’s important to develop good self-awareness and strong career management skills. Identifying your strengths, values and motivations is vital to understanding the jobs and sectors that would best suit you. You also need to develop the skills that will help you to plan for the short-term, make effective career decisions and successfully navigate your career in the long-term.
Managing your career
We have extensive advice on Student Futures+ to help you develop the skills you need to manage your career.
We recommend exploring this content to help you:
- Identify important career management skills, as well as understand how to make a career decision
- Develop self-awareness and an in-depth understanding of your strengths, skills, values and career motivations
- Identify how ethics could influence your career development
You could also consider completing the online course from Vitae on Getting started with your professional development planning, which you can access with your university email address (Cardiff University is a Vitae organisational member).
We also recommend:
- Focusing on your career early. It’s never too soon to start dedicating time to your career
- Using the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) to reflect on skill, career and professional development
- Engaging with the support offered by Cardiff University through the Doctoral Academy or services like Student Futures
- Discussing your career ideas and professional development with your supervisor, principal investigator or manager
- Exploring wider resources available on Student Futures+, a careers resource for all Cardiff University students and graduates, that covers crucial employability skills, from acing applications, utilising LinkedIn and job-searching to advice on networking and how AI can be used to support your career development