Blog

As a science graduate, you will have had to develop presentation skills in various ways which will have helped you develop the ability to give a confident presentation. This may have been to large audiences during lectures, small groups in seminars, or in a more informal setting during poster sessions. These presentations are likely to have been about conveying technical information and data to other scientists.

When you move into the workplace, especially if you are in the corporate world, pre…

Do you need interview tips that will help you to feel prepared and confident? Have you ever experienced feeling unprepared for an interview? Those nerves, your mind going blank when the interviewer asks you a question, self-doubt creeping in about whether you are good enough for the position? Well you aren’t the only one! Feeling anxious about an interview is common and happens to even the most qualified person for the job.

So how do you battle those nerves and master your confidence so you can…

Pursuing an academic career in scientific research is inherently purposeful. You are striving to discover, learn and educate others. But what are your other options if you want to know what science-based careers are out there with a purpose? What if you don’t want to work in lab but still want to make an impact in the world? You might want to make a different kind of impact, where you see the effects of your work on people, products or systems. You might want the work you do every day to have an…

When you hear the words ‘personal branding’, what does it make you think? Some words that may come to mind are marketing, Instagram influencers and self-promotion. Personal branding can be related to all of these things, but when you put it in the context of career development, it takes on a whole new meaning. In today’s job landscape, whether you have a secure job or are looking for one, personal branding is key to your success. If you want to progress within a company, you will be competing wi…

If you are thinking about carving a career path outside the lab, you may either have an undergraduate degree in a science subject and know you don’t want to work in a lab, or you have been working in a lab and want to transition out. Either way, planning your move is essential to making the best decision for your career path moving forward. The question is, how do you go about career planning? What things do you need to think about? Where do you even start? These questions can be overwhelming, a…

As a science graduate, it's useful to know the transferable skills you get from a science degree. This applies whether you are a fresh undergraduate or want to make a career transition after your PhD. To work outside of academia, it gives you an edge if you are aware of what skills you can take into other organisations. Once you are aware of these skills, you can articulate these in various stages of the job application process. Then you can identify how your skills match those described in job …

If you want to navigate your career development, you can find a lot of advice online. There are job sites with career profiles for different jobs and websites like Glassdoor which show you reviews of companies from people who have actually worked there. You may have spoken to a careers adviser in university, who showed you a list of jobs matching your subjects. Or you may have career conversations with your manager, discussing your future trajectory at that company.

A lot of these resources wil…

Trying to network as an introvert can bring up feelings of dread, fear and nervousness. Event though the general stereotype of scientists being introverts is not necessarily true, often, the nature of scientific work doesn’t require the same type of human interaction compared to say, the corporate world. As someone with a science degree, whether you have worked in academia or not, the type of work you have been trained to do may not lend itself naturally to networking. Whether you are an introve…

During my time volunteering at the Science Museum in London, I had the opportunity to visit their National Collections Centre. They store objects and archives that are not currently on display in museum exhibitions but may be in the future. This visit opened my eyes to what contributes to running museums and all the things we don’t see as visitors. So many things go on in the background, contributing to amazing displays that we explore with fascination and learn from.

What happens at a collecti…

There are many reasons why we have chosen not to work as a scientist in a lab. For me, one of them was that I realised a lab was not the right work environment for my personality. Often when we apply for jobs, we don’t take our place of work and the effect on our job satisfaction into account. A lab is a very specific environment suited to people with specific personality traits and characteristics. A lot of the work may be independent and self-driven even if you are part of a wider team. The en…