Influencing stakeholders is the key to any large-scale project success. Throughout our professional careers, it’s a skill we must learn to master to really thrive. This post breaks down influencing stakeholders into an art form.
Category: PhD Skills
Good work habits are important throughout our professional careers. Your PhD offers you a chance to perfect them. Knowing how to manage your motivation, time, productivity, and prevent burnout whilst also ensuring you keep developing is key to thriving in any career whether that be in academia or beyond.
Being methodical is the key to keeping the big picture in mind. It’s important to move away from a reactive and reactional state of mind for any job. Thinking about the strategic direction for your role, team, or company will fast-track your career success.
Being a manager isn’t as straight forward as it seems. Having adept interpersonal skills to foster support and develop those around you is essential. As you progress up the ladder it’s important to think about your manager shadow – how others perceive you, model and emulate your behaviour.
Categories
Being a self-starter – it matters.
Being a self-starter comes naturally do PhDs. Exercising this skill is an incredible asset to help support your growth and development whilst contributing to your personal brand. However, if we’re not careful, this skill can hide us from the credit we deserve.
We often take intellectual curiosity for granted, however it’s a core ingredient to help you thrive in any career you pursue. Having the desire to ask the ‘why’ questions will increase your skillset, opportunities and overall visibility, ensuring career success.
Getting stuck in is what PhDs and academics do best. Recognising this skill and tailoring it to help you develop further, grow your network, and acquire new skills will lead to improved opportunities for your academic career and beyond.
Critical thinking is a core skill most, if not all, PhD students possess. This skill enables you to evaluate concepts, articulate their flaws and opportunities for improvement without being confrontational. Being able to critically evaluate concepts outside of academic is an asset for any organisation.
Leadership and mentoring skills are often hard to foster during a PhD due to limited opportunities. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t highlight it as a transferable skill or something you can consciously work on whilst in your PhD.
Recruitment is a career many PhD students overlook. However, much of the skills acquired during the PhD set you up for success for this profession. Here we break down the skills needed for recruitment and things to consider about this career option.