Understanding your skills and strengths are key in managing your career. Skills are searchable through keywords, so it is important that your application documents and online profiles effectively highlight your skills. If you do not know what your skills and strengths are, ask people around you for feedback and think about the abilities with tools or technologies you used to complete your research. You are more than likely a super user of some technical tools, or you have needed to solve some difficult problems and have established specific techniques to achieve the outcomes for your research.
You want to identify what your strengths are as mostly we like to work with these in our daily work. It is useful to look at job descriptions and not just the job titles. Your PhD is not so special in an academic environment but in other workplaces it can be unique. It might not necessarily be the knowledge that you have gained but the process that you used to achieve your research outcomes. It will be essential that you are able to describe how you did your research rather than what you researched.
With the job search process, it is important to notice the types of roles that attract you, similar with the employers. If having read a job description you are still unclear what the role is doing, contact the employer to engage in informational interviewing.
Our values guide our career choices and help us to decide what we want to achieve, as well as who we might work with or work for. Eliminating working for certain employers can reduce your options and hone your focus in the job search process. It's a job getting a job so spend your time wisely.
There are a range of micro courses available that can provide context and insight into specific skills or knowledge that can help to bridge gaps.
Position types
- Technical Writers
- Publisher
- Communications
- Museum
- Technical Communications Analyst
- Enterprise Process Engineer
- Agile Business Analyst
- Analyst
- Business Process Analyst
- Functional Analyst
- Technical sales, marketing and management
- Project Manager
- Project Coordinator
- Process Analyst
- Process Coordinator
- Usability Analyst
- User Experience Designer
- Business Consultant
- Management Consultant
- Agile Analyst
- Business Solution Architect
- Process Architect
- Subject Matter Expert
- Digital Media Consultant
- Operations Specialist
- Insights Analyst
- Compliance Manager
- Data Analyst
- Technical Data Analyst
- Business Intelligence Analyst
Main competencies for this pathway
- Managing data and what the data means
- Written communication
- Attention to detail roles
- Project management
- Leadership
- Critical thinking
- Analytical skills
- Confidence
- Influencing
- Convincing
- Time management
- Persistence
- Adaptability
- Teaching
- Asking the right questions
- Researching
- Knowing what good information is
Possible workplaces
- Tertiary Education
- Finance companies
- Consulting companies
- Publishing