Careers ServiceMaking the most of your PhD

There are lots of fantastic opportunities that you can take advantage of during your PhD to build your skills, experience and add to your CV. Below we have compiled a list of some of the most common opportunities, but it’s worth keeping an open mind to any other opportunities that may present themselves.

Making a plan

If you have a career path in mind, you can actively seek out experiences that support that direction.

  • Reflect on your current skills: Consider what you’ve gained from previous education, work, volunteering, and your PhD so far.
  • Research your target roles: Look at job descriptions, talk to professionals, or use AI tools to identify the skills employers value.
  • Identify gaps: Compare your current skills with those required in your desired field.
  • Set SMART goals: Focus on goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Prioritise opportunities that align with your career goals or offer additional benefits like funding or recognition.

If you don’t have a career path in mind, then you can use the opportunities below to explore your options as well as using our resources on Exploring Career Options.

The Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) is a framework that describes the knowledge, behaviours and attributes of successful researchers. It can be used as a tool to help with professional development planning at all career stages.

You can find more information and resources on the Researcher Development Framework section of the Vitae website.

If you are participating in the Researcher Development Programme alongside your PhD then many of the workshops available can support with developing key transferable employability skills as well as researching career options for after completion of your PhD.

It comprises over 80 different workshops, courses, events, and online resources to support our postgraduate researchers in their continued personal and professional development

The programme covers a breadth of areas and is designed to help researchers enhance their generic skills, behavioural attributes, and competencies for future employability both inside and outside of academia.

Find out more and book courses on the Strathclyde Researcher Development page.

These opportunities are all discipline specific and the list in this sub-section gives suggestions on the type of activity that you could consider. Your supervisor and other academic staff in your department may be able to give you more information specific to your discipline.

You can find more support with finding paid research roles on our finding academic opportunities page.

  • Research Assistant roles
  • Conferences: attending, speaking, helping at, organizing
  • Journals: writing, editing and peer reviewing

 

Your academic department or faculty is often the best place to start your search for opportunities relating to teaching. Similar opportunities at other institutions may be available to PhD students from Strathclyde. The vacancy section of their website is a good place to start looking.

 

 

  • Become a department or faculty student representative
  • Organise university events or conferences