Academic career coaching

[Emotionalsupporthamster]

Just wondering if anyone has used an academic career coach and if so did you find it useful?

I’m mid-career now, with a decidedly mediocre CV after several years of part-time working and mat leaves. I really want to ramp up my career now my kids are in school but feel as if I’ve fallen into the dead zone for funders where I neither fit the bill of bright young ECR nor research leader already making an outstanding contribution in their field. I do have a very good mentor but they are a close collaborator I feel like I would benefit from a bit of insight from someone at more of a distance and from outside my institution (an independent research organisation).

Recommendations (UK based) very welcome!

i've heard from others who say it is great. our university has a couple of recommended coaches and will (in theory) pay for it. or at least you can try to make a case to have coaching funded

I know someone who does this (for VCs and other upper management), but it's not cheap. I had coaching for a very specific aim, paid for by my university, but it landed them a lot of money (large grant).

From the sounds of it, you know what you need to be doing and maybe you just need to work out a two-year (ie short-term) plan to get started? Do you do an annual PDR? Do you have a mentor who's not your line-manager or HoD? What about talking to your department's Director of Research?

So what are the steps you need to take to get grant-ready? What smaller steps? Break down the task.

In my field (Humanities), it would be strengthening your research networks - maybe attending a couple of key conferences with a paper that outlines your next research project, and starting to see who's out there whom you might want to collaborate with.

Find people you want to play/work with (but think of it as "play") and just chat & brainstorm.

I haven't used an actual coach but I work in academia (research but not in a typical role that fits in the usual pathway) and I have been feeling quite stifled in my career lately, like I have nowhere obvious to go from here. Today I had a meeting with a professor who isn't involved in my management about something we are working on, and I decided to mention my current career dilemma. Even though she couldn't solve it, she had some really sound advice and honestly it was just refreshing talking about it outside of my direct management. I feel newly motivated from getting that outside perspective but from someone who knows our University well.

Thanks a lot for the replies. I can absolutely see that this sort of thing would be a good investment for institutions to make. Sadly at the moment the only thing mine would pay for is a VS package though!

@YellowAsteroid you’re maybe right, I suppose I do broadly know what I need to be doing. I think my priorities set out in my PDR are usually along the right lines and I have a good idea of what I need to be focusing on in the short-medium term. I think breaking that down further would help though. Mostly I need strategies for managing to divert time during the working day for the important career progression stuff (writing, networking, working on more strategic grant proposals rather than being drawn into too many things that are good for the department but not for my career).

maybe attending a couple of key conferences with a paper that outlines your next research project, and starting to see who's out there whom you might want to collaborate with.

I really like this. I’ve never gone to a conference with an idea to develop before. I do think some fresh collaborations would be great. I also need to make time to try to develop on promising collaborations on recent unsuccessful bids.

@Bringbackspring that’s great that you got some useful insight from that single chat. I’ve been reluctant to press upon more senior colleagues that I don’t tend to work with as we’re all so busy and stressed but you’ve made me wonder whether even just a single sit down over a coffee might be useful.