Developing Transferable Skills

′PhD students and young researchers increasingly find employment outside the world of education. This book is an excellent guide to the skills they will need as they make that move.′ -- Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA, Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics, The University of Manchester and Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy

′Researchers are much more likely to focus on improving their research and research outputs, and not on improving their capabilities and performance as a researcher. This book encourages researchers to make this ‘Gestalt’ change in perspective. It takes researchers through the reflective process of identifying, developing, evaluating and understanding the transferability of their capabilities as a researcher.   Researchers are usually effective in communicating their research to others – although less so to a ‘lay’ audience. All too often they are not skilled at articulating their capabilities as a researcher. The ability to do this is increasingly necessary, particularly to potential employers outside higher education where the majority of researchers will eventually work.  

This is a highly-readable comprehensive book on transferable skills and speaks directly to individual researchers. Its content, layout and style encourages both full emersion and dipping into individual chapters and activities. Chapters four, five and six are particularly useful for readers new to the research process. The later chapters will be invaluable in helping researchers to reflect on their career development and employability. This book should be required reading for researchers embarking on a research career, particularly those on doctoral training programmes, and academics in their roles as supervisors or managers of researchers. Those responsible for providing development opportunities for researchers will also find much of value in the content of this book.′ -- Dr Janet Metcalfe, Chair and Head
′The expertise and insights from experienced researchers contained in this book will encourage ECRs and PGRs to understand, reflect on and analyse the breadth and depth of the skills, attributes and behaviours they are acquiring. As a careers adviser this book will add to the resources I can use in my work with these two groups as they develop and manage careers inside and outside academia.′ -- Clare Jones, Senior Careers Adviser