• Get ready for your career in science
• You and the job you want
• Employers and the labour market
• Practical Skills to Find Work
• Useful Resources
  • Additional support (mentoring, career counselling, helpful others)
  • Accepting job offers
  • Performance as a Newcomer
  • Useful websites
    • Job search databases
    • World of work
    • Discipline associations
    • Education and training
    • Information from the Faculty of Science
  • Tips for managing your career

Useful Resources

Additional support

To enhance your job searching or improve your knowledge of the labour market you might find it beneficial to enlist further assistance from time to time.  The following presents some ideas on how to do so.

The role of mentors

• Sometimes we can link up with a more experienced person to help with our career decision making. Mentors can share their wisdom to help you deal more effectively with workplace challenges and encourage independent thinking.  A mentoring relationship can be formalised with an agreed time limit and objectives or less formal and open ended in its’ arrangements.
• Mentors can offer assistance in a number of ways including:
• Business skills development – your mentor can offer advice on how to build relevant workplace skills including transferable skills such as communication.
• Support and encouragement – mentors can offer guidance on how to deal with the process of finding employment in your chosen career.  This can include things such as “pep” talks before you attend interviews, methods of coping with the stress of a new job and adjusting to new work environments.
• Role model – a mentor working in a job that you would like to do may be able to offer advice on how to be strategic in your career planning to reach your goals.  Through their own experiences they may make some recommendations on how to network, where to gain relevant work experience and other factors that will assist your marketability.

How do you go about finding a mentor?

In approaching someone to be your mentor it probably helps if you have clarity in what you would like to be helped with, have given some thought to the practical arrangements convenient to you both and some ways of measuring the value of the mentor relationship.

The Role of Career Counselling

• Career Counsellors are qualified professionals who can assist people with the challenges they face in their working lives. They can help clarify issues and use a range of techniques to help people process their study and career options to make better informed decisions about job choices and career pathways.

Helpful others

• People who know you well can be useful in determining career direction. Family and friends may be able to make suggestions on job roles they think would suit you, provide personal feedback on how you present to others and broaden your network through their own contacts.