A Career Progression Map - From Academics

Edinburgh University’s staff published a visual learning model which depicts a career progression in one of the three areas in academics - Research, Engagement and Leadership.

Now, if you are an entry level researcher, what and all do you need to know, and if you are an advanced researcher, what do you need to know - and more importantly, what should you focus on? That’s the specific question this graph tries to answer. This, for example, is what an advanced research should focus on.

According to the team which developed it, these are the four ways the tool helps in coming up with a robust coming plan. And these are pertinent enough for every field of operation.

• Prioritise Activities. Help people map where their current activity/focus is, with a view to understanding current pressures and helping focus on a narrower set of tasks

• Career Planning. Reflect on what their future career goals are, and what type of ‘package’ of activities might best support these (for example, through identifying possible pathways based on career goals – becoming a research centre leader, leading collaborative projects, or engagement with industry)

• Retrospective Assessment. Provide a retrospective tool for researchers to understand and communicate how they have navigated their careers (for example, senior researchers could share their ‘route’ with earlier career colleagues)

• Addressing Inequalities. Help identify inequities in the burden of activities across colleagues, especially in relation to the extent of ‘leadership and collegiality’ activity being undertaken.

Though this is going to take some effort for your theatre of operation, such sort of a demarcation will clearly help chart out career paths for associates at different levels of experience and learning graph.