Beyond Publish and Perish:

Developing a Global Career Strategy

Dr Breno Nunes

Lecturer in Operations Management

OIM group

e-mail address: b.nunes@aston.ac.uk

PhD workshop

Aston Business School

Birmingham, UK, 01 MAY 2013

Developing a career strategy

A deliberate plan to help you to achieve your long term

goals intelligently.

RESU

LTS

EFFORTS

(£, time, energy)

Strategic career

Who are your career stakeholders?

• YOU

• your supervisor

• your family?

• your co-authors

What are you trying to achieve?

• Money

• Prestige / popularity

• Work flexibility / Free time

• Personal satisfaction / enjoyment

Today

Tomorrow

??????

Next 5 years

Next 10 years

?

Career choices

• Academic

• Research position

• Teaching position

• R+T+C position

• Industry / government

• Consulting

• Specialist area (industrial sector)

• Governmental agencies

• Third sector (Not for profit, NGOs)

• Entrepreneur

Strategic areas for your career and quality of life

Financial Social

Intellectual

PhysicalEmotional

Spiritual

Professional

development

Self-assessment

(Today’s performance versus where I want to be)

• Financial health

• Networking / professional relationships

• Physical / Emotional / spiritual wellbeing

• Output-effort ratio (Productivity levels)

• Skills needed versus your strengths and weaknesses

Career Strategy

Strategic Importance for your career

Per

form

an

ce S

cale

HighLow

Worse

than

As

expected

Better

than Excess?Appropriate

Improve

Urgent

Action

Adapted from Slack, 1994

Pillars of an Academic Career

Research

Publications

(analytical and

writing skills)

Teaching

(verbal and soft

skills)

Community

Engagement

(Analytical and

social skills)

International Careers

Issues to be considered before applying

• Where to go? (state, nation, continent, globe)

• Language

• Place

• Mentors

• Department

• School

• University

• Where is next?

• Long term career plan is essential!

Benefits of going for international experience

• Language

• Networking

• Cultural learning

• Better salary? Financial earnings?

• Access to expertise (or experts)

• Better infra-structure and resources?

MUST DO for academic career

• Negotiate your teaching responsibilities

• Publication strategy

• Quality versus Time versus Effort

• Demonstration of outputs in all areas

• Demonstration of potential outputs

• Time management

• Networking / professional relationship management

• Understanding the career life cycle and trade-offs

• Learn the rules of the game quickly

Avoiding Pitfalls

• Too much multi-tasking

• Initiating too many things at the same time

• Careful with benchmarking yourself against colleagues

• Too much planning

• Working too much on non-valuable outputs

• Formal rules versus informal rules of the game

Final Considerations

• Define well your personal and professional long-term goals

• Make conscious career choices

• Different countries and schools value different things

• Equivalence of degrees & Certifications

• Teaching vs Research vs Community

• Value of interdisciplinary studies

• Methodological positioning

• Value of emerging topics

• Publication rankings

• World academic and industrial trends

Thanks!

Dr Breno Nunes

b.nunes@aston.ac.uk