How to Upskill During Your Degree
Worried about how to get a job after your degree? Not sure how your skills will translate to the job market? Learn about some ways you can upskill whilst completing your degree and make yourself stand out.
If you are completing an advanced degree, such as a master's degree or PhD, by the time you graduate, you will have developed niche skills and an impressive depth of knowledge in your chosen field. But this might not be enough to land you your dream job. Whether you want to pursue academic research or take your career in a new direction, it is your transferable skills that will make you stand out.
This is where upskilling comes in – you can work on improving those skills that will make you most valuable to employers. There are many ways to formally upskill – you could take on a part-time job, volunteer in a relevant position, or enroll in a course. But these options might not be practical or achievable for everyone. In this blog post, we will explore some of the ways that you can upskill within your degree. This will allow you to develop skills that are important for success in your degree and help you in your future career. Overall, the best advice we can give is to take on opportunities that will challenge you and teach you new skills, and don’t forget to document them for your resume!
Write, Write, Write!
It may be obvious, but writing is one of the most important skills you can develop independent of your career goals. If you can’t communicate your ideas, then they will likely be undervalued. As such, it is important that you can use written language to convey your ideas in a clear and engaging way.
And the best way to get better at it? Practice! Start writing early and write often, and importantly, write in a range of formats for different audiences. If you are writing a thesis, you will need to write about complex ideas for an expert audience, but it’s also important to be able to summarise your ideas simply and clearly for a targeted audience. Try writing short reports of your progress throughout your degree, write conference abstracts, or take opportunities to communicate your research to non-expert audiences, for example, you could submit an article pitch to The Conversation. And don’t forget to read – reading a range of texts can really help you to identify good writing and learn how to emulate it yourself.
Learning to write well can be challenging, and this is especially true if you are writing in a second language, so seek out help. Ask your supervisor for feedback, find out if your university offers writing courses, or start a writing group with fellow students where you can offer each other helpful feedback.
“Whether you want to pursue academic research or take your career in a new direction, it is your transferable skills that will make you stand out.”
Become a Social Committee Leader
A happy team is a productive team. Taking a break from the office, chatting with colleagues and fellow students, and relaxing is just as important as work. In fact, many businesses recognise the importance of a cohesive team to increase workplace morale and productivity. Academia is no different. This does not have to be a huge undertaking, but can be as simple as organising a morning tea, getting your team to take an afternoon off for a fun event (bowling, anyone?), or something as big as a department trivia night or an end-of-year student function. These can be great ways to upskill your communication, organisation and leadership skills. This sort of leadership and proactive attitude is what many employers are seeking.
Learn to Code
If you are studying a research degree, particularly in STEM, then chances are you have data…. possibly lots of it. If you find yourself doing repetitive data analysis in Excel, learning to code is a great opportunity to make your data analysis more efficient and learn a new skill – win-win! Even if you’re not doing quantitative data analysis, if you have some repetitive task, you could probably automate it to improve your efficiency.
Today, many jobs involve data in some form, and being able to code can improve your efficiency and make you a desirable candidate for any job. We suggest you start small – you don’t have to write an entire program on your first try! There are plenty of online courses which teach the basics (Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, among many others). You can start by automating a simple procedure, then just keep practicing! If you don’t know which language to learn, Python or R are good ones to start with. They are free, open-source and have lots of documentation available online to help get you started.
Organise a Conference
Planning a big event is a great opportunity to showcase a wide range of skills. It takes organisation, communication, teamwork, negotiation and working to deadlines. It can also open doors to networking opportunities, such as meeting executive members at your university or industry contacts.
Find out if you can join the organising committee of a conference in your field - ask if they need a student coordinator or similar. You could also organise a symposium for research students at your institute – this is also a great opportunity for students to practice giving presentations in a friendly environment. It can be as big or small as you like. Event-management skills are highly transferable and will be favorably looked at when searching for a job.
Apply for Funding
Writing grant applications is a skill that you will need to succeed as a professional, in academia or industry. Writing grants requires you to clearly explain your work and its outcomes to stakeholders, plan and deliver outcomes and manage a budget. These are all incredibly useful skills in academia and industry.
We suggest that you get into the game early – apply for small grants or funding schemes during your studies. These can be for travel, experiments, academic trips, visits to other institutions, or simply living allowances. This will give you the experience that you need to start applying for large grants as you progress through an academic career.
Take on Extra Responsibility
If you’re part of research group, then there is almost certainly something that you can do to help the team run smoothly that also helps you to develop some valuable skills. These don’t have to be time-consuming tasks. You could offer to schedule group events like meetings or coffee catch-ups, or you could organise a weekly journal discussion group, or writing group with fellow students. If you are part of a lab, you could volunteer to take on some organisational task, such as scheduling lab clean-up days. These are just a few examples, any task that requires you to plan, organise and communicate with groups of people can develop your management skills and also demonstrate your proactive attitude to employers.
Supervise Students
Supervision and mentorship are integral to any business (academia or industry). Employers are always looking for leadership and teamwork skills, meaning that you need to be able to show proficiency in this area. So, why not get it before entering the job market? Speak to your current supervisors about co-supervising more junior students, run workshops for undergraduates, volunteer for mentorship programs, and engage within your community.
