Career planning and mentoring for researchers

Career planning involves developing a longer-term plan of where you'd like to be in two, five, and 10 years from now. If you are aiming to apply for a certain grant, you need to know what is required to be able to qualify and be competitive for that grant.

For example, you may need to have industry partnerships already established, or a proof-of-concept study already published. Often, this needs to have been started one to two years before going for the grant. Sometimes there's a limit on how many years post-PhD you can apply for a particular grant or fellowship.

For more senior academics, you need to be aware of what is required in terms of supervision, successful grants, publication output, and teaching before you can apply for a particular promotion level. You can benchmark yourself against others in your discipline at a similar career stage who have been successful with the grant or promotion level you are going for.

For more information, go to Academic staff development.

The University encourages and supports academic staff in their career development. To manage development, the University has established the Academic Development and Performance Review (ADPR). All academic staff employed for more than 0.2 FTE are entitled to an annual ADPR. To learn more, go to Academic Development and Performance Review (ADPR).

Other important resources to understand your career progression:

• Staff employment agreements: These explain your contractual obligations.
• Academic standards: Role descriptions for academic staff researchers (research fellows, lecturers and professors).
• Promotions: Criteria are different depending on your subject or discipline.
• Postdoctoral Fellow Appointment Guidelines: Postdoctoral fellows are differentiated from research fellows as development roles for researchers who have recently completed their doctorate and are looking for their first academic appointment.
• Fellowships for early-career researchers: These provide financial support to an individual researcher to develop their own research vision.
• Academic continuation: A tenure-like process newly appointed permanent academic staff must undergo within three years.

Research mentoring is a type of mentoring where the mentor and mentee mutually agree to focus on different behavioural, intellectual, or attitudinal aspects of researcher development.

Below is a video of Professor Merryn Gott and Dr Natalie Anderson discussing their mentoring relationship in the context of the Rangahau Āwhinatanga framework at the School of Nursing. You can reach out to your head of school to find out if your school, department, or faculty has a mentoring programme.

Mentoring resources

• Mentoring and coaching intranet page
• Cultivating mentoring relationships (Percipio online module)
• Asia-Pacific Women in Leadership mentoring programme

Early career researcher career planning workshops

Organisational Development's Academic Staff Experience team and the RIO's Researcher Development team have partnered to offer a two-half-day workshop for early-career researchers to help them explore their career pathways within or beyond academia.

The workshops are co-facilitated with CDES (Career Development and Employability Services) and provide practical, reflective sessions tailored to help you gain clarity about the next steps in your career and drafting a career plan to get you started on the next steps of your career pathway.

It includes a pre-workshop digital workbook that takes about two hours to complete, and a printed workshop workbook. The half-day workshops are in-person and three hours long (9.30am-12.30pm). Participants will need to attend both sessions.

For upcoming workshop dates, check the Development opportunities calendar.

Doctoral training and development

For upcoming opportunities, visit Doctoral what’s on.

University resources

• Career Development and Employability Services (CDES) Canvas modules
• My CDES+ – resources and tools include a CV and cover letter builder, and tips for job interviews
• Career planning and opportunities (staff intranet page)
• Interview skills webinar
• Hono learning
• Career resources for doctoral candidates
• Career development modules for ECRs considering outside of academia career options
• Research, study and academic leave
• International opportunities – Grants to support international networking and collaborations

External resources

• Professor Positions
• Prosper Career Development Navigator
• EURAXESS career development
• What does it take to secure a permanent lecturing position in Aotearoa? (video) – Future Leaders Advisory Group (FLAG) recorded panel discussion from June 2023

Researcher Development team
Email: researcherdevelopment@auckland.ac.nz