It has been agreed for some time that doing a PhD is not an end in itself, and that transferable skills or as important, if not more so, in continuing life as a researcher in academia or science. Part of the structure underlying recent years’ activity in strengthening the transferable skills of PhD students has been the Joint Skills Statement, a sort of takeaway menu of skills that cut across all disciplines. Training programs at universities around the UK have been designed, funded, and executed in response to the call for skills which the Joint Skills Statement says should exist in PhD students.

So what of Postdocs? Whilst we are all keenly aware that if we want to get on in academia (or industry) we need to develop skills such as management, writing grants, publishing, administering finances, forming collaborations, and taking charge of our own career development. But in the asbsence of an equivalent to the Joint Skills Statement, institutions and funders are without guidance.

An equivalent of the JSS for postdocs should certainly go over and above what is expected of PhD level; no lectures on using 24-point fonts in Powerpoint!!! It should also be clear on what we expect postdocs to be. Only a small proportion will go on to become PI’s, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still be required to manage a team of students (or other postdocs), to manage a lab budget, to provide performance reviews to line staff, etc. Without training, we can only default to one setting: our own experiences, some of which will be good, some adequate, and more than a few terrible. Is this a great model for transmitting best practice?

Firstly we need to decide what we want a researcher to look like, then consider the skills that go into that and separate those that can be learnt “on the job” to those that would benefit from direct teaching or experiential courses. Then we need to consider delivery (are postdocs only going to take more senior academic staff seriously?), funding (that Robert’s money counts for us too you know!) and coordination (has somebody at your institution got responsibility and accountability for the skills development of researchers?). We then need to share best practice about stuff that works well and iterate upon our initial work.

Now the good news is that this isn’t all happening in a vacuum, and in fact UK GRAD have just had their contract renewed by the government which includes a widened remit to cater for early career researchers like us too. Now they can do a lot of the stuff I’ve outlined above but it’s crucial that we have a voice in what is developed for us.

Time to get thinking.