Holly helps PhD researchers navigate careers beyond academia.

She is a PhD Careers Specialist at the University of Birmingham and creator of Post-Gradual: The PhD Careers Blog.

Sarah and Holly talk about

1. How a nudge from a friend kick-started her career
2. The shortage of research-specialist careers advisers
3. Navigating life and work with a disability
4. Why we need better language to define roles in research and higher education

Find out more

1. Read the show notes and transcript on the podcast website
2. Connect with Holly on LinkedIn or BlueSky
3. Visit Post-Gradual: The PhD Careers Blog

About Research Adjacent

1. Fill out the research-adjacent careers quiz
2. Sign up to the Research Adjacent newsletter
3. Follow Research Adjacent on LinkedIn Instagram and BlueSky
4. Email a comment, question or suggestion
5. Leave Sarah a voice message

What worked for their supervisor, what worked

for their predecessors, will not work for them just because of

how things are now. Tell people you're looking and what you're

looking for, because that automatically multiplies the

number of people who are job hunting for you. If you've got a

disability or a long term health condition, I think what you have

to be really good at doing is you have to be really good at

understanding your boundaries and understanding what you need

and being able to ask for it.

Hello there. I'm Sarah McLusky, and this is

Research Adjacent. Each episode I talk to amazing

research-adjacent professionals about what they do and why it

makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we

think the research-adjacent space is where the real magic

happens.

Today's guest Holly Prescott is one of the wonderful people who

I didn't know before the podcast, but is now one of our

biggest champions. Holly is a careers advisor at the

University of Birmingham. She specializes in working with PhD

students and postdocs, advising on both research and

research-adjacent careers, which explains her enthusiasm for the

podcast. Thanks Holly. Holly also writes regularly for

Post-Gradual, her PhD careers blog, which provides a wealth of

advice on things like identifying skills, redefining

success and using LinkedIn. There's even a book version

coming soon, which you'll hear about in this episode. In our

conversation, we talk about why Holly found herself drawn to

working in the research careers advice area, why specialists

like her in short supply, navigating life and work with a

disability, and why she wants to find new language to describe

the world of opportunities that are out there for graduates,

speaking of which, if you're listening to this podcast for

career inspiration, then make sure you check out our podcast

back catalog. Take a minute to hit subscribe in your podcast

app, and then you have instant access to our growing archive of

research-adjacent career stories. In our conversation,

Holly talks about the importance of role models. Well, we have

got over 50 role models to choose from, and around half of

them have got PhDs, so you're bound to find somebody whose

story resonates with you. Then, without further ado, let's add

Holly to that archive of inspiring role models. Listen on

to hear her story.

Welcome along to the podcast, Holly. Thank you so much for

coming along as a guest. I wonder if we could start by just

hearing a bit about what it is that you do

Absolutely and thank you so much, Sarah for

having me. I am a fan of the podcast, so it's it's great to

be talking to you. A little bit about what I do, I'll start with

where I came from. I did a PhD, which I finished in 2011 it was

kind of humanities, social sciencey sort of PhD. And since

then, I have worked in what I would consider to be academic

adjacent roles. So I originally I went for a job in postgraduate

student recruitment, where I was helping people to apply for

postgraduate degrees, and I was going all around Europe, which

was very exciting, doing exhibitions, convincing people

they should come to University of Birmingham to do their post

grad. I got that job because when I was coming towards the

end of my PhD, a friend sent it to me and said, you'd be good at

this. And I said, Great, what is it? And but no, I'd worked with

him, helping out, doing post grad open days, and so knew the

office a little bit, and I went for the interview. I didn't get

the full time job, but I got taken on part time because the

the department had some extra funding. So tip number one,

always go for interviews, because even if you don't get

the job, you might get offered something else. And so I worked,

I did there. I worked there for about three years, and what I

did as I was going through that was I kept thinking, What do I

like about this and everything there was, I like present,

presenting. I like being student-facing. I like the

advisory capacity. What I liked less about it was the salesy

aspect, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have a

conversation with these people I'm talking to, and put them and

their needs at the center, rather than selling them a

postgraduate course. And I thought, well, there's something

that does that isn't there. There's career guidance, and

that's what then led me down this path. I was also always

drawn back to the example that was a model, really, of my own

careers advisor when I was doing my PhD, Lucy. She was a person

I'd always looked at and thought I could see myself doing what

you do. And I think having those examples and models is really

important. So in 2014 I enrolled on a professional qualification

in career guidance. Did that alongside my post graduate

recruitment job, and then in 2015 got a secondment to the

Career Service. And then I never went back. So I started working

with taught postgraduates to begin with, but since 20 since

early 2017 I've been a postgraduate researcher careers

advisor. So focusing mostly on working with PhD and other

research students and early career researchers as well. So

that's what I do officially. I all I started a blog in 2021

called Post-Gradual, because I, I was really enjoying the work.

I, I mean, I find career guidance really fascinating, and

it's got a really interesting social science theoretical

background to it, which coming out of social science PhD sort

of grabbed me immediately. And being able to do it with

researchers, specifically, I have really enjoyed finding that

niche, but I was kind of wanting more, wanting sometimes, when

you work in an institution, it can be frustrating, feeling like

sometimes you're not having the impact that you could have. And

I thought, well, I miss writing. I'll start a blog, and I'll put

some of my ideas and some of my frameworks into the ether and

see if anybody else finds them useful. It turns out they did,

and I started getting invitations from that to do

workshops for other types of organizations, professional

bodies, other universities and things like that. So since 2021

I've also worked as a consultant, doing talks,

workshops and commissioned posts for other institutions and

organizations as well. So I've got that side business that grew

out of the blog that I never intended. I never sought it out,

that it just happened. I kind of put, put something out into the

universe, and then things

Sometimes, sometimes, that's just the way

it goes, isn't it? So it sounds that, although, sounds that once

you found yourself on this path, you know you've you've really

found your niche and and followed it. When you went in,

you said that you did a PhD yourself. Did you have a sense

of what you might do afterwards, or was it just something that

that kind of just, yeah, somebody saw something in you

that maybe you didn't see in yourself,

Both. I think I did the PhD because it came out

of my master's research, and I thought, I'm not done yet. This

could go further, and I want to be the person to take it

further. I definitely had some aspirations for an academic

career, but my brain shoots off in a lot of different

directions, and sometimes that's bad, but sometimes it's also

really useful. And what I realized when I got into PhD

level was there were a lot of people working in other roles in

the university who seemed to be able to do it, be doing similar

things to the academics, like teaching, training, even still

publishing, in some cases, but with more doing it on their

terms and were working in student kind of student facing

in different ways, were experts in different ways, and I was

really interested in exploring that. So I think it was in the

second year of my PhD where I thought I might want to do

something else here. And I'm interested in what else there is

within the university environment. So I took quite a

few bit like bitty jobs. I was a student ambassador, and that

introduced me to student recruitment. I got a random part

time job working on, of all things, a website for career

resources for research staff, which was the first kind of

career thing I did, just anything that was in my graduate

school newsletter that was like, oh, we'll pay you by the hour to

do this thing I would go for and just try it. And so whilst going

into the PhD with some aspiration of potentially an

academic career. What the PhD taught me was, well, what are

the bits of that that I actually like, which is all the student

facing stuff? What do I not like? Pressure to publish,

pressure to find my own funding and all of that. But what

manifestations can I find of the things I do like? Where is that

happening? Who's doing it without the pressures of the

things I don't like? And that sort of emerged for me as I went

through so I'm a bit tongue in cheek when I say about my friend

Simon giving me that is showing me that job, and saying, Oh, you

could do it. He did that. I think with the knowledge that

I'd spoken to him about this, I'd said, oh, you know, I'm

interested in working in a university environment in the

capacity advising, presenting, not doing research. So he had

something to go on. It wasn't completely random, yeah, I think

he did see something in me as well, but it was an educated

guess for him that that would be something I'd be interested in.

And this is why I say to people, tell people you're looking when

you are job hunting. Tell people you're looking and what you're

looking for, because that automatically multiplies the

number of people who are job hunting for you, and they might

come across things that you don't. Yeah

I imagine though, that yeah, that's excellent

advice in and of itself. And I'm sure some of what you've just

spoken about there, the experience that you went through

will will be the kinds of things that you now speak to

postgraduate researchers about, or it'll also it just gives you

that empathy that you've been on a similar journey.

Yes, although careers advisor school teaches

you, you've got to be careful about that. You can quite often

find yourself in a one to one consultation with a researcher

who you find you have something in common with, and good

guidance is to put that back, file that away, put the person

you're talking to at the center, because they are coming from a

different place than I came from. They're also existing now.

They're job hunting in a very different economic, political,

social climate than I was. So you've got to be very careful

not to project your own experience onto them. You've got

to appreciate the differences. If there's a way of balancing

it, I think there's a way balancing that I understand, I

empathize, but I think that, Oh, I've been there. You've got to

be careful with that, because you've been there, but you've

been there with your own perspective, at your own time.

So I think, I think having gone through it, having got the PhD

and been through that experience, I think it gives

credibility, definitely, but, yeah, but as a guidance

practitioner, you've got to be really careful that you're

meeting that person, you're meeting that researcher. You're

talking to where they are and not where you were or where you

expect them to be based on your own experience. Does that make

sense?

It does. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

And that idea is very important, because I think

in academia, specifically, we've suffered a lot from careers

advice that goes something like, well, if I were you, I would or,

well, this work, here's what worked for me. And you know, a

lot of PhD researchers, what worked for their supervisor,

what worked for their predecessors, will not work for

them just because of how things are now. So the so the impartial

guidance that we offer, I think, is really important, and I think

the researchers really appreciate that space.

I bet they do, because, I mean, that's

certainly one thing that's that's a case from some of the

PhD students and early career researchers that I've talked to

is that if, if all they're seeing around them day to day

are other academics, then it's very hard to conceive of what

else might be an option for them

Yeah. Or if all they see around those academics

who did it a certain way, they're going to think there

might not be another way to do it, or another way to manifest

that, or what that could look like. So I would definitely hope

that the work I do with them helps them to to see more

possibilities, not just beyond the academy, but potentially

within it as well.

Are you listening to this podcast for career

inspiration? Even though research-adjacent roles are

pretty niche there are still so many different paths that you

could take. For a bit of a nudge in the right direction try the

research adjacent careers quiz at researchadjacent.com/quiz

based on your strengths and interests. It will suggest a job

category to explore further with some recommendations for podcast

episodes from the research adjacent back catalogue. To give

you some more inspiration, complete the quiz at research

adjacent.com or click the link in the show notes.

Jack Grove put out an article in the Times

Higher it was two weeks ago now, saying what a shortage there is

of career guidance professionals who specialize in working with

PhDs. And I read Jack's article, and it was like, Ah, thank you,

because he was talking about a report that Robin Mellors

Bourne, has published recently, which is excellent, because the

focus of that has shifted. The focus whenever still felt there

were, there were a few years where we went through the

reviews of doctoral education from a couple of the from a

couple of the research councils and from UKRI, and the discourse

tended to be, there's not enough not enough support, not enough

career guidance for PhDs. There needs to be more. Do more. Do it

more. Do it better. And we were, you know, myself and my

colleagues are plugging away, saying we're doing what we can

with the resource we can with the funding we can in the time

that we have. But Jack's article, the references Robin's

report, shifts that discourse a little bit and says it's

happening, but the people who are doing it are stretched, and

these jobs are needed, but it's difficult to recruit to them, so

like kind of starting to shift that narrative, not saying

there's not enough career support for PhDs, but saying

there's a shortage of people in there's a shortage of roles, or

a shortage of people to do those roles, which is a slight shift,

but it feels a bit more it's a bit less defeating. So, yeah, I

think there is, and I'm so much has come out recently, say the

reviews of doctoral education from some research councils,

UKRI statement of expectations for doctoral training and new

deal for postgraduate researchers from UKRI. And in

all of these things you will see making postgraduate researchers

aware of their career options, aware of the skills they need

for those options, is is a priority, and so it's quite it

is interesting and quite energizing at the minute to sort

be in the center of that, yeah. And I think, yeah, I think it's

definitely come to the fore over the past, over the past few

years. Yeah,

Well, we'll have to get a link to that article,

then we can put it in the show notes. But as you say, You do

seem to have found yourself in a position where the sorts of

things that you're writing about are getting attention and

they're the kinds of things people want to hear about, they

want to read about, to the extent that you're going to be

putting together a book.

That's right, yeah, which I love, because I

think a lot of people who do PhD think that turning your PhD into

a thesis is the only chance you'll ever have to write a

book. And if you don't do that, you've missed the boat. Well,

you absolutely haven't. But yeah, that that's right. Ah,

over the past seven or eight years, I've kind of surveyed the

landscape, and there have been, there are quite a lot of voices

in North America that have been talking about these issues

around career options, broader career thinking for researchers

and the people in mainland Europe as well. But I noticed, I

mean, there's lot, there's lots of great resources from people

who were based in the UK. But what I noticed was there wasn't

a book, like a sort of practical handbook type volume that was

written both by a trained careers advisor, which comes

back to not that n equals one advice of, here's how I did it,

here's how you should do it. But who was also writing for an

audience of researchers from all subject areas. There are some

brilliant volumes by, you know, like Sarah Blackford, for

example, focusing on the life sciences. There are a few other

good ones as well, focusing on specific subject areas. But

think this my center of my Venn diagram was that I had a PhD. I

was a trained careers advisor, and I was writing for all

subject areas, and there wasn't Oh, and I had a UK focus as

well. And that was how I got the pitch. That was, that was the

pitch I made for the book, which is Navigating Careers Beyond

Academia, A Practical Handbook for Doctoral and Postdoctoral

Researchers. The book contracts with Routledge and my manuscript

deadline is Halloween next year, I deliberately chose the

scariest day of the year

I was gonna say, Did you get a choice in that?

I did. I chose it myself. I'll not it's because

I'll not forget it. What's the scariest day of the year? That's

my deadline. Yeah, basically, and it's really exciting,

because to go back to what I said about starting the blog out

of the motivation of having a wider impact for more people,

being able to formalize some of the exercises and the frameworks

that I've come up with in my practice, and put them into

something official feels really nice and really tangible.

Yeah, excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to

seeing it. Maybe we'll have to, if we're still going, then maybe

we'll have to have you back to hear about it once it's out in

the world, so maybe, well, that leads us on to I don't know how

it might relate, but to ask you about some of the things you've

done in your career that you're really proud of, I don't know if

maybe it touches on some of the things we've already mentioned.

Yeah because I thought about this question, I

know you usually ask people, and there are two sides of it. To

me, I think professionally, the book is right up there. Because

I, as I say, a lot of people who come from an academic research

background, you think your thesis is your one shot at that.

And if you don't publish that, and then you move away and you

do something else, you might not get the chance again, that's

absolutely not the case. So I'm proud of the fact that I have

kind of come out of my original academic subject area, found

something that I'm just as if not more interested in, and that

I've kind of applied my researcher brain to it to to to

get the book contract, which is brilliant. But there's

definitely a personal aspect as well that I'm proud of. So I had

talked about this a little bit in my blog, but not in a lot of

detail, but so 16th of June, I think it was 2020 it was a

Wednesday. Whatever day was Wednesday, mid June, 2020 I woke

up one morning and I couldn't see properly out of one eye, and

I thought, oh, it's grit or something, and it's carried on

blinking all the way through the day. Anyway, what turned out

happening was that I was diagnosed with a very rare eye

condition. We don't know definitely what causes it. It's

called AZOOR, but what we think happens is that the immune

system attacks the photoreceptors in the retina,

and it the effects of that can be temporary or it can be

permanent visual loss. So I have lost about a third of the visual

field in my left eye, and I have other aberrations, like flashing

lights, what we call photopsia and some other interference.

Looking at bright things is very difficult, and as somebody who'd

always had perfect eyesight, this was really difficult to get

my head round. And I think one of the things that I'm proudest

of is adjusting to that, being able to stay working, stay

working full time, and not and not using it as a force to say,

I can't do things, but I think what it's given me is a force to

say, let's do this while I still can. Yeah, because we don't, we

don't know what will happen with it.

So is it something that can get

progressively worse over time, or is it a bit unpredictable?

It's a bit unpredictable that we think it

is affected by a viral infection. If I contract a viral

infection, then I tend to get something will happen, and

that's when the lesions happen. And then it takes a while to

know whether that lesion is permanent, or whether it or

whether it self resolves, but we don't know. It's not

progressive, which means it doesn't kind of slowly get worse

over time. It's an acute condition. But yeah, I might

have other attacks of it. I may not. If I do, we don't know when

they'll be so you have to get quite good at living with

uncertainty. And I think what I've developed is, which is

useful most of the time, not so useful when I have to do any

long term planning, but I try as much as I can not to think past

the day I'm in, if that makes sense. I yeah, I wake up in the

morning I think, ah, today's not the day I go blind. Brilliant.

Let's do this day. Let's do all the things we're going to do in

this day, which I think sounds odd to some people, but that's

how I've coped with itthat.

I mean, I think it's something that's probably

very good for your mental health, yeah, just to take it

one day at time and not think too far ahead and and also not

to think backwards as well, because it can, you can get

bogged down and like, why did it happen? Why me? You know, all

that sort of thing. So it does sound a very positive way to

approach it, but it does also, as you say, it must make it hard

to think sometimes about longer term projects, like like your

book, for example,

Exactly that there's a new kind of anxiety

that comes with something that I'm committing to a year in the

Yeah, well, like, see, that's just sounds like

future and but there's what I found also helps, is just being

open and authentic with people about it. So with my editors,

I've explained to them the situation. This is why one like

another, it's a real interest of mine is supporting students and

researchers to talk about health conditions and disabilities with

very positive attitude, because I'm sure that when you're saying

potential employers. And I call it when I do it, I call it

bringing them onto Planet Holly, before they meet me, or before

we commit to anything, so that they understand the parameters

I'm working with, and how within those parameters I can work with

them, and they can work with me. So yeah, but I yeah so I think

adapting to that I still been able to do all the things that

I've been able to do and still committing to things. I'm proud

that I've been able to do that, and that it hasn't stopped me

saying yes.

as well, now that you're in that position to speak to and

students and postdocs about having those conversations

themselves as well, because that's the kind of thing that

people really worry about, isn't it? It's, you know, who's going

to want me if I if I can't do X, Y, Z, yeah,

Feeling like a liability.

Yeah, yeah

Is how, is how it can feel, but showing how

you've overcome it, adapted to it, manage it, I honestly

believe far outweighs any liability you feel you are. It's

just having the it's having the belief, or the confidence in

that. I've had some brilliant examples of, certainly of PhD

researchers using health conditions, how they've managed

those, how they've recruited their own carers, and things

like that. Actually using those on their CV and on applications

It demonstrates incredible skill and resilience

and all those sorts of things that employers are looking for,

doesn't it?

I think so. Getting people to believe that,

you know, is, is a step. But yeah, I think, I think, I think

if you do have, if you've got a disability or a long term health

condition, I think what you have to be really good at doing is

you have to be really good at understanding your boundaries

and understanding what you need and being able to ask for it,

which I think in a relationship with a line manager is actually

a really useful thing to be able to do, because I think line

managers will find you more self aware than potentially employees

who don't have those challenges, because you've had to, you've

had to understand yourself, you've had to understand the

impact on you, and you've had to understand what you need to to

to perform at your best. And you know, other people don't always

know that. So, yeah, obviously, I strongly believe in those

benefits of it for you in the workplace and but working with

researchers to understand and believe that there is a bit of

work that needs to be done there.

Yeah, I can imagine, I can imagine that it's

not as I say. I think, I think your attitude, where you said

that some people find it surprising, I think it's

probably fairly unusual as well, that you know that the way that

you've coped with it, but, but yeah, fantastic that there is

that you can use that experience to help others as well. Yeah. So

as I think you know, I do like to ask my guests, if they had a

magic wand, what would they do with their magic wand in the

world that they live, in the world that they inhabit?

If I was the PhD careers fairy godmother, there'd

be a lot of glitter involved, a lot. I know I love this

question, and I do, I do have an answer for it. So I was, if I

was PhD careers Fairy Godmother for a day and I had a magic

wand, I would use it to invent a new language for talking about

careers that doesn't involve that in academia and out of

academia,

Oh please, yes please,

Because, and I, because I have wrestled with

this. All of the language we have at the moment for talking

to researchers about options and paths is we've got non academic

alternative, outside, even adjacent. And there's two issues

for me with that. One of them is it situates everything as if

academia is somehow at the center, and that everything else

is defined by its proximity to or its distance from academia,

which sit doesn't really sit well with me, but also I think

it bolsters that idea that you either have to totally stay or

totally leave, and that there are not variations on that. And

that's why, in my book, what I've tried to do is there's got

to be case studies in there from real PhD graduates and former

postdocs. And I've tried to get what as much as I can, as many

different ways that people are combining contributing to

academia and contributing to research or higher education,

but also applying their skills beyond. They're not doing one or

the other. They've created they forge this career where they're

doing both

yeah,

because it is a false dichotomy. So if I could

wave my magic wand and solve something, it would be that

It's definitely something that's needed,

definitely something as you know, the whole premise behind

this podcast is about how we talk about these roles and where

they sit in relation to research. Another thing I'd love

it if you could solve with your magic wand as well is I really

hate when people talk about hard skills and soft skills. That

drives me up the wall as well. So if we could sort that at the

same time, that would be an amazing wave of the magic wand.

So definitely granted for that one? Yeah, fantastic. Well, we

need to start thinking about wrapping up our conversation.

It's gone really quickly. Where about can people find you find

the blog that you've mentioned all those sorts of things?

Yeah, sure. You can find me where I usually hang

out, on LinkedIn and Holly Prescott and there. My blog is

called Post-Gradual, The PhD Careers Blog. You can find it at

PhD-careers.co.uk, and oh, you know what I've done this week as

well I joined BlueSky, and I'm Holby83 so H O L B Y 83 on

there, which I think I'm going to now use as my second social

media platform after LinkedIn. Yeah, those are the places where

I am.

Well, we'll get the links to all of those and

put them on the show notes. Yeah. I'm also dipping my toe in

BlueSky, but not, not quite sure just yet, but we shall see how

it goes. Yeah, um, thank you so much for coming along, sharing

your story and uh, yeah, telling us about the book and

everything. So we'll look forward to that coming out. But

for now, thank you.

Thanks so much, Sarah. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

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