Research Staff Career Development

helping you reach your personal and professional potential

At LSE, we're passionate about helping you achieve your career goals.

To achieve these goals, it may be necessary for you to develop new skills, gain experience and knowledge of a new discipline, or undertake a qualification.

Set out below, are the various opportunities and resources available to research staff in this journey.

HR Organisational Learning

Here's what's on offer through the HR Organisational Learning team:

  • A wide range of general courses open to all staff, many of which are appropriate to research staff.
  • Research staff can also apply for External Funding for access to more specialised provision for which there is not the demand and/or expertise at LSE.

The Eden Centre

The Eden Centre supports the development and delivery of excellent teaching and learning in the social sciences at the school. 

Full details of the support available can be found on the Eden Centre's website.

Research and Innovation

Research and Innovation can support you in developing your grant winning skills, building your funding plans and indentifying funding opportunities for your project ideas.

Full details of the support available can be found on the Research and Innovation website.

LSE Careers

An LSE Careers Consultant offers individual, confidential careers meetings and bespoke workshops to review, plan and prepare for your next steps.

Your career development matters, and progress can be made in many ways, depending on your unique profile. Catherine Reynolds, the experienced LSE Careers Consultant, supports the development of research and policy staff, as well as PhD students and alumni. Here's how Catherine and the Careers service can help:

You might have a range of career ideas and concerns to discuss.

Typically, these include reviewing your current situation and reflecting on your experiences; considering a range of options, including career change; making career plans for the short and medium term; clarifying priorities for job search, promotion and career progression.

Some people think strategically and want to discuss preparing career-building activities and positioning for promotion; building a network, making contacts and being visible may be important and you might want to formulate a longer-term career strategy.

Others want to talk about tactics and use careers appointments for evaluating the style and content of CVs, letters and other application materials; preparing for a selection interview and other tasks; reflecting and learning from previous interviews.  You might be at the stage of considering an offer; negotiating and deciding between offers; resigning or preparing for a new role.

All of your concerns are important, discussing them with an experienced careers consultant can help you develop the career you want. Get in touch whenever you need to.

To access Career Hub create a staff Career Hub account using the form on the new user registration page and we’ll let you know when we’ve approved your registration. This will usually be on the same day.

Please note: if you have studied at LSE in the past and your staff ID is the same as your old student number then you will need to make up a unique staff ID to register. We recommend adding '-staff' to the end of your staff ID.

Logging in once you have created a staff account go to careers.lse.ac.uk/login and enter your CareerHub account username and password below the heading 'Login with your CareerHub account'.

If you have problems registering please contact LSE Careers with your name, staff ID and a screenshot of the error message.

Career Development Reviews

All salaried research staff at the School are required to undertake a Career Development Review (CDR), a meeting arranged by the deprtment/research centre intended to allow for an open and constructive exchange of views.

As well as taking into account future plans, the process enables a review of past performance, achievements and experience.

Mentoring

Junior salaried research staff are alloacted a mentor by their department/research centre. The Mentoring process provides those in the early stages of their career at the school with constructive advice on career development from senior colleagues.

Knowledge Exchange

A series of lunch time session to help support a range of topics aimed at developing knowledge exchange for researchers of any level. Further information is available here.

External Funding

Whilst the School runs a very comprehensive programme of in-house options, there are occasionally situations where staff need access to more specialised provision for which there is not the demand and/or expertise at LSE. There is a limited annual budget to support this type of development and applications are dealt with on a first-come, first-served basis. Further information is available here.

Other professional development support (external resources)

  • Vitae is the global leader in supporting the professional development of researchers, experienced in working with institutions as they strive for research excellence, innovation and impact. They are part of The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Ltd with over 45 years' experience in enhancing the skills and careers of researchers. They provide a range of tools to help support professional development for researchers
  • The Researcher Development Framework describes the knowledge, behaviour and attributes of successful researchers. It is a handy tool to help identify your strengths and gaps in development, prioritise development needs and monitor progress. Fuller information on how to use the Framework is available here.
  • Researchers in Motion is a unique pan-European initiative delivering information and support services to professional researchers. Backed by the European Union and its Member States, it supports researcher mobility and career development, while enhancing scientific collaboration between Europe and the world. Further information is available on the EURAXESS  website.
  • LinkedIn Learning: these online courses are designed for every step of your career by instructors with real-world experience. 

If you have any further queries, do not hesitate to contact a member of the Organisational Learning team at hr.learning@lse.ac.uk