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Holly Prescott, PhD Careers Specialist (Episode 61)

    Holly Prescott, PhD Careers Specialist (Episode 61) | Holly is taking a post-gradual approach to careers advice

    Podcast artwork with the text 'Research Adjacent Episode 61 Holly Prescott PhD Careers Specialist' and a picture of Holly Prescott

    For this episode of the Research Adjacent podcast Sarah is talking to Holly Prescott. Holly is a PhD Careers Specialist at the University of Birmingham and creator of Post-Gradual: The PhD Careers Blog.

    A different way to support students

    Although Holly did complete a PhD, she started exploring other higher-education career options while she was still studying.

    “There were a lot of people working in other roles in the university who seemed to be doing similar things to the academics, like teaching, training, even still publishing in some cases, but more doing it on their terms, and were working with students in different ways, were experts in different ways.”

    Part-time and temporary roles as a student ambassador and in student recruitment helped Holly figure out what kind of work she enjoyed. She was also inspired by her own careers adviser. It was a nudge from friend that led her towards this career.

    “I’d told him “I’m interested in working in a university environment, advising, presenting, not doing research.” So he had something to go on. It wasn’t completely random. I think he did see something in me as well, but it was an educated guess that it would be something I’d be interested in. This is why I say to people, tell people you are job hunting. It multiplies the number of people who are looking for you, and they might come across things that you don’t.”

    Specialising in research careers

    Holly now specialises in supporting PhD researchers. Her own experiences give her empathy for PhD students although her specialist careers training has taught her to keep the individual at the centre of their conversation.

    “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.”

    As Holly has built her skills, she regularly talks about the unique challenges facing PhD graduates on social media and in her blog Post-Gradual. Many of these blog posts will be incorporated into her upcoming book entitled Navigating Careers Beyond Academia: A Practical Handbook for Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Researchers.

    “What I noticed was there wasn’t a book that was written both by a trained careers advisor and was also writing for an audience of researchers from all subject areas. Being able to formalise 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.”

    And a way to extend the reach of Holly’s expertise is needed. Although Vitae and UKRI recommend that career guidance is part of doctoral programmes, there is a shortage of specialists who can help – currently just 1 for every 3000 PhD students.

    Living with limits

    In recent years Holly has also had to adapt to the challenges of living with a disability. In 2020 she developed acute zonal occult outer retinopathy (AZOOR) and has lost about a third of the visual field in her left eye.

    “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 using it as a force to say, I can’t do things. It’s given me a force to say, let’s do this while I still can, because we don’t know what will happen with it.”

    It has given her an added interest in supporting students and researchers to talk about health conditions and disabilities with potential employers.

    “If you got a health condition, I think what you have to be really good at doing is you have to be really good is 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.”

    Redefining academia

    The one change that would make the biggest difference to Holly’s practice is to break down the artificial categorisation of things as in or out of academia.

    “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 all. There is that idea that you either have to totally stay or totally leave.”

    In her practice and her writing, she tries to showcase all the different was people can contribute to higher education or contribute to research, whilst applying their own unique skills. Something that is very much in line with the whole ethos of this podcast (which perhaps explains why she has been one of the podcasts longest and most vocal supporters – thanks Holly :D!).

    Find out more

    Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay

    Episode Transcript

    Holly Prescott  00:00

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  00:32

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  00:54

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  02:21

    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

    Holly Prescott  02:31

    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

    Sarah McLusky  07:29

    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,

    Holly Prescott  07:53

    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

    Sarah McLusky  11:04

    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.

    Holly Prescott  11:24

    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?

    Sarah McLusky  13:07

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

    Holly Prescott  13:09

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  13:52

    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

    Holly Prescott  14:16

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  14:43

    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.

    Holly Prescott  15:14

    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,

    Sarah McLusky  17:54

    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.

    Holly Prescott  18:15

    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

    Sarah McLusky  20:36

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

    Holly Prescott  20:39

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  21:11

    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.

    Holly Prescott  21:34

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  24:33

    So is it something that can get progressively worse over time, or is it a bit unpredictable?

    Holly Prescott  24:40

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  26:06

    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,

    Holly Prescott  26:36

    Exactly that there’s a new kind of anxiety that comes with something that I’m committing to a year in the 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 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.

    Sarah McLusky  26:42

    Yeah, well, like, see, that’s just sounds like very positive attitude, because I’m sure that when you’re saying 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,

    Holly Prescott  28:18

    Feeling like a liability.

    Sarah McLusky  28:20

    Yeah, yeah

    Holly Prescott  28:22

    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

    Sarah McLusky  29:05

    It demonstrates incredible skill and resilience and all those sorts of things that employers are looking for, doesn’t it?

    Holly Prescott  29:12

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  30:35

    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?

    Holly Prescott  31:10

    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,

    Sarah McLusky  31:43

    Oh please, yes please,

    Holly Prescott  31:46

    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

    Sarah McLusky  33:03

    yeah,

    Holly Prescott  33:03

    because it is a false dichotomy. So if I could wave my magic wand and solve something, it would be that

    Sarah McLusky  33:10

    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?

    Holly Prescott  33:54

    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.

    Sarah McLusky  34:42

    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.

    Holly Prescott  35:05

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

    Sarah McLusky  35:10

    Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes  at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay. And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end. See you next time.

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