Career Development and Trajectory: How to Excel in Any Research Administration Role
As an early career research administrator who has experienced exponential career growth, I believe my professional experience could help fellow neophytes in the research administration profession to excel in their current or future roles. I started my career in research administration as a research outputs officer in 2019. Ever since, I have accepted and excelled in two other roles working as a research administration officer (or grant officer) and as a research integrity coordinator. Having been successfully employed in three different roles within the research administration profession at my university and receiving multiple recognitions and awards such as the Due Diligence Award, Vice-Chancellor’s Service Excellence Award, Research Division’s Service Excellence Award and most recently Future of the Field award, the following attributes were of immense help for me to excel in each role.
Charting your career pathway
The research administration profession is both rewarding and challenging, especially for early career research administrators. There are diverse roles within the profession thereby creating diverse opportunities. However, this poses the challenge of navigating a career maze, hence charting the right career pathway would require conscious effort and adequate planning. Understanding the complexity of career pathways in the research administration profession at the early stage of my career enabled me to plan and develop skills for the next career pathway. With the appropriate career planning tool, navigating a career maze could be enjoyable. While developing a generalised career planning tool may be difficult, developing a personalised career planning tool is easy. For example, to develop my personalised career planning tool, I collated data from advertised positions in various research administration roles for two years. Through this data, I was able to understand the skills, knowledge, and experience required for different research administration roles.
Mentorship
It is important to have someone to admire in the profession. When I started in the profession, I looked for someone within my team to look up to in terms of knowledge, skills, and experience. I genuinely admire their performance and desire to put my best interests into the roles. In my three roles, I have a mentor, and this has enabled me to gain tremendous experience. In a situation where I could not find a mentor within the team, I tried getting one through professional society membership.
Open-mindedness, genuine involvement, and bracing for any challenge
Open-mindedness to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge and experience coupled with genuine involvement or interest and the ability to brace any challenge also helped me in my roles. For example, when I started as a research funding officer, I challenged myself to lead the pre-award management of one of the nationally competitive applications. To lead this scheme, I was open to new skills, knowledge, and experience while leaning on the shoulders of my colleagues who have led other schemes before. Taking up this challenge also enabled me to develop some useful tools such as grand readability and pre-award management tools which the team found useful afterward.
Conclusion
Succeeding in any career involves having a growth mindset and taking proactive steps from the early stage of the career among others. As research administrators, we are saddled with various responsibilities. These responsibilities when properly harnessed will help research administrators to acquire new skills, knowledge, and experience for career growth.
Authored by Dr. Olumide Odeyemi, Research Administration Officer
University of Tasmania
SRAI Catalyst Committee
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