Research

What's it about?

Research activities undertaken as part of your degree and in your broader experience inside and outside the university will enable you to develop a range of employability skills. 

Typically they would include the following, all of which would be useful in the workplace. Refer back to your record of qualifications, employment experience and extracurricular activities; what experience do you have that can help you evidence these skills?

Information analysis

  • Using paper and electronic resources
  • Using online and physical library resources
  • Identifying appropriate resources and knowing where to use them
  • Using findings to structure and complete coursework and other projects
  • Using theories and methods in a critical and scholarly way.

Project management

  • Being able to work to a brief, e.g. completing an assignment or external project, or organising and staging an event
  • Setting goals and objectives; scheduling and managing tasks and putting plans into practice
  • Producing risk assessment and evaluation strategies to assess outcomes and outputs.

Problem solving

  • Developing decision-making skills, critical thinking and enquiry-based learning
  • Thinking things through in a logical way and identifying the key issues before coming up with a practical solution
  • Finding solutions to a technical problem and testing them out to identify the preferred solution
  • Negotiation skills.

Organisational skills

  • Being able to work unsupervised
  • Organising events and carrying out tasks
  • Meeting deadlines for academic, paid or voluntary work
  • Balancing study commitments with other responsibilities, e.g. employment, childcare, social and community activities.

Resource gathering

  • Sourcing potential funding for projects, submitting bids and maintaining records for audit
  • Determining the range of resources required to carry out a project, human and material, and identifying sources of supply.

What's next?

You may think enterprise and entrepeneurship skills are only relevant to someone starting their own business; think again.