Mission Statement

Elevator pitch

[re]searching aims to make it easier for academics to transition into non-academic careers. By connecting practicing scientists with both scientific alumni and companies who like to hire PhDs, [re]searching helps early career researchers confidently plan their careers, and enable companies to rapidly recruit top scientific talent.


Background to [re]searching

Being a scientist is an amazing privilege. You get to work with passionate people and spend your time asking valuable questions. Whatever else is going on in the world, science moves forward, onwards and upwards. Truly a light in the darkness.

However, there is a major problem at the heart of the scientific enterprise: too many PhDs are produced for the number of positions available in academia.

What this means, simply put, is that most people who train to become scientists, will not end up permanently employed in academic research. This wouldn’t be such an issue if PhD graduates were finding gainful employment straight out of graduate school, but this is not the case.

While academic research equips one with a broad set of skills, these are often not so obvious to both the researchers themselves, as well as non-academic employers. What use is five years’ experience in molecular biology to a consultancy firm?


How can we fix this?

Enter [re]searching. By connecting practising researchers -  Mentees  - with scientific alumni who have made the transition into the non-academic workforce -  Mentors  - users can identify multiple potential career options based on both their academic background, as well as the skills they have acquired.

As well as facilitating networking between these groups, it also allows early career researchers to gain an understanding of the types of skills that are used in different job types so that they are able to upskill in preparation for a career change.

Having already transitioned out of academic research, the Mentors can provide a very valuable service to Mentees: advice. Adding a short statement summarising how they got from A to B allows Mentees to benefit from the collective experiences Mentors had in making a career change.

How many Chemists have become Consultants, or now work in a start up? Probably a lot. How many do you know? It's time to find out!


The third user group: Companies

Having a large network of highly technically skilled people can be very useful for Companies too, who can recruit directly from both user groups.

Companies are also able to post job templates describing a role that they would like PhDs to apply for. This means that both Mentors and Mentees can identify jobs that they might be interested in aiming for in a career change, allowing them the opportunity to upskill, as well as establish a relationship with a company, prior to applying to a specific job. In this model Companies can ensure that they have a constant stream of top scientific talent interested in applying for a job, even before they have started recruiting.

Another way of attracting scientists to your company is to write a advert for a particular role in our careers fair. Here, you can explain what a given role is all about, who you like to recruit for and why they should consider a career change.