Are you staying, or are you stuck? Career optionality for researchers

At a panel for postdoc appreciation week, I was asked to reflect on my path through academia. I was drawn to the CV of Failures - the real, messy things that reveal deeper truths about a career that can look polished from the outside. But the clearest moment that didn't fit the 'success narrative' was actually the counterfactual: the moment when I might have left academia, but didn't know that I could.

At the end of 2012, I stepped down from Research Fellow (Lecturer or Assistant professor equivalent) at the Australian National University to return to the UK for a postdoctoral assistant role closer to home with my young family. My reasons were good, but my ego was bruised; this step down wasn't how I'd expected academia to go. For 18 months I struggled to find roles in the UK, but throughout it all, the idea of choosing a different path never seriously crossed my mind.

In short, I was stuck.

This feeling is not unique - career inaction is common. I was a well-qualified, competent scientist, but this didn't protect me. Inaction feeds on worry, not ability. Today, there is good writing on leaving well: this is about the other half of the problem.

Why do so many excellent researchers feel stuck in academia?

An identity echo chamber

Academic researchers are highly susceptible to peer opinion. This isn't a flaw, it's a design principle - we operate on peer-review for outputs, grants, promotions. Like many, I simply had a highly developed sense of career identity.

But a strong identity as an academic has a dark side. It correlates with difficulty leaving the profession and shapes attrition because it can make leaving unthinkable. Moreover, it can lead to a form of emotional dependency on peer approval meaning that leaving can actually feel unsafe. I felt that my academic colleagues would disapprove of any step off the path.

Despite the academic role being hugely broad in tasks, the desire for peer-approval gives excessive weight to a small and biased subset of the ways in which researchers can have impact. While I could - theoretically - access activities in policy, start-ups, media and more, these did not feel open. The majority of academics have not spent significant time outside of academia to be able to establish an alternate baseline or identity. Academia can be a reinforcing echo chamber for career identity.

Nevertheless, exiting the academic identity is natural and common. Over 70% of PhDs and 40% of postdocs don't end up as academics. Probation and tenure misses happen too - often late, usually unplanned. Even so, my own experience of stepping off the idealised path led to dashed expectations, which do real damage to mental health.

Valuing stability is completely rational, and unplanned exits and dashed expectations are clearly to be avoided. But the system has an echo chamber problem, exemplified and perpetuated in my invitation to speak to the assembled postdocs: we talk about those who stay, and not enough about those who leave well.

You can't think your way out

In 2013, I thought I had an idea of what the world outside of academia looked like. But crucially, this was prefactual - I had no personal experience of other paths. Prefactual knowledge cannot drive major change, and trying to apply the tools of science (plan, risk assess, resource, act) to a career change is a recipe for inaction.

Academics are probably the worst people at making career moves, because it requires overcoming a major barrier (identity change) without actionable knowledge, and we're trained to look before we leap!

Luckily, solutions exist that do not require an end-of-contract or tenure-miss crisis; we run intentional and playful career experiments. These could be secondments to industry, external policy advisory work, conversations with friends and colleagues. This gives so much more than a network; it buys optionality where exit is one possible output. The cognitive decathlon of tasks in academia works for you, as a playground in which to craft your own role.

To me, Ibarra's approach looks like exploratory sampling of career space, which is how I run my lab. While the scientific method trains us to design our experiments, in the real world we have to test and learn.

Making a good choice

As a community we need to ensure that when a postdoc or colleague says they're exploring options outside of academia, our first reaction is curiosity not loss. Career exploration must be encouraged and supported whether or not it leads to a decision. In academia, much as in industry, this has a cost: seeing a good postdoc leave can be a real loss.

As organisations we have levers - protecting and normalising secondments, ensuring that researchers who leave academia remain part of the community, fully using agreed professional development for career exploration. I build secondments into my postdocs' training, and skills development into postdoc schemes. But maybe we can go further - opening university careers advice to all staff, including permanent academics. To be clear, this is not an argument about organisational headcount, but for individual choice and agency to make active decisions; a credible exit option strengthens individual voice.

There is also an organisational case: researchers in the right role, inside academia or out, deliver more. But, in 2013, I didn't want or need economic arguments to move out of academia. I wanted the psychological safety to explore outside of the academic identity, and despite the best colleagues I could have hoped for, this is something that academia has not yet learnt to give.

I developed a successful career as a university academic. I enjoy my work and was fortunate; but if I am honest with myself, in 2013 staying was a default, never really a choice.