Establishing expectations and setting goals with a robust plan is essential for a successful postdoctoral career. An Individual Development Plan offers a progressive plan to identify individuals’ career objectives and the needs of specific professional development resources to accomplish those objectives. Moreover, IDP is also a communication tool between postdoctoral scholars and their mentors.
The following resources are available to develop an IDP:
My IDP (STEM fields)
myIDP created by Science Careers, helps to explore career opportunities based on your strength, values, and interest and set goals to achieve that. This myIDP online access is free and can be used independently or with a mentor. It helps you to:
- determine your skills, interests, and values based on designed experiments
- Find the best-fit career path for you from 20 different scientific career paths, matching your skills and interests
- Provide tools to set up strategic goals for the short and long term and also keep you on track by using the reminder
- Guide you through the process using appropriate articles and resources.
Imagine PhD (Humanities and Social Sciences)
ImaginePhD is a career exploration and planning tool specifically for postdocs and graduate students from the humanities and social sciences. Imagine Ph.D. helps:
- Postdocs to evaluate their career-related Skills and explore career paths based on their interest. It also helps to map out steps needed for career and professional development.
- ImaginePhD is a unique platform developed by experts from over 50 universities for Ph.D. students to identify popular job sectors and learn how to use various search strategies to find a best-fit job in their discipline.
