Transferable skills of researchers

1. Project management

• Financial management
  • Understanding financial systems
  • Budgetary control
• Managing people
  • Understanding the characteristics of an efficient team
  • Interpersonal skills within teams
  • Leadership
  • Motivation
  • Team building
  • Skills in delegation and support
• Planning
  • Planning the work and the allocation of work
  • Planning to avoid peak load problems for support staff
• Proposal writing
  • Expertise in writing project proposals
• Quality issues
  • Understanding of quality assurance processes
  • Conducting regular project reviews- including development of ideas
  • Skills in working to deadlines and producing a quality product
• Understanding the project's purposes
  • Clarity on project context
• Information/document management
  • Know-how management
  • Construction of databases
  • Document handling

2. Personal and Interpersonal

• Networking skills
• Financial management
• Time management
• Assertiveness skills
• Use of Information technology
• Word processing
• Skills of workload management
• Stress management skills
• Managing your supervisor
• Negotiation and persuasion
• Communication skills
• Managing people
• Team working
• Managing change
• Handling the media

3. Corporate management/business skills

• Entrepreneurship eg. Business start-up awareness
• Technology transfer
• Protection and exploitation of IPR (intellectual property rights)

4. Research Skills

• Context
  • Keeping abreast of current developments/future trends in the research domain
  • Maintenance of familiarity with literature and with current practice in the field
  • Awareness of research activities of other people in the centre
  • Awareness of the wider social and political context of the research
• Strategic
  • Clarity of thought
  • Ability to distil out the finding of crucial significance from volumes of research data
  • Ability to operate across a range of different projects
  • Ability to generate high profile, authoritative statements on key issues
  • Developing the ability of staff to apply research methods/concepts to new domains
• Research concepts
  • Research strategies
  • Ethical issues
  • Scientific method- some philosophical considerations
  • Philosophies and issues within research
  • Hypothesis generating and testing
  • The political dimensions of research
  • Ethnographic research
  • Economic models of research
• Methods
  • Bibliographic and reading skills
  • Quantitative and IT aspects in research
  • Understanding of how to exploit hierarchical databases and use CD-ROMs
  • Statistical analysis techniques
  • Methodology generating and testing
  • Measurement and experimental design
  • Analysis of data - hard and soft
  • Validation of findings
  • Statistical skills
  • Qualitative and historical aspects in research
  • Working with organisations
  • Design and use of questionnaires
  • Using questionnaires in organisations
  • Survey techniques
  • Case study approaches to research
  • Computer modelling
  • Interviewing and participant observation
  • Field work
  • Survey methods (interviews, questionnaires, case techniques, action research)
  • Econometric methods; psychometric methods
  • Linear and multivariate modelling
  • Association and group analysis techniques
  • Qualitative research methods
  • Interviewing skills
  • Knowledgeable about available software for data analysis
  • Acknowledgement of the importance of qualitative skills
  • Survey techniques
  • Enhancement of qualitative skills eg. awareness of software packages
  • Sound quantitative grasp even if not primarily a quantitative researcher
• Dissemination
  • Writing skills
  • Presentation skills
  • Ability to write and present appropriately to different audiences
  • Skills in identifying outlets for publication
  • Networking skills