Do you have any colleagues or employees who used to be university researchers?

The project explores the career tracks of former post-docs and have moved into other occupations, whether inside research or not, in science sectors or elsewhere. Running across Europe, the survey’s results should provide an invaluable insight into potential employment opportunities for researchers who are considering whether to forge an academic career or leave higher education. We already have almost 1400 responses, but do please help us to make its coverage even more thorough. 

Some comments from our survey respondents:

"I am glad to know about this kind of research project. I think that collected results from it will be really useful to people who decide to change career as me."

"It's a great initiative. I think it's important to tell a more informed and nuanced story of how and why researchers leave academia: it does not have to be due to lack of options or as a sign of defeat. For me, it was an active choice, which has given me great new career opportunities."

"Having relevant information readily available about possible career paths will be a useful resource."

"I was impressed to see such a survey and I really like this research project! Congrats!"

"Looking forward to results being public. Know plenty of researchers still in academia anxious that they can't do anything else. I think this will be a great resource for them."

From the survey, Vitae will then invite specific respondents to tell their own career stories, as a future careers resource.

Please forward to any of your relevant staff (or others you know) this text and especially the link to the survey.

If you have options to publicise the survey further then please use #PostAcStory through Twitter.

More information about the project is available on here here and Naturejobs website.