Julie Gould 00:09
Hello and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast.
I’m Julie Gould. This is the fourth episode of our 2025 Career Planning series supported by the International Science Council.
Julie Gould 00:28
One of my favourite career theories, because it very much fits how I have experienced my worklife, is planned happenstance.
It flips the what I call “This is what everyone thinks of career planning” idea on its head.
As we’ve heard in previous episodes in this series, conventional career planning theory suggests doing some self reflection, setting a goal, making a plan and marching towards it.
But the truth is careers rarely play out in straight lines these days.
Planned happenstance theory says stop treating luck as random. Instead, build the skills to take advantage of it.
The theory highlights five qualities that turn chance into opportunity. A curiosity to explore, persistence, to keep going when things stall, flexibility to adapt, optimism to see possibilities. And risk-taking, to step forward, even when it feels uncertain, which, let’s be honest, these days, working life can be a bit uncertain.
In other words, you can’t predict the future, but you can prepare yourself to catch opportunities when they fly past.
So instead of trying to plan everything to perfection, let’s expect to welcome the unexpected and be ready for it.
But before we dive into this more, don’t forget that at the end of this episode, we have a sponsored slot from the International Science Council, with the support from the China Association for Science and Technology.
The ISC is exploring how early and mid-career researchers can navigate their careers in a constantly evolving scientific landscape through conversations with emerging and established scientists.
Julie Gould 02:00
Planned happenstance is the theory that underpins Holly Prescott’s work. She’s a career guidance practitioner, and the careers advisor for postgraduate researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK, and she’s developed a way to prepare yourself for the unexpected, which she’s highlighted in her forthcoming book Navigating Careers Beyond Academia For Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers.
Holly Prescott 02:20
I often talk about a framework called “keep, lose, add,” which I think is really useful for what I would describe as career planning.
And it’s a framework that anyone can use to reflect on their experiences, evaluate those, and then understand what that tells them about what you need to do next.
So what the model does is it says, “If you were going to turn whatever you’re doing now into your ideal job, what aspects of it would you want to keep, what aspects of it you would you want to lose, and what would you want to add to it that you don’t get the chance to do at the moment.”
Now those things could be things you do in your work day to day activities. It could be aspects of your working environment. It could be the kinds of people you’re working with. It could even be more personal, things like work life balance and things like that.
But if you go through and regularly ask yourself those questions, that’ll help you to process the information you’re getting from whatever you’re doing at the moment, and understand what that’s telling you about what you want more of and what you want less of.
Julie Gould 03:28
Retrospectively, Holly realized that this is what she was doing subconsciously while she was doing her PhD in English literature at the University of Birmingham in the UK.
Holly Prescott 03:37
And all the things I wanted more of were the teaching, the public speaking, the people-facing stuff.
Stuff I wanted less of, was the data analysis and the working on my own a lot. And it was through working those things out that I was able to incrementally move towards a career path that would let me keep what I wanted to keep, lose what I wanted to lose, and add what I wanted to add.
Julie Gould 04:01
Having a system like this, where you analyze your career experiences is important, says Holly, because if you don’t, you might find yourself making decisions reactively rather than proactively.
Holly Prescott 04:12
If you don’t have this systematic way of processing the information from the experiences you have, (I see a lot of people who make career decisions based on wanting to escape something rather than wanting to intentionally move towards something).
Now that’s important for two different reasons.
The first, I think, is when I see people do that, when I see people making reactive career decisions, choosing to move into something, to get away from something else, that especially if they are researchers, if they have higher degrees, if they spent a long time in a particular research field, they’re moving into something to kind of get away from academia, for example, that I do see that lead to people then feeling a little bit lost and feeling a little bit kind of feeling out of place, not really knowing who or what they are anymore, because they’ve not taken time to think about “Well, what was it about academia that defined my identity? What was it that I really enjoyed about that, and what parts of that can I take and carry with me to what I do next?”
If you don’t do that, I think it can lead to an almost identity crisis of thinking, “Well, if I’m not doing research anymore, who or what am I?”
I think it’s also important when the time comes to do the practical stuff as well, like actually applying for jobs.
Because if you can’t, if you can’t construct a convincing narrative as to why, after you’ve done what you’ve done so far, you now want to do whatever it is you’re applying for, then the employer is kind of going to pick that up and not really understand why you’re there or why you’re you’re applying for What you’re applying for.
So really, kind of having a convincing narrative for that and being able to say, “Well, here’s what I’ve done so far, here’s what that’s taught me about how I thrive and what I enjoy, and here’s how that is relevant to why I’m going for this job with you now.”
That’s much more convincing and will help you in the long run.
Julie Gould 06:44
As I was speaking to Holly, I found more and more that her attitude towards career planning seemed to be in line with the planned happenstance theory that I mentioned at the top of the episode.
But I wanted to know what she thought about the idea of career planning, where you ask yourself the question, “I want to be x, y, z, in two to five years time. How do I get there?”
Which I originally thought was the idea behind career planning, before I dove into this topic,
Holly Prescott 07:06
I call that dangerous. I think we’ve seen enough instability over the past five years, COVID, political instability, economic instability, and the world of work is changing so rapidly.
If you were to choose a job title now and work towards that in 10 years, it might not be a thing anymore, and I think we’ve really got to take that into consideration.
So what I’m saying with career planning is, if you base so rather than kind of naming a job title, naming a role and saying, in 5-10, years time, that’s what I’m going to be.
That sets you up. I think that can set you up for a lot of difficulties, because your priorities might change in that time.
The world might change in that time, the sector you’re aiming at may change during that time, right?
So the model of career planning I’m talking about is more about developing the career management skills you need to adapt and change your plans in accordance with what happens in the world.
I just, I think, I think at one time, 50 years ago, when it was normal to get a job in a company, work your way up and you’d be there for life, then maybe linear plans, naming job titles and saying where you would be in 5- 10 years. Maybe that works, but I don’t think we can rely on that anymore.
And that’s why I think we’ve gotta train ourselves to have this enterprising mindset, to develop a toolkit of skills we can use to say, “Okay, well, we have a good idea about where we perhaps want to be aiming…”
….but that we don’t miss being opportunities that could arise on the way that could be even better for us.
Does that make sense? It’s a mindset.
What I’m talking about is training yourself in a mindset. And if you train yourself in that mindset, and I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this work with researchers I’ve worked with, it means that you can actually happen upon career paths and options that you don’t even know is a thing that could be even better for you than the thing you’re aiming at, because to aim at a thing you need to know what it’s called, and you need to know it exists.
And some of the researchers I’ve seen be the happiest in their careers were never in that position. They found things along the way.
And it just so happened that they knew how to evaluate those things in line with their priorities, and they knew how to capitalize on those unplanned opportunities.
Julie Gould 09:51
This sounds very much like it’s more along the lines of sort of planned happenstance theory of careers. Am I along the right path?
Holly Prescott 10:00
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
So planned happenstance, the famous quote from John Kumboltz to was a big career theorist in plan happenstance said that trying to fit a changing person in a changing job market is like trying to hit a butterfly with a boomerang.
It shows you that a career is incremental. You increment you move through your career, and you incrementally tweak your professional activities to be more in aligned with what you want them to be aligned with.
And that’s a lot less daunting than coming out of school University, coming out of a PhD in postdoc and thinking I need to make a decision now that will irrevocably influence the rest of my life.
And what Krumboltz says is that we need to get comfortable actually with the with things like uncertainty and not that.
Not treat those as things we need to eradicate, but actually embrace them and think about how they can be productive and positive forces on our career planning, rather than thinking, we need to kind of do away with them.
Julie Gould 11:07
Thomas Oxland, a professor of orthopaedics and mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia in Canada, is an example of someone who embodies the planned happenstance theory.
When he was younger he was getting ready to finish his undergraduate degree and he was planning a career in industry, as is common for engineers. But he reconsidered his options when he was offered a chance to do a Master’s.
Thomas Oxland 11:28
And so I had this opportunity. I talked to a prof that was in our department, this is at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and he said, “Sure, I’ll supervise your Masters.”
And so that was a very short-term thing. I was, I wasn’t thinking that in 10 years I’d be working in biomechanics, but I got interested in it, and then I had this opportunity.
So I saw I so I took it.
And then I guess it became very surprising to me. I loved research.
I really just, when I got involved with doing a Masters, I’d had some exposure to research during my undergraduate degree at University of Waterloo. They have us do a co-op program.
So I worked for Ford Motor Company and their scientific research lab. So I saw research there. I did it in my masters, and I just loved research.
So then I decided to do my PhD. I never would have expected to do my PhD five years earlier.
There was no way I was going to go to industry. So did I plan those steps? I would say I didn’t. And in I guess in some ways, it was following my passion, following areas of interest, that I newly discovered
Julie Gould 12:43
It feels like you take a bit of a risk every time you follow an opportunity like that.
You know, when you say you follow your passion, you know it may or may not have worked out well for you.
At the time, did you did you analyze things like that, like when the opportunity came along to do the PhD?
Did you think, “Okay, well, here are the pros, here are the cons. Let’s weigh them up and do it.”
Or did you just go, Yeah, well, whatever, let’s give it a go.
Thomas Oxland 13:04
I did weigh the pros and cons. So I got to, got to the point where I was working as a research engineer. So after I finished my masters, I got an opportunity. I went down to Yale University, and I got a position as a research engineer, and then I took a year before I started my PhD.
And I had an opportunity at different universities to do the PhD, and I explored those. I had the head of mechanical engineering at McGill University in Montreal.
He said to me, he says, “Why are you going into this field? There are no jobs in Canada, and this was in biomechanics.”
That gave me a reason to pause. I thought, “Okay, this is, this is a senior person saying there are no jobs.” So, of course, you don’t hear something like that and say, “Okay, I’m just going to disregard what, what you said.”
But I talked to other people, and other people said, “Well, you know, but, but there are jobs out there.”
And that’s when I just said, based upon everything I’d seen, I was very interested in this area, and I said, it just makes sense that there’s going to be jobs, whether it’s in academics or whether it’s in industry, who knows?
But there’s going to be jobs
Julie Gould 14:15
So he took on a PhD position at Yale University in the USA, during which he considered becoming a professor.
But when the time came to make a decision about his next steps, he still wanted to work in industry.
So he took on a role in a small company in Minneapolis.
Thomas Oxland 14:30
Because I wanted to, I’m an engineer working in the medical area. I wanted to get out there in the medical implant business, or some other area that was using my skills and in a more practical, in a more practical way, I guess.
And so I went against the advice of a lot of people who said, “Oh no, you can’t leave. You can’t leave the academic world and go to industry. You’ll never be able to come back.”
It just didn’t make any sense to me.
You know, I felt that my skills, my experience in industry, would be valued. And it would help me understand more about the world and the problems that I was working on in my PhD, and potentially afterwards, in working with surgeons, working with medical doctors.
And I thought, if I’m an industry, then I’m going to get more experience in that.
And so the advice of, “Oh, if you go one direction, then there’s no recourse. You can’t get back.”
That didn’t make sense to me. So I was kind of RE, you know, evaluating some of the feedback I was getting.
Julie Gould 15:37
Tom continued to constantly evaluate his skills and the feedback he received from speaking to people in and around the environments he was thinking of working in.
He spent three and a half years in industry before ultimately moving back to an academic position. But in order to make that a possibility, he did make sure he remained connected with academia whilst he was in industry.
Thomas Oxland 15:56
So I was doing research within the company, and I was also collaborating with some of the other universities that our company was working with.
They also let me go and help teach a course at the University of Minnesota, which was, which was really good, because I was just honest with the company. I said, I “don’t know where I want to go in my career, and if I got involved with teaching, that would be a good thing.”
It gives me an idea. Do I like teaching? And they supported me.
They said, “Great, that’s what you want to do, do it.”
So I didn’t plan to leave after three and a half years. It was just I could see where the company was going. The company was doing well. Company went public, and then soon after that, I left.
So the company was busy hiring people, making more money, but there were just things that I said, I don’t know that, that this is where I want to be.
And then I got a good opportunity to go run a research group in Switzerland.
And so, so we decided, you know, my wife and I decided to go and do that.
Julie Gould 16:56
By constantly evaluating himself and his working environments, Thomas has been able to make career decisions that worked for him, moving to jobs that suited his values and skills. But sometimes, even when we do this, plans don’t work out, and that’s what we’ll explore in the fifth episode of this series on career planning.
But before you go, here’s our sponsored slot from the International Science Council on career development for early and mid career researchers in an ever evolving scientific landscape. Thanks for listening. I’m Julie Gould.
Izzie Clarke: 17:42
Hello and welcome. I’m science journalist Izzie Clarke and in this podcast, presented in partnership with the International Science Council, with the support of the China Association for Science and Technology, we’ll be discussing the power of interdisciplinary research to protect our ocean, and how early- and mid-career researchers can bring about crucial change.
Today, I’m joined by Rashid Sumaila, Canada Research Chair in Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics, and Professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Rashid Sumaila: 18:17
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Izzie Clarke: 18:20
And Dr Mia Strand, an Ocean Nexus Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Coastal Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.
Mia Strand: 18:29
Hi, Izzie. Thank you so much for having me.
Izzie Clarke: 18:33
Thank you both for joining me. I think we’re living in a time where we are starting to understand that by protecting our ocean, that means we are protecting our planet. We are an ocean world. So, why is a transdisciplinary approach essential for tackling ocean challenges today?
Rashid Sumaila: 18:49
Yeah, actually, we have one global ocean. We’re all interconnected. So, to me, that is one place where interdisciplinarity is important, truly. Not only scientists, but working with government, with NGOs, with communities, Indigenous people, to try to find a solution that works.
I’m an economist by training but I decided to be interdisciplinary because I never believed that economics alone can solve our big problems — you need to work together. No single group or discipline can deal with the ocean issues. We need to understand everything, from the ecology right to the chemistry, the physics, to the people, the communities, so this is a laboratory for interdisciplinarity.
Izzie Clarke: 19:34
And Mia?
Mia Strand: 19:35
More locally, I think it’s also really essential to respond to real challenges and realities of, particularly, coastal communities that are facing a lot of the great impacts of climate change and of ocean degradation and ocean acidification, for example, and making sure that our research and our work is really connected to the realities on the ground. And also, that it’s connected to policy and policy needs.
Izzie Clarke: 20:04
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s so clear that this needs so many people involved in it to help. So, when it comes to early- and mid-career researchers, where are they helping and how, and what skills are needed at the heart of that?
Mia Strand: 20:19
I definitely think that early- and mid-career researchers are already quite an amazing driving force in that. I think we’re seeing a next generation or a current generation of researchers who really want to pursue more, what we often call, bottom-up approaches, or more relational and ethical research that is involving, like Rashid was saying, NGOs, Indigenous peoples, government officials, in the work that they do. We’re seeing a lot of early- and mid-career researchers wanting to challenge status quo, and I think that is needed to pursue more ethical and equitable research and approaches.
Rashid Sumaila: 21:00
The point you make, Mia, about just pushing the envelope and shaking up the system, that is one thing I love about young people coming into this business. Diverse people, right? And we need all this perspective if we’re going to move forward.
Just to give you a quick example, our project, OceanCanada Partnership, it’s called a partnership, and the Social Sciences and Research… Humanities Research Council of Canada, called SSHRC, actually has a partnership grant. And they insist that not only different professors, but also the students and the community, government, come together. And 50% of the budget was to develop early careers.
Izzie Clarke: 21:43
It’s great to see that that’s already starting, that things like that exist. Would you say there are any standout skills that you think are key to working in this field for anyone that might be listening?
Rashid Sumaila: 22:00
Oh yeah. In terms of skills, we are moving into some really technology kind of skills, we’re talking about AI and programming and so on. Things are moving so fast, and the younger people clearly are with the trend and they bring this into groups and we see that it has a lot of value. So, that’s one aspect I would like to highlight here.
Izzie Clarke: 22:18
Mia, is there anything you’d like to add?
Mia Strand: 22:20
Yeah. Facilitation skills are key. And we’re seeing that stakeholder engagement across different viewpoints and different ways of relating to or knowing the ocean is quite key and can contribute a lot to meaningful engagements.
I feel like I personally really benefitted from has been training in ethics, in what’s often called everyday ethics. So, beyond the very institutional ethics procedures, which I’m actually busy with at the moment, it’s more about how can we apply different approaches to everyday ethics and building relationships, and addressing power asymmetries and power relations that are already embedded in the relationships that we form or that are already there, and taking time to build trust and form relationships. That’s also a key thing.
Izzie Clarke: 23:12
Yeah. Given that this is such a big subject to tackle, you are going to need to work with people alongside the power of transdisciplinary research in that approach. So, can you tell me about a project that you’ve been involved in that brings different disciplines together within ocean research, and what was that issue trying to tackle?
Rashid Sumaila: 23:34
Yeah. We have a live project now, another Canada Partnership grant, we have case studies in five continents. We have the Canadian case study, which is about Indigenous management of the ocean and fisheries, which they have centuries of experience in. Then we go to the Netherlands, talking about circular economy. Then we are in West Africa, looking at IUU fishing, gender issues and sustainability, food security.
Then we go to China, and there we’re looking at agriculture because they are the masters of agriculture. So, what can we learn from China, and what don’t we want to touch with a long pole from their experience? Finally, in Costa Rica, is the land–ocean relationship.
And in all of these case studies, our goal is how to deal with the sustainability challenges at the nexus of food security. How do you feed billions of people in the face of climate change without destroying biodiversity?
Izzie Clarke: 24:39
There are so many topics and countries and different corners of the world all involved in that. How do you even begin to plan something like that, because it has so many moving parts?
Rashid Sumaila: 24:52
Indeed, and that is a challenge, that is really the fun part! I think one of the things we’ve had experience really working with large groups. But still it’s not easy, it’s very challenging. There are different languages, disciplinary ones, continental ones, and so on. But you know the value of this, so far, is remarkable.
Izzie Clarke: 25:15
And Mia, can you tell me about a project that you’re involved in as well and, again, talk about how that brings all those different disciplines together?
Mia Strand: 25:24
Yes. One of the projects I’m currently involved in is a WIOMSA working group called Blue Tenure Transitions. And that’s actually bringing together marine and social scientists of different disciplines, but also people in government, decision-makers, and also community-based knowledge holders.
And it’s really to try and understand and research how the rights of small-scale and artisanal fishers and Indigenous and local coastal communities can better be recognized but also realized of their rights in the Western Indian Ocean, particularly, in the context of increasing blue economy investments and efforts, but also increasing ocean conservation processes such as the goal for 30×30 in marine spatial planning that’s happening.
Izzie Clarke: 26:14
And you advocate for equitable collaboration with ocean communities, as well, and in previous episodes of this series, we’ve talked about how important it is to involve the Global South, as well, in discussion. So, what does that look like in practice working with ocean communities, and why is that such an important piece of the puzzle for now and for the future?
Mia Strand: 26:37
I do still think that we really need to centre the experiences and the realities of coastal communities, particularly, in the Global South and on the African continent, that are facing a lot of these challenges today. And I do think that the only way that scientists or researchers, or even decision-makers, can ensure that they are hearing and listening deeply is to really work through equitable approaches.
So, what does that look like? The transformative opportunity of transdisciplinary research is that even from the start, the design of the project and the way we do our research can be co-produced with community members. And I think for early- and mid-career researchers, I think it’s also about understanding who and what you’re doing your research for, what you want to do and why. We’re seeing a lot of early- and mid-career researchers already doing that, that’s very great to see.
Izzie Clarke: 27:38
Yeah. And Rashid, what do you think are the biggest barriers to making transdisciplinary and community-based research more common, and are there ways in which we can begin to overcome them?
Rashid Sumaila: 27:52
Yeah. The barriers, it’s language, also. The other one is — Mia, I like that you stress the power imbalance and the inequities, because that is so important. By really ignoring the communities, we are losing something overall.
I think our world and our economy is run a lot by so-called Western principles, and we can debate that. I tell people looking for profit is not just a Western thing. My own grandfather knew that he couldn’t continue running losses in his little business. But it seems profit, short-term profit, is running the world, and I really think if we open up the space for Indigenous knowledge — what I call granny wisdom — to soften this hardcore ‘money, money, money’ thing, that will really make the world better, we’ll know how to deal with the environment.
Izzie Clarke: 28:50
What advice, and this is to both of you, would you give to early- and mid-career researchers who want to embark on a career in transdisciplinary research?
Mia Strand: 29:01
I think just do it. I think have fun and learn, and the benefits outweigh the costs, I would say, even though it might give you some grey hairs and it might get sleepless nights, I do think that it will make your research and your work more relevant, more applicable, and you will learn a lot.
And be ready to be humble and unlearn things. Like Rashid was saying, what is so core is to question some of the forces that might be louder than others in the world right now.
Rashid Sumaila: 29:41
This is fantastic advice. It’s not going to be easy. And, actually, people might even call you names for pushing the envelope. Just ignore them. Eyes on the ball, persevere, persistence, keep pushing. You’re going to be happy you did that because the world is recognizing this more and more. So, come on board, guys and girls! Let’s do it and push the world in the way we want it to be to improve here.
Izzie Clarke: 30:08
A lovely note to end on. Thank you both so much for joining me.
If you’re an early- or mid-career researcher and you want to be part of that transdisciplinary community, join the International Science Council forum for emerging scientists.
Visit the website council.science/forum to find out more. I’m Izzie Clarke and next time, we’ll be discussing the importance of well-being and mental-health support for early and mid-career researchers. Until then.
