What kind of person makes a good academic?

You may have already noticed the “Researcher Development Framework” if you are a follower of news from Vitae. Vitae are currently consulting on this framework and I am one of many who should get my act together and give it my response (I will do I promise if anyone is reading this from the consultation team). Having not read it fully yet, I have already been recommending it to researchers and research students who have picked it up with great interest as a tool to understand what an academic (and specifically a research academic) looks like. What I like about it is that it actually takes personal qualities and skills and drills down into how this can be expressed in terms of levels. Take the example of enthusiasm.

Such a framework is really useful in terms of providing meaningful descriptors of what researchers actually do and look like. It could be of great use in actually reflecting on your own skills and where you are at when applying for jobs.  I am sure many people will read it and think “yes, that’s what I do, but hadn’t thought of articulating it so concisely”. I think the framework provides a model for other fields of work. With a little re-phrasing the example of “enthusiasm” quoted before could apply to many other career fields outside academia.   I showed some of the framework to MBA students recently and straight away it challenged them to think about what such a framework would look like for their level of seniority in business management.

So well done - to the writers of the framework!