Evidence logs

Alongside your training log (or as part of it), it is useful to keep an evidence log. Your Prospective Personal Specification Audit means you have already started to log evidence of your achievements – but you don’t want to miss anything! So, at the start of your research degree (or as soon as possible, i.e. right now!), you should start a document that captures your successes, achievements and important activities you have completed.

It makes sense to record these in a way that can be easily transposed to CVs and cover letters, so record these thematically. It’s up to you how you want to do this – whatever makes sense to you will probably make it the most user-friendly.

If you are planning on applying for academic posts, then make sure you capture evidence of your teaching, research and administration, as these are all things you will need to evidence. You may also like to keep subheadings like: Public Engagement, Impact, Funding and Publications. When you record various activities, don’t forget to immediately make a note of what that achievement demonstrates (you could write this in another colour or a comment box as an annotation). This will mean you have multiple examples not just of what you’ve done, but what that means at your fingertips. Therefore your document will be easily searchable, when you quickly need an examples of when you’ve shown leadership or project management skills.

For example:

Funding

Humanities PGR Activities Award: £500 (2017)

Co-ran a workshop, with two PGR students from other disciplines, on ‘Policymaking and the Humanities’, with an invited speaker from parliament. This workshop offered expert advice on writing policy documents and scopes and allowed participants to learn first-hand how to best communicate their research to policymakers. (demonstrates: leadership, organisation, networking, ability to write funding application, thinking about wider impact of research)

Teaching

University of Exeter: Grand Challenges, Facilitator (2017-2019)

Facilitating a one-week project with undergraduates from across the university on the ‘Mental Health Treatment Gap’ Grand Challenge. Working with three project groups to deliver and present research outcomes on the theme of ‘Patient-level Barriers to Seeking and Receiving Mental Health Treatment’. (demonstrates: leadership, facilitation, working with diverse students across different disciplines, time-management, team work)